CDPR publicly announce they're going to offer refunds

They've just out out a statement about refunds

Total respect to them for this. Remember Shitthesda released Fallout 76? That game didn't just run bad it was bad period. Bethesda purposely blocked refunds like not putting it on steam and refusing to allow merchants to refund as well. Ea would never do this either despite putting out garbage like Andromeda and anthem.

Cdpr will fix the game and they have a track record.this game is still good for me playing on XSX but no doubt needs work

Although. I doubt a game of this scope and magnitude will ever run well on base consoles. They'll need to downgrade the game like if they were making a switch version.

https://twitter.com/CyberpunkGame/status/1338390123373801472?s=19

The way it’s worded it sounds like this will only apply to console users but sure because that’s the version that looks like a trash fire on base consoles.

GOG already has a very consumer friendly refund policy and Steam has it's "less than 2 hours played policy." No need to really go out of the way to mention PC refunds, especially when that version is leagues better than the base console versions. The consoles don't really have a standard refund policy in the same way, so it is necessary for them to be clear about how they are going to handle console refunds.

Love some hiding the performance of the base console versions and then offering refunds after overwhelming blow back. Refunds totally something that companies do if they have no liability concerns.

Better than nothing, but this game has seriously damaged CDPR's reputation, and it should. It obviously needed to be delayed further, but instead they decided to crunch hard and put it out busted to hit the holiday season. I don't really know why, since they seem to be in good financial shape, but maybe they had marketing deals and other commitments that made it seem "necessary."

It clearly needed to be pushed back.

Offering refunds after the fact is, again, better than not offering refunds, but it doesn't make up for the various issues, especially the crunch and the epilepsy stuff (though hopefully that was publicized enough that nobody other than that one reviewer got hurt before it got patched out.)

Cyberpunk may eventually be a great game but it will remain a black mark on CDPR's record.

There is no respect to be had here.

They knew it was bad in base consoles. They deliberately hid that performance. Their refund policy is "use the store you bought it from, and if not send us a message but only until Dec. 21st, at which point it will likely be too late because you tried to go the official route first."

I took them up on the offer! No excuse for them to have released the game in this state. I will catch it in a year when 19.99 and functioning.

Other companies making subpar games doesn't excuse what can only be described as a clear attempt to obfuscate the issues these versions of the game have. They knew what these versions would look like on base consoles, and still decided to sell them to consumers at 60 bucks a pop. Offering a limited time refund along with the promises of an "improved experience" sometime down the line still sucks.

The refund ending a few days before Christmas is also pretty shady, as I have no doubt thousands upon thousands of copies are being given as gifts this year, by friends and family who don't know anything about this game aside from the fact that a loved one put it on their wishlist.

Part of me can't help but be cynical and assume this was part of a calculated choice by the higher ups before backlash even happened. "Put it out on console, we'll make up for the hit by patching it and if we have to we'll offer a refund. We"ll still profit while reducing damage to our image" or whatever. I don't know. At this point in my life I've been in too many corporate meetings to not see a plan happening that weighed profit vs. damage control behind the scenes.

The non-cynical side of me is glad to see them publicly address the issue. I don't mean that as "oh things are better now" because to me this is the bare minimum. This is what should be done and not necessarily anything that makes me feel better about buying their games in the future. I want to see that they learned their lesson and won't try to screw the consumer with shady practices on their next game. But that'll be quite a few years out from now.

Keep in mind that December 21st does jack shit for people getting this as a Christmas gift. So they're still abusing the holiday sale period. Which is what they wanted to release this on consoles this holiday for. So in the end they still get what they want without having to change their plan much.

Yeah this limited before Xmas refund seems like a very calculated business decision. How much money can they make from selling it for the old consoles and how many of those people will actually bother refunding vs. how much money is lost by making the game next gen only.

@haz_kaj: Please. That's CDPR Execs / Shareholders trying to save their falling stock price and head off any class action lawsuits in the EU (where they have actual consumer protection laws). Let's not trip all over ourselves singing their praises for a problem they purposely created. They knew the game wasn't ready, especially on PS4 / X1, lied about it, and actively covered up that fact.

As for offering a refund:

CDPR Execs: We already made enough on PC pre-orders and sales to cover all our marketing and development costs for the last 8 years. Everything now is pure profit on PC, even if the "Whiny Console Peasants" want a refund, it won't hurt our profitability. WE GOT YO' MONEY, SUCKAS!!!

CDPR Developers in 2021: CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH!!! to fix an under-baked, broken game.

(Remember when CDPR said they weren't going to crunch, then crunched, then said they weren't going to crunch long, then it was revealed they'd been crunching for a long time, up till (and beyond) release?)

They should've made it next-gen only to begin with, but at least they're doing this and so quickly, I doubt EA or Take Two would. I'd still put the game in GOTY discussions. It's probably more the executives at the company than the devs that are making these dumb decisions. If so, fire those executives.

CDPR have not offered refunds. They've told customers to get a refund from the retailer, or else they got 1 (one) week starting today to email them and "they'll do their best to help you".

"We'll do our best to help you" isn't a refund offer.

Stop pre-ordering games! I'm not blaming the consumer here, what CDPR did with the marketing the game to the PS4 and Xbox One, is scummy to say the least, shady, and possibly even false advertising. What I am saying, especially if you are buying a game digitally and it's a AAA game, there is absolutely no reason to pre-order a game. These companies have not earned our trust to do these things right, and if anything the bigger they get, I find I trust them less and less giving them money on an initial release of a huge game like this.

They're just sorry they were caught. Not showing ps4/xbone footage or review copies shows intent to deceive, they tried their best to sweep this under the rug.

I usually don't post here anymore, but this is just so blaringly misinformed that I felt had to. I am a "parasitic shareholder" of CDPR and no I'm not in anyway rich. CDPR don't issue dividends so there is no passive income to speak of either. The reason this game is so messed up is because they clearly underestimated the hinderance of working from home. They kept on pushing it back, but not aggressively enough and eventually painted themselves into a hole. I'd much rather they released it later, but fans were clammering for it to be released december 10th and delaying it again would have been another PR nightmare. Hopefully this is a learning experience for them when it comes to delays and productivity. Trust me, no shareholders or fans out there wanted this.

This feels absolutely calculated and not particularly worthy of a pat on the back but I dunno if the alternative is just Stay Mad.

The reason the game is so messed up is due to a complete failure of management by CDPR. This is an ever larger fuck up than when Hello Games failed to mitigate expectations for No Mans Sky. But they were a tiny ass studio with limited PR and media training, so it was easy to understand with them. CDPR is the opposite. They were happy to ride this hype wave of over promising right until it blew up in their face.

Also, the boss hands out tokens to good employees system for bonuses is some dystopian shit that could have been a plot line in the game they were making. I’ve worked for some rough law firms with shitty entitled attorneys and they don’t even come close to the shit I read about in video game development. And I won’t be surprised to find out that we haven’t even cracked the surface of the workplace dysfunction at CDPR.

I don't really see anything praiseworthy here.

I mean, they have acknowledged that there are major problems with the console release, but that's the bare minimum they could do. They definitely were aware of these issues prior to release and made a concerted effort to keep it under wraps as much as possible.

They're probably also committing their employees to several more months of crunch to get these promised big patches completed, and the refund offer is extremely nebulous, limited, and puts almost the entire burden on non-CDPR customer service and retail workers who will have to deal with (and likely reject) these requests.

Weird how they don't mention how they also only sent out PC versions to reviewers to avoid lower scores.

And like Chaser mentioned this just means months more crunch for employees who've been through the wringer due to mismanagement.

Nothing about this leaves a good taste in the mouth.

Having a track record of releasing busted games and eventually fixing them is not exactly a great endorsement.

Yeah, people seem to have deleted their Witcher 3 launch from their memory. I’m replaying the game right now and the inventory is still terrible. And to this day there are bugged quests(DLC mostly) than cannot be fixed without restarting.

People should take that refund money and play The Pathless, a game of limited scope with tight, enjoyable gameplay. The perfect chaser to a buggy, disappointment.

As someone who's played all three Witcher games at or close to launch, this is what CDPR does. They release a game. The game is full of various bugs, and the inventory system in particular is absolute shit. The bugs are mostly fixed and the inventory system undergoes an overhaul to make it more user friendly. By the time the third game came around, I was wondering why they just didn't make a better inventory system to start with.

Refunding a broken product is the bare minimum. There is no fucking way they didn't know this game was utterly broken on last gen consoles.

The Witcher 3 was when I realized some project manager was deeply invested in me holding every book, note and notice in my inventory. Like refused to let me read a book without holding it it forever. And this was likely the same dude that also wanted me to have to option to put out every candle single in the entire world.

When I saw the cyberpunk inventory, it was confirmation that person is still doing their thing.

@plan6: He just forced a game be made where it was canon that’s all this is.

Yeah I echo the sentiments in here arguing that this isn't really praise worthy. I don't like how we've started to compare the bad shit the big time publishers or big game releases are doing on some totem pole so that whomever handled their bad shit the best did it the best.

Games are shipping in a broken state en masse, and if the new norm for next gen games is to basically have the equivalent of trash PS4/XB1 ports, then it's just more evidence that the half step of the Pro and the upgraded Xbox in the middle of last gen was a huge mistake.

Like yes, it's nice to see them giving refunds on something they should of refunded. But I was hesistant about this on old platforms to begin with, once games like Control and other games that released well before the next set of consoles came out were having trouble on the base stuff it became obvious this was going to be a larger issue.

For me this just seems like a great opportunity to hammer home the point that AAA development is in a very bad state. The expectation of what you need to make to sell, the crunch, the scope, it's just not in a good place right now from a technical or consumer standpoint. It could just be me; but the way the AAA aspect of the industry has been going feels super unstable right now.

Anyway; just throw it onto the mountain of stuff about this games pre-launch and marketing that was a huge swing and a miss. You'd figure demoing how the game works on last gen consoles would of been a priority, but as many have said apparently all you need to do is apologize and offer refunds and it excuses knowingly shipping a product in an unshippable state.

Considering how mad the fanbase has been at any prerelease criticism, I'm pretty sure this pat on the back is part of it. Because the alternative is to admit you were wrong, and some people would rather leave the internet forever than do that.

It's a combination of people who think they're immune to marketing/advertising attaching their ego to a product.

how was this better than delaying till april, financially?

@curseofthewise: you nailed it with that last sentence 100%.

@lilnatureboyx: Released in calendar year 2020 (I have no idea what fiscal calendar CDPR uses), gives them very strong week 1 sales, gets them some nice PR as the most played launch day game ever on steam or whatever that is, etc

Even if the entirety of the fanbase gets a refund (and they won't), they'll almost definitely buy again when the Cyberpunk Enhanced Edition drops next fall. Hell, at this point that will probably be a full new SKU for the purpose of getting a higher metacritic. And it will let CDPR continue to run a sweatshop while the "fans who stuck by us" get even more obsessed with that company.

Regardless, they lost nothing with this. It got them a lot of good PR and a lot of money. Yeah, stocks are taking a hit but I would be a decent amount most of those are the "Oh, that company is cool" folk and actual investors are planning to gobble those shares up for cheap. And folk will forget why they were angry in 12 months. Hell, they will probably remember enough to shout down transphobia and racism and employee abuse with "You're just salty, ha ha."

@lilnatureboyx: They paid for the cost of development already and are just racking up sales beyond that. If they delayed they wouldn't have the rush of holiday buyers and they'd be pushing back their return on investment. Who knows what lockdown status will be next year, and while it sucks to say, people being stuck at home drives game sales. Next year will see more progress on next gen games hopefully but there's very little major contenders releasing right now, so the iron is pretty hot to strike right now with a big game that's been marketed literally everywhere.

Looking at the negative, I'd be willing to bet that most people won't refund because people are lazy or don't even know they should be refunding right now (hello everyone opening this game on Christmas). They took a reputation hit, but they still have a legion of fans praising them for supporting their games post launch so they're taking a calculated risk that they will win out over that anger.

Curious how successful these refunds will be in places too.

Lookin at Sony digital, specifically.

A lot of people are saying this in comments but its a load of bollocks. Honestly the scope is not beyond last gen base consoles. GTAV ran smooth with plenty of NPC's, vehicles etc all with their own AI.

@mezza: Development is still technically going on. Hotfixes, next-gen updates and the inevitable DLC doesn't come without cost.

I'm not sure what to make of CDPR out of this. They've done the thing everyone else does. You can crunch and bang your head against a build for as long as you like but, at some point, business dictates it has to come out. You can't really temper expectations when you've spent that big on marketing.

The messaging afterwards is always going to look shit and very, very few companies have the luxury of a when it's done mentality. Very few companies can confidently make a game ahead of schedule.

And, as a consumer, you have to be wary that this will happen again and again.

"We'd like to apologize for 100% deliberately not letting anyone see the game running on last gen consoles."

Uhm... yeah. I don't think you're sorry.

At least this serves to point at yet again how ridiculous it is that the console platform holders don't have a worldwide digital refund policy at least as robust as Steam's. They really need to fix that.

Shitthesda?

That showed 'em!

I think it’s hallow and just hilarious, these execs don’t care they’re getting paid regardless, once again this will fall on the devs, this is worse than FO76 and should be a lock for hottest mess of 2020

Too little too late they should have been honest up front and I got my refund already.

Doesn't mean much when you still can't get a refund on PS4. Sony's policy doesn't allow it and support is strictly following those rules. I was denied a refund multiple times and have seen the same everywhere. So far haven't gotten a response from that email address but it is past office hours in Poland so we'll see tomorrow I guess.

I'm curious how much they can actually facilitate refunds on consoles given that the digital marketplaces are notorious for not allowing refunds. Also the fact that they're cutting off the refund period in a week is pretty gross - you're still going to have a fair amount of people buying or receiving it over the holidays, booting up their console, and then realizing its an unplayable mess.

But overall this doesn't even come close to counteracting the bad faith in them launching the game in a nightmarish state while preventing every outlet from telling anyone that was the case. That's not something you can just apologize for, make a half-hearted attempt to make good, and go back to being the beloved, scrappy devs that love the gamers unlike those other big, evil companies.

I'm sure they'll patch the hell out of it and burn another year of the development team's life fixing the game, but this isn't something your reputation can recover from easily. People will be talking about the Cyberpunk release nightmare and being wary of not buying into hype for any game they make/release for the next 5-10 years.

They knew they were putting out an unfinished game, intentionally didn’t show footage of the game on base console’s and since they paired with NVIDIA they put 3080s in the hands of influencers with the sole purpose of misleading everyone’s expectations on what this game is and looks like. They got caught and they absolutely should offer refunds. However, this doesn’t excuse what they did and the fact that they are planning 2 giant fixes in January and February shows that. I feel for the devs who probably have been crunching on this game like crazy and hopefully didn’t want to push it out the door, but we’re pressured to meet the deadline. I don’t know the internal workings of the company, but I do know this was a grift. And I’m glad a lot of people are seeing it like that. Call a spade a spade and what not.

@twosamples: Yeah this is what I thought of as soon as I saw that message. Sony's "refund policy" is bullshit. The only way they allow refunds is if you've never even downloaded the software. Not going to be a lot of people seeking a refund for this game that'll fall into that category.

So they've clearly not really arranged this officially as an exception with Sony and "email us and we'll try and figure it out" doesn't sound like an efficient process.

This is an insult to every dev that busted their ass getting those versions made, on top of everyone involved in shipping this at all. If I had worked in this and got thrown under the bus by marketing saying “oops we kinda messed up” I would be beyond livid. I have worked on games that did well, and even THEN it’s frustrating when marketing talks above you in the best of cases. This definitely reeks of contracts with external partners biting them in the ass, I would like to think that with the reputation they garnered over the course of Witcher development they had no choice but to fall on their sword and circle the wagons internally but.... this is all gross and burns all the developers.

They essentially flushed all the good will the Witcher 3 brought them. It’s one thing to crunch and then deliver, but this was not delivering. Then they tried to hide how bad the console versions were and got called out.

They’re going to have to have a No Man’s Sky level of a comeback on this one.

@theadmin: Honestly.. I think this'll all fade away if they follow through. Whether it should be the case or not.

Like it's not quite a Bioware or No Man's Sky situation cause like... the game they released is pretty good if you can actually play it. It's like disastrous mmo launches, once everyone's able to play the thing they want to play those rough edges smooth over pretty cleanly.

This sucks and it's personally a bummer that my view of CDPR, and Cyberpunk 2077, has consistently taken a nose dive ever since the goofy high of Keanu stepping out on that E3 stage.

From the transphobia, to the crunch culture that they promised to change and then absolutely dove back into, to the fact that they seemingly felt the need to grab as much money from ignorance PS4 and Xbox users as they could before issuing a half-assed apology that came several days after they announced they had re-couped their dev costs.... Maybe I don't wait to pick this up once things get ironed out, and instead I spend my on a product that doesn't feel so fucking gross.

The literal least they could have done was give reviewers access to these versions, but they knew exactly how that would have gone and so they didn't.

It seems like it will be almost impossible for CDPR to actually honor the refund offer, and this statement is going to put a pretty significant burden on the platform holders and retailers to have to deal with the refund requests.

Anecdotally, people on Twitter are mostly saying that MS and Sony are sticking closely to their established refund policies (which tend to be pretty strict), and I'm not aware of any retailers who accept the return of an opened physical copy of a game.

@chaser324: Does just kinda seem like someone said hey tweet this it'll work out, huh.