Tokyo
Sony announced on Friday (18) that it had removed the game “Cyberpunk 2077” from its online PlayStation Store worldwide. The game had shown bugs and flaws since its inception, and in the midst of a shower of criticism, the company decided to back off to ensure “customer satisfaction”.
“SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment) is committed to ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction. As a result, we will be offering players refunds,” wrote the Sony video game division on its US website.
The game was created by the Polish studio CD Projekt RED and released worldwide on December 10th. It will be removed from the online shop “until further notice”, it said. A spokesman for SIE Japan confirmed to AFP that the withdrawal from the game and the refund to the players will apply “worldwide”.
“I don’t think we’ve seen anything like that in the video game industry,” tweeted Daniel Ahmad, analyst at Niko Partners, about the removal of ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ from the PlayStation Store. “This situation could have been avoided,” he said and postponed the start for another year.
Following the announcement, Sony’s shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange were down 2.29% in the blue at 10,255 yen (about R $ 5,000) around 4:30 GMT (1:30 in BrasÃlia). At that point, the Nikkei index was down 0.15%. At the start of business, the stock gained more than 5%. This was expected by investors with the sale of their new PlayStation 5 console for the holiday season.
According to the trade press, “Cyberpunk 2077”, a highly anticipated dystopian video game, is reaching the limits of what is technically possible today. According to the website metacritic.com, the game was “universally recognized” by critics.
Many criticize its errors and bugs, and some suggest that consumers wait a few months to purchase the game in hopes that the issues will be fixed. The game’s launch was delayed twice this year, and the developers were forced to issue warnings if any of the critics had an epileptic seizure while playing the game.
The delays, justified by the studio due to the difficulty of creating such a wide universe for the different game formats and the complications at work during the pandemic, met with much criticism. The improved versions released in November for the latest PlayStation 5 and Xbox series consoles are not yet available.
CD Projekt RED Studio apologized last Monday (14) and promised to “fix the bugs”, with fixes announced for January and February to “make the game better”. The company has also suggested reimbursing players who don’t want to wait.
The studio’s president, Adam Kicinski, announced the game had 8 million pre-orders, which he described as “phenomenal results”. He also made sure that the game “works great” in most configurations.
According to estimates by Polish bank BOS, the budget of “Cyberpunk 2077”, which is based on a game by American Mike Pondsmith, was $ 331 million (R $ 1.68 billion), making it one of the most expensive video games in the world history.
The studio turned to one of the most valuable actors, the American Keanu Reeves (from “The Matrix”), who gives his face to one of the main characters of the game, Johnny Silverhand. The worldwide advertising campaign was worthy of a Hollywood production.
AFP