Has your opinion of CD Projekt gone down?

I mean.. not really? CDPR was never my friend it's a company that makes games I like. I still like Cyberpunk quite a lot so it's a pretty static relationship.

I guess I'm more.. disappointed? This is a pretty thorough barrage of fuck ups these last few days.

It will absolutely blow over, gamers have no long term memory if the games get better.

Yes. CDP was always just a company to me, but to see them so brazenly, actively lie to their consumers has been ridiculous. Saying it, Cyberpunk, runs "surprisingly well" on the consoles when this is the opposite of the fact, the relentless crunch that has permeated that studio since forever, and now this Devotion switcharoo on top of everything, really shows how low they're willing to stoop for every penny.

My opinion hasn't really changed I think CDPR make great games, but their ambition doesn't quite match their reach, they should definitely shut up and leave social media alone.

I've had my issues with the company over the years but I'm honestly surprised how badly they dropped the ball on this one. That said, the entire business seems completely broken, what with the crunch and major publications giving 90-100 scores even while admitting the game is so-so and full of bugs.

I like previous games they've made but don't currently trust the quality of their products on release or their ability to manage the release of said games.

honestly- my perception of them hasn't changed too much. i haven't played one of their games as yet, so take that for what it's worth. they weren't on a pedestal to be knocked-off of.

but honestly there are precious few developers i will ever give the benefit of doubt in terms of 'i can trust this to be a great experience, sight-unseen.' like- we're talking 1 or 2.

bioware, bethesda, blizzard- when i was younger these names used to mean 'you can probably buy whatever they're putting out and trust it'll be a good time.' i no longer feel that way- not because i've been burned, but rather i'm consuming more critical coverage than i used to- and as a result i'm more deliberate and calculated in my purchasing decisions.

and really i've never been motivated to blind purchase on day 1, let alone preorder. i want to know what i'm buying before i've handed over my money.

cdpr haven't done themselves any favors vis-a-vis my personal perception of them with their recent conduct- but they didn't have my implicit 'trust' previously either.

The Devotion thing is a debacle that hit closer to home for me than the Cyberpunk stuff. Granted that’s more GOG territory than CDPR, the game developer.

Going into that launch, you knew it was going to be a hot mess. They delayed that game like 4 times, even after it went gold. How they treated their staff in order to ship that game, and it came out when it did was just an awful, stupid thing.

It just looks like a company that’s terribly mismanaged.

I fell off The Witcher 3 and I didn’t think Cyberpunk was going to be the GOAT that so many people thought it was going to be, so I didn’t really have a strong opinion of them either way. Curious how this will affect people’s opinions moving forward or if this will blow over after a year’s worth of patches.

Never bought into them they've been doing smaller scale bullshit for years. If anything I only feel justified in writing them off when I played the Witcher 3 and grew to hate it by the time I was done with it.

I wasn't a huge fan of CDPR themselves but I used to highly recommend GOG over Steam to people because I honestly think their policies are more consumer-oriented. Then there were the transphobic social media hurdles, after there was more than one I stopped buying from GOG and only bought Witcher 3 used. I wasn't going to play 2077 at all but their business practices are clearly shitty (the hypocrisy only made it worse) and really, the Devotion drop and immediate pull is just another reason to not support them imo. It's a good reminder that I should really play everything on my GOG account so I can stop thinking about it at all lol.

The only game other than Cyberpunk 2077 I've played from CDPR is The Witcher 3, which was incredible, obviously, so yeah, my opinion of them has gone down considerably.

They were always a company, and never worth the blind loyalty a lot of terminally online fans seem to follow them with, but at least from a distance, they seemed like a feel-good studio for a while. Indie Polish devs go from bootleg CDs to making some of the largest, most impressive story-driven RPGs of the generation? All while giving the finger to DRM on GOG? It was easy to feel good about them, even as the crunch stories started coming out from The Witcher 3.

Then those same stories, but worse, and more frequently, came out of Cyberpunk. And their social media presence more and more actively courted its most toxic fans. I can forgive a lot, but I just do not fuck with transphobia these days, so that was already a black mark on their record, for me. But, I was willing to swallow some pride and play the damn thing, only to find... it's disappointing in a lot of ways, straight-up fraudulent in the case of the base PS4 and XB1 versions, and just broken in general.

I'm so done with CDPR. The next game they make, they have a lot of convincing to do, not just about the general quality of what they're making, but their studio culture as a whole.

I'm sure this general sentiment will make all the difference in the world as they sob into their piles and piles of money from Cyberpunk pre-orders. /s

Yes. I'm not naive enough to ever consider a company my friend or real advocate, so I never held them on a level as lofty as some people did, but I did generally have respect for their pluckish workmanship and appreciated what they put out on a studio level.

But Cyberpunk is an absolute mess on my currently preferred method of gaming, and the business practices surrounding the marketing, release, and damage-control are unethical-bordering-on-illegal. And that's just what's on the surface. If you go read some of the transcripts on some of their most recent earnings calls, you can see a level of what is at worst serious anti-consumer sentiment or at best mind-boggling stupidity that will make your jaw drop.

GOG apparently listed Devotion, a horror game made by Taiwanese developers but pulled back due to its past controversy of anti-CCP messages hidden in the game. I can see why they caved under political pressure but if anything lays bare their lack of foresight or discretion in these matters and put them again in a lose-lose situation. I'm not miffed at their actions so much as their blanket incompetence.

They were as reasonably pro-consumer and pro-employee as one could expect a company to be.

But choices around Cyberpunk and now, Devotion, have seriously lessened my opinion of them. "Them" being the entity as a whole, not like the individual developers.

I'm running Cyberpunk pretty well, so all I can do is sympathize with those dealing with the console versions. But I never placed CDPR on a pedestal as a flawless company since Steam is still my preferred marketplace and I never got swept up in the hype of The Witcher series. So, my Yelp review of a sorts has only gone down from a light 8 out of 10 to a 7 out of 10.

My opinion of them has definitely gone down, but I wouldn't say I ever thought of them as an elite developer. They seemed to be aiming way too high trying to release 8 versions of the game within a short window.

CD Projekt games always launch with issues, the only thing that's changed about them is their marketing machine.

They're going the Bethesda route of starting relatively small and scrappy and not IMPROVING anything. "Their games are always broken at launch" isn't really acceptable anymore, they're not scrappy upstarts. I hated how much slack Bethesda was given (well past the point that it was "fun jank") and Fallout 76 is the only logical result of all that.

On top of that: Witcher 3 was unstable at launch, but didn't have this absolute marketing offensive behind it. Cyberpunk was touted as THE GAME going forward (hey, so was "No Man's Sky") and the MOMENT they got shy about showing real, live gameplay, but didn't get shy about that message was the moment I started to worry. That and their laughable social media.

They're still acting like "the little guy" but doing business like the "big guys" and that is a TERRIBLE look.

CDPR needs to learn from how people view “edgy” comedians: traditionally audiences give them a lot slack if their jokes are actually funny. If CDPR wants to be scuzzy online then the scuzzy content popping up in Cyberpunk needs to be effective, not desperate and “shocking to the 60+ crowd” levels of edginess.

Not really sure how to answer the poll. My opinion of how they run their company has definitely gone down, but I still think they're one of the elite developers in the world. Being horribly disorganized and somewhat shitty to consumers has never gotten in the way of elite developer status, after all. It might even be a requirement.

It’s a company not a person so it’s not something that should ever be held in any sort of regard unless your a non profit who does charity work. They make games so they are not doing work that benefits humanity so you should never look a company like them with any sort high regard.

Whenever these topics get brought up and people who choose to boycott, buy used or the worst, pirate their stuff because they disagree with a company’s practices was something that I always understood. However I always tell myself that yeah some of their choices were poor or worse but those choices by and large we not the choice of the people who toiled all those extra hours to make the game. They deserve to be rewarded in some way because we all know that the people who made those choices are not going to reward them like they should.

Regarding Cyberpunk, I’ve never played it and I won’t for a while. But this game was announced 8 years ago or something? And the RPG source it’s based on is already popular so this had an unreasonable amount of hype. Not making any excuses but they kinda ran into a bout of bad luck releasing it now when they had to put this thing out across 8(!) different platforms. If they waited a year and never released this on PS4 and XBox 1 than it would have clearly been better but if they delayed it again with all the hype for this would have been views bad as well so they we’re screwed either way.

Yes. I valued them highly after my experiences with Witcher 2 and 3 but after seeing how their management and PR have handled their shit labor practices and messaging around that as well as hiding the true state of their base console versions of the game I won't be so willing to pre-order their next game in a heartbeat like I did with Cyberpunk 2077.

Yes my experience with the PC version has been better than most people playing this on other versions including even the PC version but it's hard to ignore how bad the company has been managing the backlash to their mishaps. As for the game itself, although I'm not experiencing anything game breaking yet it still sucks to be distracted by visual or UI bugs that ruin an engrossing experience. It's made me slow down my pace of playing the game in order to see how the game will be after a couple more large patches.

I'm not excited to see them fail or crumble under the weight of their mistakes like others have been chomping at the bit over but I will be cautious and have my doubts the next time they tout how expansive their next title might be.

Depends. I always thought they had very talented writers and quest designers, and my opinion hasn't changed there. However, this being their first real venture outside of the Witcher series and seeing how much of a mess this game is in terms of game design, technical prowess and overall direction, I definitely don't have much faith now in their future projects that aren't Witcher 4.

I think there's a lot of great writing in the main quest and side quests, even some of the smaller stuff like gigs. It's just really hard to immerse yourself in it when the albeit beautiful and detailed world feels so incredibly empty. I'll reserve 100% judgement on CDPR until this thing has been patched and improved for another solid year. But I think the problems are too deeply ingrained into the game to actually patch out. Bugs and performance, yes. Empty feeling world, ludicrously simplistic AI, bad RPG mechanics? No.

My opinion of them was always fairly ambivalent - I recognise and respect their ambition and craft, but that was frequently undermined by headlines regarding the work culture in the studio and their stubborn refusal to acknowledge socially contentious issues in a way which made them seem like they were catering to groups that I'd rather not associate with.

I care less about the bugs than I do about the deception; If you ship a game half finished then I think honestly that's fine and most people would be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt (Especially CDPR with their track record of patching and updating the Witcher 3 for years) but only if you're honest about it, which they weren't - they embargoed versions of the games which were clearly disproportionately broken, and even limited the footage that was available for reviewers to use ahead of the games release. That is straight up misleading consumers and people are absolutely justified in being upset.

So yes, my already low opinion of them has gone down.

At the end of the day they were just a video game company that made some pretty damn good games. They were never infallible to me. I never bought any of the "goodwill" that they did for consumers. I never thought of them as "one of the good ones". From the looks of it they made another one and it's just a god damn mess of it and everything else surrounding it. So yeah I'll still play their stuff I won't really care for them either way even after all this.

They've gone from some fairly pro-customer moves like DRM-free PC games that were otherwise locked behind a legal IP morass, to outright perpetrating fraud with embargoes, takedowns, and talking out of both sides of their mouth about refunds. The repeated lies about working conditions and the status of their projects has put them in the same category as EA, Activision/Blizzard, and Ubisoft.

I would say their reputation has taken a major hit, though as always these companies are not your friends or your "team" to root for / against.

More disturbing to me is the ease with which embargoes and access to review copies are being used to manipulate critics in the pre-release hype cycle. I didn't hear anything about the trashy broken console versions from Giant Bomb or anyone else until after release. There were tons of problems with the new consoles that didn't come out until a week after they launched as well. I'm finding it harder to trust anyone's opinion when they have to play nice for access or get left out in the cold.

In light of some of their more "less than transparent" policy issues in recent weeks, I was considering seeking a refund for Cyberpunk out of principle, but it appears that they haven't done any work to guarantee that they can actually deliver that either. While I generally do not have a very high opinion of companies, I don't see how someone could possibly have a higher opinion of CDPR this month than they did last.

I'm not sure how you can look at their handling of Cyberpunk's console release and not think less of them. They absolutely should not have released a game in that state, and all of their efforts to conceal those versions of the game until it was too late for people to back out of preorders feels borderline criminal.

There are plenty of talented and hardworking people at CDPR, but it seems like total incompetence at the highest levels of that company have completely undercut all of the development efforts and likely long ago doomed Cyberpunk 2077 to release in its current extremely undercooked state.

Maybe eventually Cyberpunk 2077 is a truly great game if they continue to address the bugs and fill in the gaps where stressed out developers and designers cut corners out of desperation to meet deadlines, but honestly, that still wouldn't do much to rebuild the consumer trust and company reputation that the management has demolished in the past two weeks.

Witcher 3 was a mess at launch so I wasn't planning on picking up cyberpunk this early. Just a bit disappointed that they decided to launch it a tad too early.

Following the development of Gwent, and observing the CDPR community's involvement with that project already put me off caring about anything CDPR related other than how well their games ultimately come out. I still believe CDPR has the ability to make outstanding "industry-defining" games, but they have a major problem with actualizing their potential (which seems to stem from upper management).

In my mind they're sort of a "teenage" developer. They have the potential to do great things, but lack experience and have a tendency to be more idealistic than pragmatic.

Not a strong showing for sure. Even after it's all patched up, Cyberpunk will just be a decent game (one that I'm still finding some joy in playing) with mostly medicore to bad writing. They still have some goodwill from me in how they've treated Gwent since actual 1.0 launch (the game is honestly a contender for best tcg with great depth and very free to play friendly) but this was a step back from them hitting that next level of prestige. I'll keep an eye out for thier future projects but I'm a little more guarded now.

As I did not preorder Cyberpunk, and as I do not work for them, I don't feel that CDPR owes me anything. So our relationship is the same as it's always been - neutral. I presume that they will patch Cyberpunk into a decent game and I'll buy it and play it then, but if they don't, I'll just play something else.

Not enough people mention the worst thing they did with this game, that is: it's not cyberpunk. It just isn't. It's got the trappings, the assets, the keywords... but it's written and developed by people who would either be running the corporate side of things in that world or would be tagged for ratting out a local within a few years. If they didn't have source material to work from it would be laughably pathetic.

So yeah I didn't have any strong opinions about them but I know now who they are and how they run their business / treat their employees and 100% of it is bad and not for me.

Not really, they're just a game company that doesn't make too many games and has a cool digital front.

Witcher was good, Witcher 2 was great, Witcher 3 was one of the beat RPG's ever made. And I guess people had this expectation of Cyberpunk redefining everything for next-gen. It was a completely new style of game for them so my expectations were cautiously optimistic.

Seems like it's a solid game with bugs (Witcher 3 on a base PS4 at launch was quite iffy, too). But people propped them up to be the best there is and the pressure was on. Now they're just trying to make their game better, like most studios do when their new game needs more work.

I never really had positive or negative opinion of CDPR. I always thought it was strange the love that they got as the “good guys” of the gaming world. If anything I’m kinda enjoying them being knocked down a peg because the end of the day CRPR is the same as any gaming publisher/developer like EA or Ubisoft and now they will get the scrutiny that comes with it.

Weirdly enough I don't think so? I mean I think the stuff they are doing now, as in the handling of Cyberpunks release, the messaging, the refund debacle, all of that definitely is really bad. At the same time I don't think I ever actively rooted for them. I never had a personal connection with them as a developer or publisher, they were just another company that made games which sometimes interested me like Witcher 3 and sometimes not like Gwent. In light of all the sexual scandals this year with Ubisoft and a lot of other woes we've heard from big western studios, seeing CDPR fumble the release of a big game is disappointing but very tame in comparison. I don't think Cyberpunk released in a significantly worse state than Fallout 4 and Bethesda had 3 other games to get the formula right.. so yah I mean it sucks and my trust in how they handle consumers is a bit shaken but overall it sadly seems par for the course.

I'm gonna echo what Humanity said, this is tame compared to controversies from other big studios. Don't get me wrong, this is definitely disappointing and I do see them in a different light. The Witcher 3 is one of my favorite games, and I'm loving Cyberpunk so far, but all this has put a downer on it. I hope they can turn things around and make good, but I'm sure it'll take some time.

Although I’m still enjoying Cyberpunk, it’s disappointing its not as wonderful as we hoped (a impossible standard) or as competent as it should be on all platforms (a little less forgivable) despite some questionable work practices. That said, they still have a tonne of good credit with me for their work on the Witcher series, would take a lot to erode all that. I would say that I’d still be excited to see what they did next, but with a note of caution, no preorders and would wait for reviews.

As someone that rarely, if ever, preorder a game and only buy a game when I have a firm grasp of if it's actually for me or not, nothing have changed really in regards to whether or not I'll be up for seeing what they do next. Did they handle a lot of things badly? For sure. But no one is forced to pre-order a game to be able to get it, so people finding that their base console experience is horrible because they bought the game sight unseen, that's their own mistake to make. I don't fault CDPR for that. Not to say it isn't in retrospect completely obvious why they went PC-first with reviewers and made sure no one saw base console footage until release. But if people at this point have not learned to have a wait-and-see approach to games, I can't really feel much empathy for them.

That being said, maybe I'll add that getting a 'thank you for buying our game/supporting us' note inside the case of Witcher 3 did make me feel like they were a company that at least appreciated their consumers on some level (even if that doesn't make me go buy something in and of itself). I suppose that image is certainly erroded with the fact that despite me not feeling overly empathetic to people pre-ordering, they basically took that good will I presume a lot of folks had and used it up in a real magic trick of bait and switch.

CDPR are known to release games and then improve upon them and fix them. All the witcher games were like that, in fact the witcher 3 is still having some bugs that needs to be fixed.

Don't think too much of anyone so you don't get disappointed.

The Witcher 3 was decent- but everything else they've done has been kinda gash

I don't know. Maybe?

If Cyberpunk gets a bit of fixed in the future and I end up loving it when I pick it up I got no reason to doubt them.

CDPR is just as bad, duplicitous, greedy, and full of sh*t as the worst of the other lowest-of-the low AAA publishers, e.g. Bethesda, EA, Activision-Blizzard, TakeTwo, Ubisoft, etc. etc.

My opinion of CDPR has gone up considerably. I'm actually having more fun with Cyberpunk 2077 (PC/patch 1.04) than any other game released this year. It is GOTY for me. Nothing else is even close.

I'm mixed on this.

My impression of them as a business has definitely dropped. I don't like the prolonged crunch, and I don't like that management acted in bad faith by hiding the last-gen versions. I appreciate there was a lot of internal pressure due to the pandemic and external pressure from fans and business partners; look at all the cross-promotional stuff. However real leadership means making tough choices (see: Halo Infinite). The base console versions should've been held back or released as discounted "Early Access" builds.

As developers, I have a better impression of them now. This is a very good game. I believe some of the GB staff criticized the mission quality, but I'm 40 hours in and feel like all the missions (main, side, and "gigs") have been entertaining. I like the setting, and I barely notice the AI limitations others have called out—probably because I don't do much people watching in-game.

It definitely feels like they cut out or simplified systems late in development. For my playthrough to feel this good despite all that (and a global pandemic) is very impressive.

Yes, definitely. I was even considering applying for a job there during the summer (non-dev, they were looking for a graphic designer for the company as a whole) and moving across the world if I got it; because of their reputation as a company who treats their employees well. Now I feel like I dodged a bullet as I cannot imagine what the morale is in those offices.

For me, anything regarding the quality of their games output is meaningless next to how they've conducted themselves over the past year and attempted to quash any discussion about their business behavior.

I came to Witcher 3 after already hearing a lot of questionable things about them, and I didn't care for Witcher 3 so I didn't make it very far in. And honestly I got Cyberpunk with the mindset of "I hope this experience is worth all of their alleged bullshit." It isn't. Not to me, at least.

A little i guess? But still well within my top 10 favorite devs, probably top 5. So still a firm favourite. They made the best single player rpg i ever played so 🤷‍♂️

I haven't played cyberpunk and will not untill its cheap and ivr upgraded to next gen console. Its also abit wierd to blacket statement a development studio, most of which the people who work there are just hard working men and women like you or i

They have damaged their reputation for me personally BUT if they can fix Cyberpunk to an acceptable level they can win some of my faith back though not all. Between Devotion and actively misleading people about certain aspects of Cyberpunk and not showing last gen console versions because they knew it wasn’t nearly good enough, they would have to do a hell of a lot to win me back completely.

Yes but purely because of hearing about the poor working conditions. A buggy game alone that will inevitably get fixed is not enough to warrent anywhere near as much negativity as there has been surrounding Cyberpunk.

My opinion of the general gaming scene and especially more mainstream game sites like PC Gamer has taken a noticeable nose dive as well. Luckily we have GB for a more grounded take on things!

Eh, the option I'd vote for is:

• Not really. I wasn't particularly attached to them anyway. They operate like every other big company. I had low to no expectations for Cyberpunk and right now I think it is a decently fun game, if not very visually impressive.

@zoofame: well to be fair that isn’t the media fault in the regard, CDPR only gave PC codes before release and they outlets that gave them high scores were playing on top of the line PCs. But I’m glad people and the media are calling them out on their scum my practices, it’s a breathe of fresh air for sure