As someone who pre-ordered Cyberpunk 2077 and was overwhelmingly disappointed by the clearly disingenuous marketing campaign but managed to get stuck with the game after spending a few hours in the settings trying to get it to work and perform, it is needless to say that I am happy whenever CDPR gets called out for their bullshit. Regardless of how their public relations team wants to spin it, they flat-out lied and deceived players, investors, and the like. You have heard it all before so we won’t go into that too much. But now it seems CDPR is once again ramping up their CP2077 social media presence after a long hiatus since a disastrous launch. The best part? The posts are incredibly tone-deaf and devoid of any acknowledgment of community complaints.
Recently, the official Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account, among others, began posting statistics of various feats within the game that have accrued since launch by dedicated players. These stats include things like total player deaths, enemies defeated, etc. All things that must be staggeringly low compared to what they could have been if the playerbase didn’t abandon the game as quickly as CDPR’s leadership and development team did. Here are some of the tweets I am talking about:
So far, the mercenary outlaw named V has died 585 million times in Night City. If you wanted to commemorate every death in the city's columbarium, it would have to be 14 times the size of Central Park. #CyberpunkInNumbers pic.twitter.com/eyqnhZeCWX
— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) July 20, 2021
Since players were first unleashed on Night City's streets, 13 billion people have been defeated by V. By comparison, the megalopolis has a population of 6.9 million… #CyberpunkInNumbers pic.twitter.com/RLRH7TfsZy
— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) July 8, 2021
Wellsprings is officially the most dangerous neighborhood in Night City with an average of 57 player deaths per day (real time). Better not go there without an active Trauma Team platinum card! #CyberpunkInNumbers pic.twitter.com/kqBhrfrbAa
— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) July 2, 2021
So far, players have spent 6.36 million hours in the character creator. That's over 13 times more hours than Johnny Silverhand’s digital construct has spent in the Relic. #CyberpunkInNumbers pic.twitter.com/MUDPoISPob
— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) June 18, 2021
More players have opted for the Street Kid lifepath than any other. #CyberpunkInNumbers pic.twitter.com/jx7BcSJzoa
— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) June 10, 2021
As you can imagine, responses to this are overwhelmingly negative from nearly every angle as the social media managers are acting as if nothing is wrong and that these numbers are some sort of crowning achievement (they sort of are considering the state of the game, even now). While there are too many to list for each of these posts specifically, if you click on any single one of them, you can see responses that are justifiably harsh while others may come across as more neutral in asking for updates that will fix the more glaring issues (there are still countless).
In response to this, the surprisingly active Cyberpunk 2077 subreddit has begun a sort of parody with other active stats that point out the many misleading or dishonest unkept promises from CDPR including missing features or things that were shown off that the player would be able to do right up to launch before it was cut from the game (CDPR justifies this saying this happens all the time in development. However, it seems awful convenient to promise players so much only to scrap so much just before launch day and call it “part of the development process). Here are some of my favorites:
By now, many of you are probably sick and tired of hearing about the shadiness of CDPR and the disappointment that will likely forever be Cyberpunk 2077 but the humor of the remaining playerbase and meme-makers on Reddit still gets me. Personally, I sub to keep an eye on any possibility for the game turning around, which doesn’t seem likely especially considering CDPR has stated that the game is now in a “satisfactory” state since it was brought back to the PlayStation store recently. If anything, modders will likely clean it up and add features long after CDPR has moved on from CP2077, which seems like they already mostly have.
The posts from the various social media accounts of CP2077 are tone-deaf, like I said before, which comes across as insulting and marginalizing legitimate issues, especially those that pertain to people who paid a lot of money for this game and weren’t able to return it for some reason. And sure, the social media managers can’t be to blame for the state of the game nor can they be expected to fix it but it just shows that upper-management is so careless and inconsiderate of reading the room, so to speak, that they would rather pretend like nothing went wrong in the first place while many, myself included, still feel ripped off. In any way you spin it, it is ugly for public relations and CDPR continues to lose what little faith their fans may have. Whoever is calling the shots over there in Poland really seems to constantly make the worst of choices available when it comes to this game which doesn’t bode well for consumers or investors.
My faith in CDPR has in the negative and I likely will never buy from them again out of spite but my faith in the community, especially the modders is at an all-time high. And while I don’t condone leaking proprietary information and personal user data like CDPR claims had happened in their recent security breach, it does seem curious that all the resources and tools to build the game conveniently leaked along with everything else that allows solo devs and members of the modding community to pick up where CDPR left off. Anyone else smell the burning cinders of conspiracy?
