Cyberpunk 2077 is experiencing the sort of resurgence not many would have predicted. Especially since we are closing in on two years since its incredibly rocky launch. The game finally being in a state where people are celebrating and appreciating just how much work went into it is clearly hitting home with those who had a hand in creating it, as was recently demonstrated by Cyberpunk's quest director.
CD Projekt's Paweł Sasko spoke about Cyberpunk's launch and where it is today with fans on Twitch over the weekend. Pablo397 pulled the clip from the stream and shared it on Reddit, during which Sasko is clearly struggling to fight back tears as he shares some of what he went through at launch and how appreciative he is of where the game is now.
Sasko reveals his girlfriend saw him “wrecked” after Cyberpunk's launch, highlighting that some people put eight years of their life into the game. That certainly adds up as Cyberpunk was first announced by CDPR in 2013, more than seven years before it would finally arrive. “It's good to be back. It's really fucking good to be back. It was so heartbreaking,” Sasko admits.
The rough launch Cyberpunk experienced at the end of 2020 and into 2021 surrounded the last-gen versions of the game being so bad that they were almost unplayable. Refunds were issued and Sony was so dissatisfied with the game and the backlash it generated that it delisted it from the PS Store for six months. The decision to launch Cyberpunk in the state it was in would have been made by higher-ups, and the developers who likely didn't agree with that decision have largely been forgotten through all of this.
To see the reaction of Sasko now that people are able to appreciate his and his colleagues' work as it was intended is pretty great. The overdue success of Cyberpunk has been brought about by tireless work to improve the game, a massive update recently, and the launch of Edgerunners, a Netflix show set in the same universe. That all led to Cyberpunk breaking The Witcher 3's concurrent player count record on Steam last week.