More time to try and get a 3080!

”Hey, we heard one person that was buying our game is having a week or two of uninterrupted free time when we planned to relese. So we feel like we should move it again just to spite him personally. It is 2020 after all.” - CDPR

That’s what I read at least.

soooooooooo no free upgrade if bought on PS4?

I definitely don't have the willpower to resist buying this at launch, but I get the distinct feeling if you really want to play the game in a good state, you should probably wait for at least six months of post-release patching.

Apparently the employees found out about this delay when they got an internal email the same time CDPR posted that tweet.

CDPR is a bad company.

I guess they didn't crunch hard enough and must keep it going for longer. I can only imagine how the patch support will turn out for this game post launch because it seems like this will be coming in hot no matter what

EDIT: I still wish they would axe the current gen versions or at least restrict to the half step consoles. The idea that this game will run on a base Xbox One sounds ludicrous. I'll be shocked if it doesn't have a variable resolution of 540p-720p

I was right! They delayed it again! What do I win?

They might as well delay it to 2021. I doubt any human will have a 3080 by December anyways.

@colourful_hippie: It's sort of funny in a way. They specifically didn't want to even aim for a PS3/360 version of The Witcher 3 because they knew it would require them to create more versions and to hamstring the game for older consoles. The comparison to Dragon Age Inquisition comes up - because EA/Bioware did release on those older gen consoles and as a result the game did feel very last gen as opposed to next gen.

Now this is taking them so long that they've had to develop a current gen game for next gen and with even more platforms to build for. If they could've managed the project better, this could've been out on current gen already and they could've double dipped in for a next gen upgrade.

Pour one out for the developers slaving over this game that just should have a staggered launch. Because they gotta launch on all the things at once, because restraint would require leadership and stuff.

Edit: Also, the more I think about these :free upgrades" at launch, the less I am into them unless Sony and Microsoft are doing the QA with their own people or something. Because no matter how much money gets thrown at the problem, it doesn't make more people do the work.

@plan6: Aren't the actual "free upgrades" not coming until 2021? I believe the deal at launch is that the Series X/S and PS5 will be backwards compatible with the Xbox One/PS4 versions, and the actual next-gen upgrade won't come until next year.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/cyberpunks-ps5-xbox-series-x-2021/

@misterfrodo17: Yeah, but what are the chances that the poor folks at CDPR will be crunching until those are done too? My bet is very high.

Dammit, CDPR I just want a video game storefront and developer who aren't evil, even if it's just one of each. Why is this so hard. I'm going back to pogs!

guess all that crunch was so worth it now wasn't it...You sign up to do a few extra weeks to get things finalized only to just have more crunch. This industry is absolutely disgusting. I've just about lost all respects for this company.

“Alright, we’re clearly not going to make our release date the way we’re going, do we do the humane but business unfriendly decision and delay, or do we make our workforce crunch to make back our money?”

CDPR: “We enjoy both shooting ourselves in the foot while also making our employees suffer, so why not both?” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wonder what the state of the game is right now, because an unbelievable amount of money went into advertising this thing for a Nov. 19th release date, and now that will have to be extended by a significant amount.

I can only imagine what a mess this will be on release, if they have been crunching 80-100 hour work weeks for who knows how long. I don't really give a shit about the delay, there's so much stuff to play in november and it shared a launch with Age of Calamity which I am personally more excited for, I just feel for these poor employees being run ragged.

Something special must have come up for it to be delayed again so close to release. It's annoying, but I'm fine with them taking the time they need. I just hope this new date is the final one.

With a Dec 10th release date, this game will get little to no air time on GOTY discussions, especially if its some 80+ hour epic. What a shame.

It's hard to find a big AAA studio that doesn't fall into some of these vices. Unfortunately they all seem to suffer from bad leadership that leads to crunch or worse.

@jesus_phish: Yeah I just don't understand why they insist on going for these underpowered machines other than this game being developed for so long that the initial idea was to aim for current gen but all the delays has kind of thrown all of this into disarray and they insist on adding all these ropes around their neck by aiming for a simultaneous launch across generations of machines, PC, and bullshit Stadia for crying out loud. You'd think of all the versions they're working on that they can punt the Stadia one down the street for later.

Like others have said they have managed to delay for more time while only delaying enough to ensure that their employees crunch schedule will that much more longer. What a mess.

Can't say I trust that this game is going to be coming is a non-buggy state at this point. Definitely going to hold off and wait to see impressions and any issues/disappointments that arise in launch week. As much as I enjoyed Witcher 3, seeing them still miss their targets is a huge red flag and makes me wonder what all they're accepting as "good enough" to release that we aren't hearing about while they crunch on whatever this is thats going on.

Either this should have been a next-gen title from the start or CDPR should have said "we're going to finish the announced platforms first and then port-up to Series X/PS5."

And scrap the fucking Stadia nonsense. That's not going to make you much money or buy you many fans. I know some people have one and quite like it, but that's a sliver of their customer base.

I applied for days off for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands which got delayed. I barely managed to then move those vacation days to match Cyberpunk release, and now that got delayed. Anyone have any other games they want delayed? Seems like I have the power to do it! (For those thinking it's stupid to use vacation days for games, I have more upcoming vacation for family and friends. Just have a few days that I would like to use for myself and use them around a videogame I could binge on)

@plan6: Yeah, that's a really good point, and it sucks. :-( Part of me was hoping for a situation where employees wouldn't have to crunch to complete the next-gen versions, but that feels naive at this point.

@mobiusfun said:

Didn't think about that. Damn.

Yeah, that week's usually when everyone gets together. HOWEVER, with everyone being home-based, you won't get stuff like Vinny and Alex travelling over. So they've got more time to catch-up ahead of the deliberations.

Huh? The same day as Game Awards 2020. Oh, they are going to adverise so hard that day...

@humanity said:

And I'll just chime in to say that at least Projekt RED doesn't seem to be a misogynist boy's club that Riot, Rockstar, Ubisoft and Rooster Teeth are, or as cold and calculating and EA and Activision and chalk up their development cycles to "Geralt Magic" or whatever.

...Again, famous last words before CDPR's Ryan Haywood makes the news.

@facelessvixen said:

https://www.resetera.com/threads/cdpr-is-a-transphobic-company-its-time-we-stop-making-excuses-for-them.307474/

They definitely seem to have some other issues.

Management fumbles the deadlines, the artists pick up the slack.

Honestly I'd much rather the game was delayed for a few months than the staff was forced to commit development seppuku just to hit a pre-christmas deadline. I think especially during a pandemic when everyone is extra forgiving of delays, there's really no excuse to subject your staff to that kind of pressure unless your company is capping their overhead. Which, putting it lightly, CDPR fucking should not be doing.

And this is on top of all the general shitty reports we've had of transphobia and sexism out of that studio? Cool. Cool cool cool.

There must be something incredibly wrong with one or more of the many ports considering the amount of their fanbase's goodwill and hype they are throwing straight into the trash with such a last minute delay. Plus, as others have said, this is going to hurt it when it comes to Game of the Year stuff considering how close to the end of the year it's (presumably) coming out.

My guess is even with so many more days of crunch it's going to release as a buggy mess on par with a Bethesda offering with different versions taking vastly different amounts of time to receive patches. They'll probably try to blame it all on the game being so big and expansive and so on, but for the most part it comes back to crunch.

Human beings aren't machines. Being forced to work ~80-100+ hours week after week is going to wear people down both mentally and physically. Code becomes sloppier and results in more bugs, these same exhausted and overwhelmed individuals now need to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it, and when a fix does appear it's likewise probably less-than-perfect and might not work or might create even more bugs.

Crunch only results in more crunch to 'fix' the problems created by crunch. I am reasonably confident that the game would have come out sooner and in a better state with happier employees if there was little to no crunch with a healthy amount of breaks so everyone could work at their best as efficiently as possible.

I welcome all delays. Hell, make the game and announce the date of release after it's done. I'm all for it.

@conmulligan: agreed. Its somewhat positive that they even considered delaying the game again rather than crunching even harder. But in the end I can say from experience that delays to stressful projects often just feel like the light at the end of the tunnel just gets further away from you.

All the best for the people hard at work finishing the game, and I hope that they end up with something they can be proud to have their names on.

Im bummed out by this but at least now I can enjoy Assassins Creed longer then a week so meh. Whatever makes the game better in the end. Im jist curious what went seriously wrong, as one minute the game goes gold and seems on track, just to then need more time

I'll agree it seems like Cyberpunk has or had a doofus or doofuses running their Twitter account, but it also seems to me like that forum poster is looking for things to be mad at.

My theory is that they finished the game only to realize that they forgot to put Keanu Reeves in it. Whoops!

More seriously...I understand why they can't just push the game back further but I wish they'd just push the game back further. I'd rather just get a Series-X version with all the bells and whistles that works well in the Spring than get a buggy mess of a game played through backwards compatibility in December. This year has already been a terrible one in reality and kind of a mediocre year for games (with a few stand out titles like Hades and the FF 7 re-imagining) so one more game being moved back won't really matter and at this point I just want the people working on the game to be able to maintain their health and sanity. Definitely much more than I want to play a video game sooner.

At least a few humans have 3080s. I was lucky enough to get one a couple weeks ago, but luck is exactly what it was. I reacted to an Amazon stock alert and happened to be among those that got one before it disappeared in 8 seconds.

This is what happens when management isn't handling timetables right and now devs are picking up the pieces.
I just hope they'll be properly compensated for everything and CDPR reputation is already severely tarnished.

I surprise myself with how fast I've let their reputation and goodwill towards me as a customer become tarnished because of this delay.

Is it because I took some vacation days between November 19th and Thanksgiving to play it? Mmm, that has something to do with it even though this gives me more time for Valhalla.

I think most of it has to do with me thinking they were one of the good ones. Now they've proven themselves to be just like the rest of the crunchers and liars in this industry. Sad.

At this point why not just delay into 2021? Avoid crunch, do a ton of clean up work on existing bugs and put out a polished and properly tested product?

@bocckob: I think you should read more of that thread.

From what it sounds like from the information around the internet so far is that the current generation consoles are the problematic platforms. It sounds like the game is complete, but is not running very well on the PS4 and Xbox One.

If that is the case I wonder if the delay is actually just waiting till the new consoles come out. If they released it on their original date, then most of the core console audience would be playing on the PS4 or Xbox One. If the game was in a broken state, then its likely there would be huge blacklash to the game. But if the game release 3 weeks later, which notably pushes it after black friday and cyber monday, then its possible many thousands of players would have upgraded to a PS5 or Xbox Series where it presumably runs fine on. Then when the game releases the backlash won't be so severe.

I'm not saying they aren't going to spend those 3 weeks working to fix the issue, but I do wonder if the delay was motivated in part by waiting for next gen console adoption.

@obliviousjd: I'd wager Cyberpunk was built with next-gen in mind so downscaling it for the current ones requires some heavy lifting. I don't even anyone developing for a console launch, let alone developing for a current gen as well.

I really sympathize with anyone who took time off work for the previous release. That sucks.

Whats really going to suck though is for developers who are now going to be crunching even longer. And likely some more after release 'cause I doubt it'll be perfect launch. No game is worth that and its on management who seemed to have continuously fucked it up, though Im sure some of it is on lockdowns etc.

Given that a number of key employees left after Witcher 3, I wonder if CDPR is due for another exodus after Cyberpunk with the work conditions on it. I wonder if they'll end up another Rocktar - 'serve' few years in crunch, get an uber hit on your resume and go cash out elsewhere.

I'm one of those people who took time off because they announced it went gold, and all signs were looking like it was absolutely not going to get anymore delays.

I really wonder if scrapping the current gen versions was ever on the table.

Having no interest in Cyberpunk, this is the one that actually bothers me. Had to do a doubletake when I read their news post.