This Is How Cyberpunk 2077’s Publishers Are Taking Responsibility For Its Messy Launch

Since early Friday morning, everyone in the whole world knows how buggy Cyberpunk 2077 is. Given how its publisher and developer CD Projekt were with its previous open world game The Witcher 3, we kinda suspected it was leading to that.

However, the situation escalated further since the base console versions of the game (Xbox One and PS4) are near-unplayable. So the executives of CD Projekt took it upon them to take responsibility, telling its staff recently that they will receive their full bonuses no matter how their game is reviewed (via Bloomberg).

Previously, the devs were told they would receive extra pay based on the game’s critical performance. Also, the company has a token-based bonus system according to current and former employees who spoke to Bloomberg. Every month, team leaders gave out tokens styled after the company logo (the red bird) to members of their team who deserved honours.

Thanks to the new system in place following the buggy launch, those payouts will be guaranteed, along with the annual profit-sharing payouts. Here’s a quote from studio head and creative director Adam Badowski to clarify just that.

“We initially had a bonus system that was focused on the game’s ratings and the release date, but after consideration, we believe that measure is simply not fair under the circumstances. We underestimated the lengths and complexity involved to make this a reality, and still you did everything you could to deliver an ambitious, special game.”

Will this band-aid solve the company’s long-time problem of having its workers spend late nights on finishing a game via crunch periods that last for years? Probably not, because that’s a management issue that cannot be solved overnight. But it’s no coincidence that the CD Projekt higher-ups unwittingly made this public to coincide with the game’s public release, especially when it’s getting critical acclaim on Metacritic.