@chaser324: And even just ignoring that, if there is even the slightest chance this becomes popular (and, schadenfreude aside, it is a really high chance that this becomes a "universal good" in eight months) it would be giving MS an exclusive for "free".

When it does show up in the store again, will there be a disclaimer stating that the game is for PS4 Pro only? I just can't see how they will be able to fix the game to play on a base PS4 or at least not in any recognizable form.

Hopefully this will lead to Sony having better policies on what is required for a release and add a better refund system. I know times have changed but back on ps3 they were far stricter with things such as minimum loading times and no crashes etc. The waver on the back of day 1 patch solution that was talked about on this weeks bombcast has obviously gone too far and doesn't work, and sony have done the right thing to remove a game that failed to meet the requirements or deliver the fixes promised in that day 1 patch.

Personally I'll keep playing on the pro, finish it up and move on until maybe it's been overhauled enough to warrant a 2nd playthrough on ps5, when they become available to buy.

To all the people who are enjoying this because they disagree with CDPR's awful business practices. Please take a step back and realize what is going to happen to these poor devs now, during the holidays no less. This really blows.

I wasn't dismissing other people's experiences, I was just sharing my own. To be clear, in no way was I stating that my experience has been shared by everyone on PC. I should have elaborated on my point more thoroughly, but the intent was not to imply that my relatively smooth experience is norm on PC. The point is that while not everyone on PC has had as smooth an experience as I have, literally no one on console has.

The situation consoles is on another level. The very nature of PC gaming and the wide array of different hardware configuration among different users results in less uniform levels of stability and performance across the board. Some players, such as myself, have a relatively smooth technical experience. Others are having issues. However, the baseline technical experience on PC is much higher than that of the consoles.

Not to diminish those that are having issues, but the average level of technical performance on PC is simply not at a level that force storefronts like steam or GOG to make exception to their existing refund policies. The situation with PS4 is an extreme situation where essentially every user is having a broken experience. We've seen plenty of broken games released in the past and not forced drastic changes to refund policies. I just don't see Steam or GOG changing their policies over the PC version when, on average, players are not having the same degree of issues console players are.

@isomeri:

Yikes. I would refuse to crunch at this point. What could they do, fire me? I would think CDPR needs their devs more than they need CDPR at this point. Unless you are someone they can point to as being responsible in some way for this mess.

I thought DF said the PS5 version ran relatively well but seems like that’s gone too?

I’ve been playing on the One X and there have been crashes but not enough to deter me. Panam’s dialogue puts me off way more, seriously who wrote that section of the game?

Last night I switched to Series X on quality mode and haven’t had any issues so far.

@ll_exile_ll: GOG especially since they have a 30 day no questions asked refund policy so you're covered there. This is actually a very interesting situation for Microsoft as they become the sole source for the console version of the game at the moment. If they can enact a proper refund policy regarding this game then they can possibly earn a lot of money down the road. Considering that people who bought the digital version on Microsofts site have access to the internet and the xbox tracks how long you've been playing a game they can definitely put forth a Steam-like 2hr playtime refund policy. Being able to properly handle refunds is infinitely preferable to delisting the game entirely as you don't lose out on sales. Many people are, as shocking as it is, either not going to ask for a refund or they will wait for a patch or simply won't care about the performance of the game. That is money that stays in Microsofts pocket. Sony due to having such an archaic attitude towards refunds and through their own hubris of allowing this clearly not ready game on their lesser platform has forced themselves into the nuclear option of delisting it entirely because they have no other choice. If Microsoft is able to play they cards right they stand to really come out on top in this situation.

It's not a separate version of the game. It's just the PS4 game being run through backwards compatibility.

This whole situation is fascinating. The fact that such a high-profile game could have performance that's so bad on current-gen consoles is amazing. I know that they are several years old at this point but... I still think of PS4 as being pretty powerful? As far as I can tell there's nothing gameplay-wise that is necessarily so taxing on Cyberpunk compared to other open-world games, and open-world games have been a staple of the industry since the PS3 era at least. By this point, most games should be able to scale their settings pretty easily for whatever hardware they are on. Like how Id could cram Doom Eternal onto Switch and have it run pretty smoothly. If it can't scale well... does that mean the engine was just badly designed from the start? I know nothing about game development so this is probably nonsense. Curious to see someone more knowledgeable weigh in on technical aspects...

@humanity: Microsoft actually does have a refund policy, unlike Sony.

Request an Xbox refund | Xbox Support

It seems 14 days is the cutoff for Xbox. Also, If you follow some of the links, you find this quote.

When you request a refund for these products, and depending on the purchase or content type in determining refund eligibility, we consider a variety of factors like time since date of purchase, time since release, and use of the product.

So, based on the "use of product" line, it sounds like they already do look at playtime when they consider a refund request, though they don't mention a strict number of hours like Steam's 2 hour policy. The vagueness of a lot of that wording probably opens up more flexibility in a situation such as the one with Cyberpunk to where they don't actually have to adjust policies and can work within existing ones.

When corporations fight, everyone loses.

What a wild fucking ride.

@chaser324: right but DF still said it ran relatively well on PS5, 60 FPS etc

@pearsonpark: That doesn't matter. The PS5 is running the PS4 version. The PSN store doesn't differentiate that at all and I don't think Xbox does either. This probably won't change until CDPR releases the "next gen" update they've been taking about.

@wollywoo: Optimization is one of the last steps in much of game development. Basically rewriting code and tweaking setting to make stuff run well. Given that this game clearly came in way too hot it just wasn't optimized, in addition to not having a lot of its bugs crushed. There's no reason to think it can never run decently on PS4 or Xbox One (though it might look pretty bad when all is said and done) but there's clearly a lot of work to be done to make that happen.

Microsoft has announced that anyone who bought the game digitally is eligible for a refund now, though I don't think they've said they're delisting it.

@bigsocrates: this definitely reinforces the line of thinking that Sony did what they did because of their lack of a refund policy.

@colourful_hippie: Oh I see what you’re saying, that makes sense. I thought there might be a way of preserving access for PS5 owners.

@pearsonpark: They probably could make it available for purchase via the PS5 console store only (they did that for the PS4 collection you get with PS Plus) but my guess is they're way too pissed for that.

Sony does not like issuing refunds, does not like this precedent, and wants to punish CD Projekt Red.

Microsoft, being a software company, is probably more sympathetic, and also probably sees this as an advantage to seize a PR advantage by both issuing refunds and permitting people to buy the game still.

Worth noting that MS has much deeper pockets than Sony (as a company at least, not Xbox division vs PS division) and, of course, has a lot of ground to make up.

@bigsocrates: Yah as I said above and @ll_exile_ll added to above - this is going to be a good thing for Microsoft down the road. I will also say that as a small benefit, maybe this will finally get Sony to look over their existing refund policies and update them so there is this little good that can come from it.

Wish this had happened in time for the podcasts.

@robinothoodie: Is there no Hot Spot today? I don't see it on the upcoming list on the main page, but was really hoping to tune in live this time to hear the reaction to this news.

Edit: It seems that it's already live in chat with the stay tuned screen up. That would explain its absence from the upcoming list.

Best Buy is now allowing returns.

Note that in Best Buy's statement it says the vendor is accepting returns, so that means CD Projekt Red seems to be on board with the returns thing.

This is really interesting stuff.

I always saw this as CDPR trying to do the ultimate make good move of just allowing refunds all the way down. The problem is retailers fucking HATE doing that and have so many different plans in place to prevent them that just saying to them "Let people refund our game" pisses them off extraordinarily.

@fugoy: There are lots of reasons that retailers hate to do this. Especially around the holidays. It's expensive, it's potentially dangerous, and probably most importantly it opens up the issue for future games. This is not the first game that will be shipped busted and people are going to ask why Cyberpunk could be returned but Fallout '77 can't be.

Obviously retailers should do the right thing anyway, but man this is just a big disaster for everyone involved.

CDPR is going to face even further backlash when it inevitably announces paid DLC.

I don't necessarily know what's dangerous but everything else sounds like it should just happen. This being the last straw is only because CDPR actually wanted to go through with it. Bethesda would have rather gone under than even think about it. Also I can see the first big DLC being completely free.

When was the last time a big box retailer made specific return policy exceptions for a product?

@tunnelman: none that I can recall. Few retailers are willing to pick up the tab(yes, processing refunds costs money) for the mistakes of the manufacturer. And if they are forced to process returns on mass, they make every effort pass those costs on to product manufacturers.

Also, from my retail experience, rejecting a return from an angry customer never felt “safe”. It is very rare that people get violent over that stuff, but does happen. And that is what is going through your mind when some customer is yelling at you because they can’t get a refund.

All these announcements about refund policies would have come across a lot better if they had been made in concert with CDPR's original refund announcement. Now it just looks like they're scrambling yet again to do more damage control after another big messaging screw up. PR department just can't keep egg off their face.

@fugoy: It's 2020 my dude. Best Buy is primarily an American retailer. Extra trips to stores are dangerous, and having a bunch of people have to go to the store by a deadline a few days away is definitely potentially dangerous.

If this was December 2019 then it would not be dangerous. Hopefully by December 2021 it won't be either.

Idk. Yes the launch was crazy bad and the console versions are barely playable right now. But only one week after launch, the game is fine on pc. The only bug I ever still have since patch 1.04 is V occasionally T posing fully nude on top of her vehicle, which is more amusing than annoying. Idk I feel like I have no one else to talk to who really likes this game too. All this drama kind of just sucks for me.

Well, yeah...we knew the first batch of DLC was going to be free anyway.

I think whatever talks or hints at the larger, expansive DLC later down the road is going to be so fucking precarious they'll need some fucking masterminds on how to even approach the subject with consumers. And that's assuming they've fixed the stuff with the game by then, because I cannot imagine a scenario where they don't do so and still try to spin out a new expansion.

I'm pretty sure, for example, that they've gotta unveil a sixth attribute. No idea if that was going to be an update or something rolled out with a story DLC, like some of the new abilities and mutations in The Witcher 3's Blood and Wine DLC.

True.

I think it hurts retailers, like the people in suits who run them hurt...physically pains them...the idea of giving back money they've just gotten. It's always the idea of looking reasonable while trying to do whatever they can from not having to give the money back.

Which, I think is probably the thing that triggered Sony to delist it. CDPR was publicly promising refunds, something that Sony did not want to have to do. That much is clear. So much so that they were starting to look bad with the widespread stories of Playstation owners being denied refunds.

Feel for the devs. They're going to get raked over the coals for this and it wasn't even their fault the game was rushed. But this is a wild precedent to set and I'm curious what the future looks like where janky ass games can just be pulled from stores completely.

@thepickle: According to Bloomberg it is the devs who are raking the management team over the coals. The best quote: "What do you think about making a game about corporate oppression and making us work mandatory 6-day weeks for months?" Cyberpunk Game Maker Faces Hostile Staff After Failed Launch - Bloomberg

To your point about janky games being pulled... MS and Sony are also to blame for granting the waivers and providing no additional QA.

After originally denying my refund request, MS has retroactively approved it, but required me to email CDPR. I was playing mine on a XSX so I didn't have the same type of technical issues people on last gen consoles were getting, but I have characters materialize in odd scenes, tracked missions changed in the middle of other missions, and dialogue lines from earlier sections looping inside of combat.

They could have released on PC and next-gen just fine and none of this would have ever happened. That's the truth. This game on the above-listed platforms is actually decent.

They could have delayed just the last-gen (PS4/Xb1) versions until Feb or whenever they fix them and, based on the reviews of the less-buggy next-gen versions they released they would probably have enjoyed great success.

But somebody decided get that cheeeeze for Christmas. Who cares about dropping all the versions at the same time? Oh no spoilers. I think in retrospect there are people at CDPR that wished they did this instead of how things turned out.

I will totally buy this game for PS5 or XbSX if/when I ever can buy one.

@digitaldisco: in terms of industry types I definitely expect to see the vast majority of the attention paid to management. but for the mainstream audience I feel like the knee-jerk reaction is to just blame the people that literally made the game. People who just buy cool space-man games at the store don't really know or care about the context of dev crunch they just want Skyrim with lasers.

And it will be interesting to see what if any effects this boondoggle will have on future cert processes.

@wollywoo: I've worked under crunch-like conditions a few times. At some point it's more about helping out your work friends than holding down a job, for me at least. You don't want to leave your friends in more trouble by quitting. It's not a healthy approach, but definitely one I've fallen into on a few occasions.

The news breaking about the game being pulled was cathartic for a few minutes. Then there was pretty much every game journo I'm aware of going "holy shit" when this happened. Then there was regular daily news talking about it.

This really is on a scale that hasn't happened before for this industry. Most anticipated game of the year, maybe even the decade, getting pulled off digital storefronts and the respective publishers offering full refunds on request? It's mind-boggling; not even Fallout 76 beefed it this bad, and one can easily say it had the much rougher launch.

Can't help but feel awful for the devs over at CDPR, working their ass off on a game they must've known wasn't going to be ready in time, but leadership ignored the red flags and pushed it ahead anyway. Now they're going to be crunching for the foreseeable future not only to fix all the immediate issues, but also to get this game back to a state that publishers and retailers feel comfortable selling it again.

Shit's fucked, man. Hopefully the upper-management at these companies see what's happening and actually change.