Legendary bugs at the release of Cyberpunk 2077 appeared because the alternative was even worse

Almost four years later, the disastrous launch of CD Projekt Red’s action RPG Cyberpunk 2077 seems like ancient history, but a new retrospective from Eurogamer delved into the causes and consequences of those problems.

Image source: Steam (Droveck)

Let us remember that at the release in December 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 was criticized for sloppy technical execution (especially on consoles) – it came to the point of promising to return money to all dissatisfied customers and temporarily withdrawing the game from the PS Store.

Cyberpunk 2077 lead engine programmer Charles Tremblay spoke with Eurogamer to explain why the game was so bad at release and how the situation could have been even worse.

Image source: Steam (maty)

The main problem at the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 was the old-fashioned hard drives on consoles and many PCs, which were unable to stream content at the required speed, but the game also suffered from memory leaks.

Because of this, sooner or later it hit the ceiling of available memory (8 GB of RAM on PS4 and Xbox One). CDPR was faced with a choice: “You either show the T-pose or the game crashes. What do you prefer? We prefer not to fly out.”

The T-Pose characters were so numerous that they became a meme (Image source: cyanide4suicide on Reddit)

CD Projekt co-head Michał Nowakowski also noted that although the studio managed to regain the favor of players after the initial failures of Cyberpunk 2077, some part of the company’s former image was lost forever.

After three and a half years of support and a highly praised Phantom Liberty addon, CD Projekt management has disbanded the Cyberpunk 2077 team. Although minor updates continue to be released, the studio is turning its attention to the sequel.