Definitely, not a single day goes by without the Cyberpunk 2077 controversy continuing to hold some surprises in store for us. While the developers continue to crunch to offer as many fixes as possible before the Christmas holidays, on the management side, we are trying somehow to play the clock and do damage control. We will obviously not come back to the chronology of the case, but once again, it is the old gen ‘PS4 and Xbox One versions which are singled out in the face of the debacle surrounding quality control which obviously does not have been respected, as much on the side of the Polish studio as at Sony and Microsoft who gave the green light to market the game in this state.
The continuation of the case took place on Friday, during an extraordinary meeting between the investors, the management of CD Projekt Red and representatives of the employees of the studio. Since the studio’s share price has continued to crash, with a market value reverting to that of a year ago, meaning that all the valuation of the last 12 months is being canceled out, we learn from the bias New York law firm Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP (and relayed first by Yahoo Finance) and New York Times that a class action is being launched by several investors against CD Projekt Red. The Polish firm is indeed accused “false declarations for the purpose of obtaining financial advantages”. It’s in a publicly shared note that we learn of the intentions to bring the creators of Cyberpunk 2077 to justice.
My name is Mikołaj Orzechowski, I am a lawyer in Warsaw but also an investor at CD Projekt Red. Following recent events and in particular the suspension of the sale of Cyberpunk 2077, we are currently analyzing the possibilities of class action with the help of my law firm. We are in the process of notifying the possibility of appealing to article 286 of the penal code, which stipulates the following offense, that is to say a false declaration in order to obtain financial advantages.
This situation is completely unprecedented in the history of video games and to defend itself, CD Projekt Red is forced to bow down. Adam Kiciński, co-managing director of the studio, apologized to investors for trying to lessen the fall in the stock market (which has still lost 40% of its initial value since December 07). While the stock was valued at € 101 last August, it has fallen to € 55 in recent days. Adam Kiciński admits to having underestimated the working time required to optimize the console versions, offered for full refund, unconditionally through PlayStation and Microsoft.
FROM EAST ROCKSTAR TO WEST ROCKSTAR
Finally, be aware that during an internal meeting with the board that Bloomberg’s Jason Shreier managed to secure, the developers asked questions on several topics, including poor management of development time, the crunch imposed by executives, while the studio boasted of not having recourse to this kind of practice. We remember the arrogant tweets of CD Projekt Red during the crunch business at other studios, and well in the end, they are no better off. Suffice to say that the CD Projekt Red soap opera is far from over.
