CD Projekt Red joint chief executive officer Michał Nowakowski has stated that internal workforce exhaustion and pandemic-related stress, rather than aggressive investor pressure, ultimately led to the premature launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in late 2020.
In a recent interview with industry publication The Game Business, Nowakowski addressed the persistent rumor that financial backers forced the studio to release the game before it was technically ready. He firmly rejected that explanation, explicitly describing the choice to ship the project at that time as an undeniable mistake while clarifying that no investors dictated the timeline. Instead, he framed the situation as a complicated psychological struggle influenced by external fan expectations and mounting internal fatigue.
The executive highlighted that working during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic severely altered studio dynamics and magnified tension across development teams. According to Nowakowski, staff members wanted to get the game released simply because the grueling process had become extremely tiring. However, this internal fatigue coincided with reports that management had instituted mandatory overtime in the months leading up to release, despite prior commitments from studio leadership that mandatory crunch would not be used.
Upon its initial debut, Cyberpunk 2077 suffered severe public backlash due to frequent crashes, widespread bugs, poor console optimization, and issues with corrupted save files. Over the nearly six years following that disastrous launch, CD Projekt Red managed to engineer a major recovery through continuous updates and expansions, though studio leadership acknowledges that the journey to fully redeem the project remains active.
Robust ongoing sales for both Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 have ultimately relieved pressure on the studio's upcoming production calendar. Nowakowski suggested that this financial security provides room to set realistic timelines for future games, including the next entry in The Witcher series, which is currently aiming for a 2028 release window as the company attempts to avoid repeating past mistakes.
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