CD Projekt Red has been going through something of a rough time this past couple of months. This is mostly due to the report that the employees were working on crunch hours to finish Cyberpunk 2077, which was then amplified when the company announced that they were delaying the game on more time, from November 19 to the new release date December 10. It also didn’t help when they announced that the game had officially gone gold, merely ten days before they delayed it again. The news doesn’t get better, as Games Industry Biz has reported that CD Project Red’s stock fell roughly 25% in the past two months, reducing their market cap from 11 billion Euros to 8 billion, a 2.5 billion Euro drop.
To put this new statistic in perspective, the last time that CD Projekt Red was this low on the market was in April of this year, when the game was originally supposed to launch. Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed a total of three times, once at the beginning of January, then in June, and then just earlier this month. Before the latter’s delay, the company was able to get themselves back in the good graces of the fans by releasing updates for the game which were dubbed the Night City Wire. During this time, CD Projekt Red’s stock rose again, peaking when they announced The Witcher: Monster Slayer, a mobile game in the same style as Pokemon GO.
The recent situation has only been made much worse due to the fans’ response to the recent delay. Despite only being given an additional 21 days before it releases, some very irate fans sent some rather unfortunate messages directly to the developer, most of which were filled with threats. In the tweet above, CD Projekt Red Senior Game Designer Andrzej Zawadzki addressed these messages, condemning them in the process. While it’s one thing for fans to be upset over a delay of a much-anticipated title, it’s another when it reaches this level. Not to mention that every single studio has been working under the COVID-19 Pandemic, which puts an even higher strain on the developers and their projects.
Considering that the game is still launching this year, has already gone gold, and is nearly complete, it’s almost unbelievable to see the situation that CD Projekt Red is currently in. Of course, if the game delivers on all of its promises then the majority of this will most likely be forgotten. All we have to do now is wait until December 10, the new, and hopefully final launch day of Cyberpunk 2077. On the flip side, this gives us a lot more time to enjoy the month of November now, which includes the launch of the two next-generation home consoles, the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S.