Another day, another development in the ongoing Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco. This time, CD Projekt RED boss Adam Badowski has taken issue with reports that Cyberpunk 2077‘s E3 2018 demo was fake.
We’ve heard rumblings about this one before, but a recent report by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier suggested that at the time the demo was shown off to the public, CDPR hadn’t even coded gameplay systems, which is why so many ambitious features were cut before Cyberpunk 2077 shipped. In a note on Twitter, Badowski disputed this with the following statement:
It’s hard for a trade show game demo not to be a test of vision or vertical slice two years before the game ships, but that doesn’t mean it’s fake. Compare the demo with the game. Look at the Dumdum scene or car chase, or the many other things. What the people reading your article may not know is that games are not made in a linear fashion and start looking like the final product only a few months before launch. If you look at that demo now, it’s different yes, but that’s what the ‘work in progress’ watermark is for. Our final game looks and plays way better than what that demo ever was.
Badowski added that cutting features is standard practice during game development, and then went on to highlight all the 9/10 and 10/10 scores Cyberpunk 2077‘s PC version received.
Badowski also responded to reports of CDPR developers acknowledging that Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t ready for release. According to him, Schreier only spoke to 20 out of 500+ employees, which he believes does not represent the development team.
Interestingly, Schreier pointed out that he contacted Badowski for comment prior to the publication of Bloomberg’s report, but didn’t hear back. CDPR didn’t explain why it chose to pick and comment on a few aspects of the report only after it went live.
[Source: Adam Badowski (Twitter)]
