1 thought on “Cyberpunk 2077: Return to Night City”
I feel like the evidence for an "employee exodus" is thin as fuck and you're saying it like it's gospel. In all reality, turnover at game companies has always been very high…across the board. It's a low paying job in an industry that asks too much where you can just get a basic ass IT job and make more money with less work.
I really think you are underplaying the issue of money here. Everyone seems to just feel like money is infinite…but just saying "mismanagement" is an easy cop-out but MOST projects of this scale depend on obscene amounts of money. If you want to retrofit an engine to be something like UE5, you need Fortnite money…not Witcher 3 money…Witcher 3's lifetime copy sold is like 30 million…GTAV was past 100 Million a decade ago. You also need to be in a position where you can develop the engine without needing a game to come out to financially bolster the studio. Epic isn't even making any major titles on UE5. They can float Fortnite on very little engine work for a very long time.
The REASON we haven't seen a GTAVI is because GTAO is bankrolling the company. They don't NEED a GTAVI…so why force a lesser product onto the market when they can continue to use that money to bolster the engine to give them a lead over upcoming titles? Not to mention, GTAVI would immediately invalidate and call into question purchases for GTAO. So if they are making GTAVI they also need to replace GTAO at the same time…aka, they have to develop BOTH future products at the same time.
When we get GTAVI, and it's amazing? you can thank GTAO…not GTAV. I hate GTAO, but if your product makes that much money with that little effort? You can invest in the future. However, who knows with Rockstar, they may be just funneling that money to upper management compensation and dividends for TakeTwo. GTAVI could just be a reskin of GTAV with a better graphics engine but little in the way of complexity improvements. (Which is why I think Fortnite is probably a better example given UE5 is actually a massive step in gaming capabilities and showcases how investment can get you ahead if you have a major tentpole product…Witcher 3 isn't a major tentpole product, it doesn't even have a way to continue to provide money to CDPR given it's 1 purchase (and many get it on sale)).
CDPR doesn't have a GTAO, it HAS to drop titles. What they didn't seem to account for is their ambition (and certainly the project is ambitious despite its failings given how massive of a departure it is functionally from Witcher 3 in UI, style, and substance) being greater than what they can financially back up. A 7 mill loan from Poland isn't enough to make UE5 quality of engine. Fortnite makes 40 million in like…a month. Their charity for Ukraine made more than 100 million and that's still a fraction of their actual income over that period. Cyberpunk 2077 was a compromise, most likely temporarily, as they continue to refill their bank account to keep the lights on. I imagine, they still have ambitious goals for the franchise as a whole.
End of the day, I think MOST of Cyberpunk's problems were less a failure of "management" and "losing staff" and more to do with the fact they probably were running out of money, Witcher 3 wasn't refilling the coffers, and they needed another game out on the market to refill their bank account. So all those big fat ambitious dreams for 2077 went tumbling down, they scaled down, and because of the sheer scope of that scaling down…they accidently swept a bunch of things under the rug that left them open to players feeling betrayed by the information already presented.
You can see money is probably the case because of their abandoning of the Red Engine and UE5. This means they can develop a game without needing engine staff…IF they keep Cyberpunk on the Red Engine, it may be that they are going to use Witcher 4 to float engine dev for Cyberpunk's sequel and build out the engine more. Aka, the Witcher as a franchise isn't actually that profitable…however it's still dependable money given brand recognition and player good will (albeit less because of 2077). It also is a much simpler product so they don't need to customize their engine for it in the way a Cyberpunk genre game would need engine tweaks to run so much on the screen at the same time. AND MAYBE…we are entering a new era of game dev in the vein of OS's for computers where most games are built on a handful of engines, and companies give up attempting to own their own engine and CDPR may just want to be a creative studio, not a tech one.
However if they announce the second Cyberpunk is also on Unreal Engine…who knows, maybe they are gunna get bought by Epic anyway. We will have to wait for both expansions to see them say anything. I have seen a Cyberpunk game on UE5 but it's basically a prototype and not indicative of what is possible at scale.
And it's pretty obvious why they cut communication, throughout the beginning of Cyberpunk 2077s launch they were very communicative and responsive to the community…and it bit them in the ass.
I feel like the evidence for an "employee exodus" is thin as fuck and you're saying it like it's gospel. In all reality, turnover at game companies has always been very high…across the board. It's a low paying job in an industry that asks too much where you can just get a basic ass IT job and make more money with less work.
I really think you are underplaying the issue of money here. Everyone seems to just feel like money is infinite…but just saying "mismanagement" is an easy cop-out but MOST projects of this scale depend on obscene amounts of money. If you want to retrofit an engine to be something like UE5, you need Fortnite money…not Witcher 3 money…Witcher 3's lifetime copy sold is like 30 million…GTAV was past 100 Million a decade ago. You also need to be in a position where you can develop the engine without needing a game to come out to financially bolster the studio. Epic isn't even making any major titles on UE5. They can float Fortnite on very little engine work for a very long time.
The REASON we haven't seen a GTAVI is because GTAO is bankrolling the company. They don't NEED a GTAVI…so why force a lesser product onto the market when they can continue to use that money to bolster the engine to give them a lead over upcoming titles? Not to mention, GTAVI would immediately invalidate and call into question purchases for GTAO. So if they are making GTAVI they also need to replace GTAO at the same time…aka, they have to develop BOTH future products at the same time.
When we get GTAVI, and it's amazing? you can thank GTAO…not GTAV. I hate GTAO, but if your product makes that much money with that little effort? You can invest in the future. However, who knows with Rockstar, they may be just funneling that money to upper management compensation and dividends for TakeTwo. GTAVI could just be a reskin of GTAV with a better graphics engine but little in the way of complexity improvements. (Which is why I think Fortnite is probably a better example given UE5 is actually a massive step in gaming capabilities and showcases how investment can get you ahead if you have a major tentpole product…Witcher 3 isn't a major tentpole product, it doesn't even have a way to continue to provide money to CDPR given it's 1 purchase (and many get it on sale)).
CDPR doesn't have a GTAO, it HAS to drop titles. What they didn't seem to account for is their ambition (and certainly the project is ambitious despite its failings given how massive of a departure it is functionally from Witcher 3 in UI, style, and substance) being greater than what they can financially back up. A 7 mill loan from Poland isn't enough to make UE5 quality of engine. Fortnite makes 40 million in like…a month. Their charity for Ukraine made more than 100 million and that's still a fraction of their actual income over that period. Cyberpunk 2077 was a compromise, most likely temporarily, as they continue to refill their bank account to keep the lights on. I imagine, they still have ambitious goals for the franchise as a whole.
End of the day, I think MOST of Cyberpunk's problems were less a failure of "management" and "losing staff" and more to do with the fact they probably were running out of money, Witcher 3 wasn't refilling the coffers, and they needed another game out on the market to refill their bank account. So all those big fat ambitious dreams for 2077 went tumbling down, they scaled down, and because of the sheer scope of that scaling down…they accidently swept a bunch of things under the rug that left them open to players feeling betrayed by the information already presented.
You can see money is probably the case because of their abandoning of the Red Engine and UE5. This means they can develop a game without needing engine staff…IF they keep Cyberpunk on the Red Engine, it may be that they are going to use Witcher 4 to float engine dev for Cyberpunk's sequel and build out the engine more. Aka, the Witcher as a franchise isn't actually that profitable…however it's still dependable money given brand recognition and player good will (albeit less because of 2077). It also is a much simpler product so they don't need to customize their engine for it in the way a Cyberpunk genre game would need engine tweaks to run so much on the screen at the same time. AND MAYBE…we are entering a new era of game dev in the vein of OS's for computers where most games are built on a handful of engines, and companies give up attempting to own their own engine and CDPR may just want to be a creative studio, not a tech one.
However if they announce the second Cyberpunk is also on Unreal Engine…who knows, maybe they are gunna get bought by Epic anyway. We will have to wait for both expansions to see them say anything. I have seen a Cyberpunk game on UE5 but it's basically a prototype and not indicative of what is possible at scale.
And it's pretty obvious why they cut communication, throughout the beginning of Cyberpunk 2077s launch they were very communicative and responsive to the community…and it bit them in the ass.