“Cyberpunk 2077” delayed again

“Cyberpunk 2077,” CD Projekt Red’s latest and most hotly anticipated game, is being delayed once again.

On Oct. 27, 2020, the “Cyberpunk 2077” Twitter account released a statement that said that the release date of “Cyberpunk 2077” has been pushed back again to Dec. 21, 2020. While not completely unexpected by those who have been keeping track of the history of the game’s development, it was a shock to many of the fans who were anticipating this game, with some calling it the savior of 2020: even more so when the game has already achieved what is known as “gold master,” which means that all the game’s features are complete with all content in it, and the developers told the public that the game would not be delayed again.

CD Projekt Red, the creators behind the astronomically popular game,”The Witcher 3,” stated in their announcement: “The biggest challenge for us right now is shipping the game on current-gen, next gen and PC at the same time, which requires us to prepare and test 9 diferent versions of it (Xbox One/X, compatibility on Xbox Series SIX, PS4/Pro, compatibility on PS5, PC, Stadia) while working from home. Since “Cyberpunk 2077” evolved towards almost being a next-gen title somewhere along the way, we need to make sure everything works well and every version runs smoothly.”

One rather prominent question that this statement brings up is the utilization of crunch time by CD Projekt Red, who are rather famous for their usage of crunch time in both their most recent and prominent title “The Witcher 3” and also “Cyberpunk 2077” after they told the press that they would not crunch their developers. After which they did exactly that, with some developers in the studio claiming that they had been working six-day work weeks with additional overtime. This was all going on while the co-CEO of CD Projekt Red told his employees that he was sorry about previous claims that crunch wasn’t that bad.

After the announcement that the game would be delayed again, the developers and general company of CD Projekt Red have stated that they have received death threats for their announcement. This is a very common occurrence in the video game industry. Very often when a game has a delay of any kind, the most ardent, most anticipating fans begin to send the people they are depending on to get the product that they are hoping to get threats upon their safety and well-being. A prominent example of where this has happened was when “No Man Sky” was getting constant delays to the point that even the journalists broke the news, who announced that the developers were getting death threats.

It is still unknown if the delay will reduce the effect of crunch time on the developers working on the game. However, Jason Schrier from Bloomberg, who has done extensive reporting on the crunch and on “Cyberpunk 2077,” has stated, “Cyberpunk 2077 getting a three-week delay is unusual but probably won’t change much for the developers, many of whom were going to be crunching into December anyway for a post-launch patch. But I sure do hope reality is becoming clearer for those who tried to deny it.”

“Cyberpunk 2077,” as mentioned before, is set to release on Dec. 21 by CD Projekt Red.

Edward Park is a third year student with a BsED writings track. EP909767@wcupa.edu