CD Projekt Red Not Interested in Being Acquired; Believes They'll Be Bigger and Stronger in a Few Years

ylai@lemmy.ml to Gaming@lemmy.ml – 481 points –
CD Projekt Red Not Interested in Being Acquired; Believes They'll Be Bigger and Stronger in a Few Years
mp1st.com
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Honestly after the Cyberpunk debacle I can easily see why, the decisions that led to that were almost certainly made by marketing and C-Suite and not the devs. Someone correct me if that’s wrong. If they actually learn from those mistakes I have no doubt they’ll reclaim the rep they had after the Witcher 3

Honestly they've already reclaimed a lot of rep fixing cyberpunk, especially after the 2.0 update.

I think they’ve done a great job with that and I really enjoyed Cyberpunk, I mean more with the vast majority of the public there’s still gonna be a stigma whether it’s fair or not. That debacle was really damn visible, undoing that damage in totality is gonna take a new release without those major issues imo

I'm hoping the stigma we see, towards cdpr and literally every other game dev studio, is people stop preordering shit. Problem solved, devs get money when we get a good game.

I picked it up on the Steam winter sale. Been waiting to play this one for so long and can't wait!

I haven't really played cyberpunk at all even though I own the game

Is it even worth playing ?

It's what a Bethesda game would be if they gave a shit.

So yeah, especially if you already own it.

I think it absolutely is. I played it a bit at launch and didn't find it near as bad as others but still set it aside. Started it fresh again with the expansion, and I had such a blast with it. You own it, so I see no reason not to a least give it a try.

Oh, absolutely, it's a completely different experience now than on launch. It's a properly good RPG nowadays, although your choices don't matter much in the storyline.

It was still a good game at launch, just buggy and didn't live up to expectations.

Yes. Absolutely. It IS a masterpiece at this point. So much of the game has changed since release that it's like, barely the same game compared to release, and all of it for the better (except fixing the super speed with krez big, that was just fun cdpr whhyyyyy)

Honestly, unless you’re on last gen consoles, it’s been worth playing since launch. Its bugs were no worse than Skyrim on consoles, and less bad in many ways. The game itself is probably the most open world immersive sim we’ve ever gotten. It’s not GTA, and it’s not trying to be. It’s not a sandbox, and it’s not a psychopath simulator like GTA. It’s a deep, philosophical, highly emergent single player game with a well-written story and competent acting in probably one of the most beautiful game worlds of all time.

2.0 update introduced a bunch of mission bugs and graphical issues for me. Not a fan. Got so frustrated I uninstalled.

They said once that it did cost them more to create phantom liberty and Update 2.0 than they will ever get back – but it was an investment into their reputation, not primary a business decision.

Investing into your reputation should be a business decision tbh. More companies should pay attention to what people actually think of their practices.

They will not. What happened with Cyberpunk happened with Gwent before and nobody gave a single fuck.

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i think that's a smart move on their part.

the CP2077 launch was rocky, but most of their previous games haven't had that level of hype. The Witcher 3 taking off like it did, gave them the confidence to go bigger. CP2077 is in a great place now, even if it didn't start that way.

Honestly, maybe they're just playing hard to get in order to raise the offer?

"Sure maybe we're worth about that... but think about what we might be worth in a few years."

I'm still sad about Gwent, though. The only reasonably priced CCG I've played, with beautiful artwork and fun decks.

As soon as Marvel Snap dropped, it sucked out whatever remaining air the game had left and even the smaller streamers dropped out of sight.

They're almost certainly right.

Cyberpunk wasn't received well, but they seem to have No Man's Sky'd it into some sort of shape since.

I still don't understand the hate it got. I played it on release and loved it, now they just shaped it into a fantastic game.

It was entirely unfinished. I also purchased it at launch and played it from day one, and it was one of the most glitchy and broken gaming experiences of my life. The cop system was nonexistent, the vehicle call system never worked, the driving mechanics were worse than watch dogs', people would t pose constantly, tons of missions glitched so that I could not complete them and had to root around in save files for a previous point to load or just abandon it, and I could go on for quite some time. It got a lot of hate because it was not a playable product and deserved a lot of hate. Now its fantastic and finally worth people's time and money.

It was astoundingly buggy, didn't work at all on multiple platforms that they released it to, was over hyped (part their fault, part community fault), the game felt "flat" and lifeless due to it missing a lot of the small details and better 'AI' of the GTA series.

It just wasn't the game they promised at all. And the fact that they kept delaying it then saying "we want to make sure it's ship-shape" gave people the impression that the game would be polished upon release, and it wasn't even close to polished.

It's improved leaps and bounds since then, though. When I first bought it I ended up refunding it, but recently I bought it again and it's so much better.

That's subjective, but fair. I did not experience the bugs and the hype I gave the game it lived up to.

the game was buggy but okay on pc. On last gen consoles though it was actually unplayable performance and bugs wise so much that ps store took it down and refunded the buyers. People who are still salty are just unreasonable though

You got amnesia or something? That game at release was a buggy, incomplete mess. Features originally promised and advertised were just missing. To this day, some of those features are still missing. Did you play through act 1 and somehow thought that a cutscene summarizing your growth with Jackie was the intended experience? The whole game reeked of rushed release. Hell, they still have an empty spot in the hills where the casino's supposed to be.

I did not experience the bugs that people on console were complaining about and I didn't overhype the game like the community did. I expected what was released and did not encounter bugs. Not everyone had the same experience.

Sure, if your expectation was for a shortened, shittier game due to a rushed development cycle, even compared to contemporaries at the time. Most people don't expect a shotty product. I mean, I don't even know how you can excuse the low effort police spawns around you. That's not even hype..... That's clearly low effort, unexcused disappointment.

Refer to where I said I didn't experience that stuff. I love how defensive you are getting over something that is completely subjective. Kinda seems like you are part of the community that overhypes everything then disappoints yourself and blames others. Also see: The Witcher 3 release :)

How do you play through cyberpunk and never spawn the cops by doing a 180? It's like you didn't even play the game. But whatever. You're the bottom 1% when it comes to expectations. Literally eating shit and can't taste the waste. But blaming others? There's no wrong in blaming CDPR for cb2077's release. They fucked up and every metric agrees with that. You'd be a fool to argue otherwise.

200 hours in the game but that's a nice attempt for ya. Once again, subjective, unrealistic expectations. Probably played it on PS3 and expected modern day performance.

is it really unrealistic that police spawns in a reasonable way and not....anywhere out of your line of sight? Your expectations have to be shit-tier low for that to be acceptable. Also, no. I finished the game on release on PC. It was a B- experience at best. The shortcuts they took were so obvious you'd have to be retarded to not see them. Maybe you just don't think about these things and your expectations are so low, you can be fed shit and still tell people it's fine. It's okay if that's you, just don't tell anyone else your opinion's worth reading.

B- is what I expected. That's above average expectations you donkey. Fucking clown.

triple A studio with 8 years to work getting B-? That's not expected. If it were the expectation, CDPR stock wouldn't have dropped half its value after release. It's currently sitting at 1/6 of all time high (before cb2077's release). Nobody agrees with you, buddy. Either something's in your water or you were dropped as a baby as hard as CDPR dropped cb2077.

Imagine not understanding the laws of averages and the meaning of subjective lmao. I repeat, fucking clown.

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I got lucky with the release too, only got a few t pose bugs, but the truth of the matter is that it just wasn't quite ready. What was there was fun enough, but most people just couldn't access it. Now, it's a 9.8/10 game imo, so good on them.

The game has been hyped since like 2013, and the final game is quite a bit different from the hype. Personally, I didn't follow any of that and just tried it when it came out since it seemed up my alley, and I thought it was pretty good, but buggy as shit for a full release.

Anyway, it's a pretty great game now. I really enjoyed the narrative, and the rebalancing of the game I think was wise as well if nothing else for removing the weird armor ratings from clothing.

It was buggy when I first played it, which turned me off for the better part of a year.

It's been pretty good lately though.

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That's debatable. I've had it since launch and while it is certainly more functional now, it's not any better of a game.

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It would be nice if the entire world didn't consolidate into two mega corps. Good on CDR for having their own vision.
CP2077 + Phantom Liberty are excellent. I just started a new playthrough. I wish it had released in this shape.

Good. Not every studio needs to be snatched up by a massive corporation. Embracer's yearlong meltdown is a great example of how that can end badly.

Every company that gets bought by another corporation either cranks out a few good games and then dies, or cranks out an okay game and then dies. The eventual outcome is always death.

Bullfrog, Raven, Westwood Studios, Bioware, Origin, Maxis, Viceral Games, all of them.

You can add blizzard to that list. That merger practically killed the studio anyway

I doubt it. They laid off 9 percent of the staff this July. That's far away from the 2077 launch. I would guess it's after the majority of Phantom Liberty's development is done.

Layoffs are only a bad sign for workers. For the owners and investors, it's the standard strategy for growth.

Layoffs are only a bad sign for workers. For the owners and investors parasites, it’s the standard strategy for growth.

My goal is to state facts, not farm the circle jerk for Internet points. But you do you.

they need to fire their whole ai department and theyll be flying lmfao

Please correct me if I *have the wrong impression here but how much does a sentiment like this matter if some big bethesda shaped behemoth makes the moves to acquire? Wouldnt business sense dictate that you sell if the offer is juicy enough?

Maybe the owners care more about running a sustainable company that makes good games than they do about getting a bunch of money.

Well thats what im wondering about. If you own (or are in the decision-making loop of) a company and you have the sentiment that you care more about your autonomy and products, how much will that matter if you are presented with a very large offer from one of the giants in the industry?

What do you mean? It's still the owners' decision whether to sell.

A decision like this is likely enormously complicated and does not happen in a vacuum. I dont personally think it stretches the imagination to see how there could be real-world pressures that could easily override a nebulous desire to "keep making good games". For example, what if selling is by far the best decision for the wellbeing of the employees and their families? What if the would-be-competitor seemed like they could outcompete them if they didnt sell? Im not trying to make assertions, Im asking if anyone has more specific information about this topic in general and specifically in the video game industry as a whole or CDPR specifically. edit: *would-be-buyer

The videogame world is weird. Say you are a small buisness in a miner town making cast and hardened steel parts for mining equipment. If a big manufacturer comes around and offers to buy you out, your alternative to saying "yes" is them, opening up their own buisness and driving your sales into the ground with cheaper offers. But if Bethesda says to CD Project RED "Either you accept the acquisition or we are going to make better games." CDPR can just say "Haha, good luck."

Thats good! I assumed there would be a lot of various pressures in a situation like that, like resisting a starbucks takeover as a small cafe or something. It could also end up being the best choice for their employees too if the offer is generous, so I could imagine that being an issue as well

For better or worse we need more developers free from the large gaming companies.

With gog becoming shittier constantly I doubt it.

What's happening with gog?

Pushing a shitty launcher, selling abandoned games, selling incomplete games, putting DRMs on multiplayer, selling a lot of low quality games, not expanding their overworked team despite the profits they make, etc. It got much worse with the success of the Witcher3 and has kept on going down.

I think there's even a browser extension that is used to mark shitty games on gog, that have missing features or DRMs. Funny for a platform that has the motto of selling hand-picked, DRM-free games.

And then I learned that Steam actually has a (to me at least) surprisingly long list of games that are either DRM free, or have unimportant DRM that can be easily circumvented.

Subnautica, for instance.

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam

Subnautica is DRM free on steam? Nice! I wanted to give it to try to my father, but he doesn't want a steam account.

Most games on steam can be played without steam.

Amen to the DRM part, that was really a stab in our back by them

Can you cite some examples? It's the first I'm hearing of any of this.

Did you even glance at this before posting? It's titled "games that treat GoG as second class citizens". Not "GoG treats customers as second class citizens".

That's a title. Gosh people really are GoG fanboys.

GoG always claimed that they hand-pick only quality games, that they personally negotiate with game companies, etc.

If a game treats gog customers as second class citizens, it means that GoG allows it. The existence of this link on the gog website also means that GoG is aware of it and doesn't give a shit.

And that was just one example.

That's a title.

Titles are typically indicative of the content of the post...

Do you want to provide evidence that isn't literally just a link to 200 pages of irrelevant user comments?

Gosh people really are GoG fanboys.

So you provide irrelevant evidence and that makes me a fanboy? Okay sure.

If a game treats gog customers as second class citizens, it means that GoG allows it

Is that so? What is it that you expect them to do about this?

The first page contains a google doc summarizing all the issues that were reported.

I called you a fanboy for attacking what I said out of superficial points that proved you didn't bother reading what I linked, all it would have taken was to read the first post.

GoG advertises hand-picked, high quality games (or at least did) so they're the ones claiming to have the ability to select. This post is enough for anyone in the gog team to contact the companies of the concerned games and discuss those issues. Pretty easy fix if you ask me.

The first page contains a google doc summarizing all the issues that were reported.

Irrelevant issues.

I called you a fanboy for attacking what I said out of superficial points that proved you didn't bother reading what I linked

Because they're irrelevant.

This post is enough for anyone in the gog team to contact the companies of the concerned games and discuss those issues. Pretty easy fix if you ask me.

And what makes you think they haven't done that?

Well the people reporting these issues don't seem to think they're irrelevant. You do sound like quite a fanboy, frankly.

If they have done that, then they didn't fix anything and didn't do their job. On the contrary, new games being published on GoG have more of the same kind of issues. You're just defending GoG irrationally.

The comments are claiming that game publishers are giving versions without controller support, etc. included.

This isn't a GOG issue, try reading comprehension next time.

Wow, instead of being a jackass try checking your ego.

Did you read the 277 pages of the link? And the Google docs summarising everything?

This is a comprehension issue indeed, your little ego prevented you from even looking more than 5 seconds at what I linked and understanding what it was.

Pushing a shitty launcher,

Fuck them. That's horrible.

selling abandoned games,

Why is this a problem? It's literally a good that those games aren't being lost to oblivion

selling incomplete games,

As in unfinished? That's the devs' fault.

putting DRMs on multiplayer,

Without that there will be a humongous rise in cheating in online games

selling a lot of low quality games

Literally not an issue. They are a marketplace and frequented by indie devs, they can sell as many shitty games as they like. In fact I would like them to be more of a platform like itch.io

not expanding their overworked team despite the profits they make

You have no idea what you're talking about, their org structure and project setup is not public and there is no way to know how "overworked" any team is as an outsider. You don't even know what teams they have.

The problem is not abandoned games, but selling them.

The devs can only publish on GoG if GoG lets them.

Multiplayer games existed long before DRMs and it worked. There are many solutions against cheating.

Quality is an issue when GoG advertises hand-picked, high quality games.

If the team is not overworked then it is not working, which is worse. I'd rather assume a lack of means than a lack of work, it's the charity principle.