Following the messy launch of ‘Cyberpunk 2077,’ the development studio’s stock value has fallen off a cliff

Night City in “Cyberpunk 2077.” CD Projekt Red

• The most hyped game of the year, “Cyberpunk 2077,” launched last week on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.

• Players are reporting a range of bugs in the game, from characters appearing to float through space to being suddenly teleported, among a variety of other issues. 

• On Monday morning, the game’s developer CD Projekt apologized to buyers and said it would honor refunds.

• Since the game’s launch on December 10, the company’s stock price has plummeted from about $27 per share to about $20 per share.

• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

After years of anticipation, and a gaggle of delays, “Cyberpunk 2077” finally launched last week for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Unfortunately, the game’s development studio has seen its stock value plummet by nearly a third since the game’s December 10 launch: from about $27 per share last Wednesday to about $20 per share as of Monday afternoon.

That dropoff in stock value is no doubt due to the massively-hyped game’s messy launch.

“Cyberpunk 2077” suffers from myriad issues: Characters that don’t animate and guns that float in mid-air. Some people have reported outright crashes and other technical issues, with players on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One faring the worst.

The issues are bad enough that CD Projekt was forced to offer an open-ended universal refund alongside a lengthy apology.

“We would like to start my apologizing to you for not showing the game on base last-gen consoles before it premiered and, in consequence, not allowing you to make a more informed decision about your purchase,” the company said in a statement posted to social media. “We should have paid more attention to making it play better on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.”

The game began development at least eight years ago, before the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One launched. It’s the first new game from the Polish studio behind the highly acclaimed “Witcher” series since “The Witcher 3” launched in 2015. As such, “Cyberpunk 2077” is the most anticipated game of the year – if not one the most anticipated games in several years.

Story continues

Despite taking a hit to its stock value, CD Projekt said that the new game was already profitable ahead of launch thanks to massive pre-order sales: Before “Cyberpunk 2077” launched last week, it had already sold over 8 million copies. At a minimum of $60 apiece, that’s just shy of $500 million in sales before anyone could even play the game.

And in the time since, it continues to dominate attention on Twitch: The game had over 1 million concurrent viewers at one point last week, and still commands hundreds of thousands of viewers as of Monday afternoon.

Similarly, on the world’s largest PC gaming platform, Steam, “Cyberpunk 2077” is the first single-player game to take the number one spot on the charts in years. On launch day, over 1 million people were playing it at any given time on Steam alone – and the game also launched for PC through GOG and the Epic Games Store.

As video game fan and Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter, “Seemed like almost everyone on Steam was playing Cyberpunk at some point this weekend!”

Got a tip? Contact Business Insider senior correspondent Ben Gilbert via email ([email protected]), or Twitter DM (@realbengilbert). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by email only, please.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Source by news.yahoo.com