CD Projekt Red Admits Cyberpunk 2077 Permanently Lost Some Fans

In a live interview at DevGAMM Gdańsk, later republished in Edge magazine's Knowledge newsletter, CD Projekt Red co-CEO Michał Nowakowski said something you almost never hear from a studio executive: that the damage from Cyberpunk 2077's December 2020 launch cannot be fully undone. The clip is everywhere right now. People are losing their minds. And they should be.

What Nowakowski Actually Said

According to PC Gamer's coverage of the interview, Nowakowski stated plainly: "I'm not 100 per cent convinced we went through the full redemption arc." He went further, telling interviewer Jörg Tittel that he is convinced the studio "lost the faith of some people indefinitely" and called that outcome "a fair thing." The launch was "heartbreaking," he said, given that CDPR's reputation had been its biggest asset. Sony pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store and issued full refunds beyond the standard two-hour window after the PS4 version shipped in a state that was, to put it plainly, unacceptable.

The Comeback Was Real. The Scar Isn't Gone.

Here's the thing we all have to sit with: CDPR actually fixed the game. The 2.0 patch and Phantom Liberty expansion genuinely turned Cyberpunk 2077 into something worth playing, with Phantom Liberty scoring between 88 and 90 across platforms on Metacritic, according to ComicBook's coverage of the review period. Per Eurogamer, a month after Phantom Liberty landed, 95 percent of the 7,000-plus Steam reviews posted were positive. The game has sold over 35 million copies, per Level Up's reporting. That's a real recovery. It deserves credit.

But Nowakowski gets it: fixing a broken game is not the same thing as never breaking it in the first place. CDPR shipped a product on PS4 and Xbox One that had no business being out there. Investors considered legal action over what they called materially misleading information, according to Eurogamer. The studio spent years and real money cleaning up a launch it had total control over and chose not to delay. Phantom Liberty being great does not rewrite December 2020.

The Real Test Is The Witcher 4's Launch Window, Not Its Trailer

Nowakowski's hope, as reported by WCCFTech, is that The Witcher 4 or whatever comes next will bring back the players CDPR lost. He also told Edge that the studio runs a rough ten-year rolling plan and has no interest in becoming a yearly-release factory. That's good to hear. The Witcher 4 has Ciri as the new protagonist, no confirmed release date, and the entire community's cautious, arms-length optimism sitting on its shoulders. CDPR also has Cyberpunk 2 in pre-production and a Witcher 3 expansion called Songs of the Past reportedly targeting 2027, per AllKeyShop's reporting.

Studios say the right things all the time. CDPR saying it doesn't want to flood the market is nice. But here's what actually matters: what ships on day one of The Witcher 4. Not what reviewers say six months after the patches land. Not the marketing. Day one. That's where CDPR's redemption arc either closes or stays open forever.