Look, I know I don’t need to tell you how much of a mess Cyberpunk 2077’s launch was. There were tons of bugs, it didn’t play smoothly, and your saves could even get corrupted fairly easily, so it wasn’t an ideal experience at the time. The game has had something of a redemption arc in the almost six years since launch (one that CD Projekt Red thinks still needs to be finished), but despite whispers of investors pushing to get the game out the door at the time, joint CEO Michał Nowakowski says that wasn’t the case.
The Game Business recently sat down with Nowakowski where he was asked if the fact that Cyberpunk 2077, in spite of its horrendous launch, and The Witcher 3 continue to sell extraordinarily well has relieved some pressure on setting a date for upcoming games like The Witcher 4. “That situation was different,” Nowakowski responded. “First of all, we were in a very peculiar moment in the middle of COVID. And the way tension built within the team was a bit different than if that hadn’t been the case. I don’t want to put it all on COVID, but it was a factor.
“The team was getting exhausted in a different way. There were people outside telling us we should launch, fans asking for it, but the team itself also wanted to push it out the door because it was really tiring at that moment in time.” I think this is probably worth pushing back on a touch. I obviously can’t speak on behalf of anyone that actually worked on the game, perhaps there was a general consensus to push to get the game out, but it was worth remembering that mandatory crunch was reportedly put into place in the months leading up to release, a reversal of what the studio previously said about crunch.
Taking that into consideration, what individual developers wanted, and what they were required to do, may have been at odds with each other. At the very least, Nowakowski admitted that the choice to launch when it did was a mistake. “The decision to launch was for sure wrong, period. There’s no denying it. But there were no magical investors telling us, ‘you have to get this out’. It was much more complicated and psychological.”
As it currently stands, The Witcher 4 is targeting a 2028 release date, so more than anything I hope those currently working at the studio aren’t forced into crunch on this one, and that they do actually get to take their time with it.