[HN Gopher] CD Projekt Red is under investigation
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CD Projekt Red is under investigation
Author : pjmlp
Score : 95 points
Date : 2021-01-11 20:01 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mcvuk.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mcvuk.com)
| mxscho wrote:
| Seems almost like an unpopular opinion, but I think Cyberpunk
| 2077 itself is really not that bad. And on PC, it runs pretty
| well already.
|
| I think the main issue is the false marketing w.r.t. last-gen
| consoles. Hyping their product more than they could deliver seems
| to be the reason they are facing this backlash. But who could
| condemn them? Others are doing great with this strategy, see e.g.
| Tesla with their "Autopilot" (last-gen console are some older
| European roads here).
| ArchOversight wrote:
| The over 40 hours I've put into the game now have given me way
| more than $60 worth of enjoyment. Yes, I've encountered bugs, but
| overall I am really enjoying the game and the various quests.
| salmon30salmon wrote:
| People get their hopes up too much. I don't mean to "blame the
| victim" here, but at the same time I read all of the hype machine
| prior to a release and am not surprised that people are
| disappointed. Based on the hype and the expectations, nothing but
| the best game ever made will satisfy the crowd. This is the same
| for anything that is overhyped. Game of Thrones comes to mind as
| well. Everyone hated on the last season, but literally no matter
| what they did, it would be hated on.
|
| People just need to relax, accept that things are imperfect, and
| enjoy the game once it is patched.
| willis936 wrote:
| D&D and HBO did not repeatedly lie about the contents of the
| last season of GoT to get high viewership.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| So many apologists here. If you liked the game, that's fine. I
| did too. I'm lucky to play on PC. But there should be
| consequences for not delivering anything close to what was
| promised to customers that has paid in advance. Game companies
| cannot always get a free pass when it comes to customer
| protection.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Launching on those legacy consoles then was a mistake. As a PC
| player, I had no issues playing on a 3 year-old machine, it's
| about as buggy as the average huge RPG game (like Divinity OS,
| Skyrim, etc.). Then every week or two you get a patch.
|
| Baldur's Gate 3 did better PR by releasing an early release
| version first, so the impatient can jump on it.
|
| My personal feeling is there is so much effort put into this
| game, it's sad to see it spun as a dismal failure by a greedy
| entity. It must be demoralizing for the devs and artists and
| other staff members that worked on it.
| mdoms wrote:
| > Then every week or two you get a patch.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong but other than the day-1 patch hasn't
| there been only a single (quite minor) patch for this game so
| far?
| lmilcin wrote:
| The irony is that if they just released it on single device then
| nobody would bat an eye. There has been plenty of just bad,
| unplayable games in history.
| 5etho wrote:
| well in Poland CDP is known for crunch... they have reaaly bad
| opinion. As a pole I wish them well about stock market. As a
| gamer I wish them the worst after lying about last gen
| csours wrote:
| Good faith question: Is CDPR worse than other games studios, or
| do they just get more flak because they claimed they were not
| going to have crunch anymore? I ask because game dev has been
| famous for crunch for at least the last 15 years.
| krzyk wrote:
| Generally in Poland Polish companies are the worst employers
| in terms of using up employees and paying pennies, and also
| some times hiring on contract which doesn't give employees
| enough protection (in terms of pension, protection from being
| fired without severance package etc.)
|
| In the middle is government job (like, policeman, teacher,
| clerk at the government building) - you get poor pay, but you
| get normal employment (so, firing = severance package).
|
| And the best of all (in most cases, there are exceptions) is
| a foreign company that does outsourcing - you get good pay +
| a normal employment contract.
| coding123 wrote:
| A co-worker of mine that isn't known for playing video games says
| he's been playing a crap ton of it, on the XBox though. I don't
| know if the game was supposedly worse off on PS5.
| karaterobot wrote:
| As buggy as the game was on launch, and as badly as this damages
| CDPR's reputation, I have not heard a single thing that implies
| they broke any U.S. laws. How this Polish office works, I have no
| idea, but I guess I'd be surprised if they came to a different
| conclusion.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| I looked into the coverage in the Polish media and it looks like
| this headline is blowing it out of proportion.
|
| Yes, we do have an agency here in Poland which, much as in many
| other first world countries, monitors consumer goods' quality.
|
| But all UOKiK did is signal that they are going to be looking
| into the matter. Not exactly an investigation - more of an
| inquiry. One made from complaints from dissatisfied customers.
|
| If they were to find that the allegations are true, they would be
| entitled to taking 10%, but that is the maximum punishment and
| they would probably have to go to court to prove it all.
|
| Other legal sources say this is would be an extreme sentence and
| that this almost never happens with UOKiK.
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| Reminds me of the quote by Reid Hoffman: "If you aren't
| embarrassed by the first version of your product, you shipped too
| late."
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Buy you don't release half cut movies, unfinished novels,
| unmastered songs. Technically you can, but not at full price
| after years of hype.
|
| I think what happened here is that investors pushed the game to
| be out since it was xmas and the two console platforms were
| real hungry for a big title.
| csours wrote:
| Cats (2019) would like to have a word.
| boston_clone wrote:
| I'm very glad that hardware manufacturers often don't seem to
| take this advice.
| warpech wrote:
| It seems that everybody seems to hate this game, or rather
| unfinishedness of it. Meanwhile, I am playing it since 2 weeks on
| PS4 (not Pro) and totally enjoying every minute it.
| gabereiser wrote:
| At its core it's a decent game. The issue is with so many bugs
| (many of which preventing a player from finishing a story
| quest) it's hard to focus on the game when your copy keeps
| crashing, glitching, frustrating you.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| I've ran into a couple of quest bugs, however most of them
| are about finishing things in certain order of operations,
| generally it will unlock the next task anyway, and then you
| can switch the target from the Journal.
| eznzt wrote:
| >The issue is with so many bugs (many of which preventing a
| player from finishing a story quest)
|
| You should see games from The Elder Scrolls franchise. Even
| in the latest version of Skyrim there still are game-breaking
| bugs they have not fixed.
| gabereiser wrote:
| I'm familiar. I think ES franchise is prone to this, so was
| GTA and RDR2. The issue is gamers expect an entire world of
| simulation and effect. Ambitious large open world games
| suffer from this as dev teams don't have enough QA to test
| everything and dev's have to test it themselves. This ends
| up with a "works good under these circumstances" which
| circumstances are different when players play it at launch.
|
| It's a hard problem. Extremely large open world, thousands
| of scripts and triggers and things to test. I sympathize.
| Gamers are the hardest genre of users to please.
| eznzt wrote:
| I understand you. I have not played Cyberpunk but games
| from the TES family are extremely complex. It would be
| impossible for them not to have scripting bugs.
| bendoerr wrote:
| Do you have an example of a bug that prevents quest
| completion? I've been lucky enough to not run into a single
| one during my 100+ hours so far and I've been trying to do
| every quest. I worry that these things keep getting said
| without people actually experiencing them. I have several
| friends playing on PS4 without the reported crashes. Not
| saying you haven't, I just don't have any direct knowledge of
| the issues that have been reported and when it is, it's very
| hand-wavy.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Here's one right off the top of Google search:
| https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/game-
| break...
| cl0ne wrote:
| On PS4 I ran into a bug near the end of "The Pickup"
| mission where Jackie gets stuck inside the All Foods
| building. The next objective is to talk to him, but once
| you exit the building you can't re-enter or call him. I had
| to go back to a previous save a few times. Sometimes the
| game just crashes and I have to restart the console. There
| have been some other bugs that I just found funny, like
| once I was driving and all of a sudden the car was stuck
| hundreds of feet in the air and I fell and died when I got
| out. I've been enjoying the game though and the bugs
| haven't really bothered me too much, but I see how they
| could.
| deadbunny wrote:
| I've had a few bugs where scripted events fail to trigger.
| Nothing game breaking, it's usually solved by loading the
| last save.
| dx87 wrote:
| I only ran into one bug that prevented quest completion.
| Near the beginning of the game, there is a quest where you
| and Jackie have to pick up some equipment then fight your
| way out of the building. On my first attempt, Jackie got
| stuck in combat because he didn't recognize a dead as enemy
| as being dead, so he wouldn't leave the building for me to
| talk to him and finish the quest.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| There's one quest line which makes you wake up naked
| without your stuff.
|
| If you trigger the exit dialogue before picking up your
| stuff, the quest line gets stuck.
|
| That's the only actual showstopper I encountered in 60
| hours of gameplay.
| mjevans wrote:
| I viewed such a bug on a Twitch stream. Avoiding spoiler
| details... The streamer was completing the Delemain (sp)
| questline and had to roll back to a save just before the
| decision at the end due to a softlock that happened in the
| scripted sequence after.
| shmerl wrote:
| I started playing it on Linux (Wine+vkd3d-proton), but I paused
| the playthrough - I'm waiting for some patches for spatial
| audio to land and also for a newer AMD GPU, they are pretty
| hard to get now. By that time the game will also accumulate
| some good amount of patches.
|
| As a Linux gamer, I really don't get this whole drama and I
| appreciate that CDPR even provided the game to Wine and Mesa
| developers in advance so they even added a whole new Vulkan
| extension to improve support for it.
| caconym_ wrote:
| I played ~80 hours and enjoyed it more than any RPG I've played
| since the original Mass Effect trilogy. It looked great too, at
| medium settings on my 4 year old gaming PC.
|
| It does seem like there were some legitimate issues on
| consoles, but I don't even know how seriously to take that
| given the insane disproportionality of the criticism that even
| the PC version has been getting. I saw somebody on Reddit
| seriously suggesting that Steam should pull the game like Sony
| did, and it's like, what?
|
| Presumably if it does end up in court, the truth will come out
| and CDPR will be sanctioned appropriately. I don't mean to say
| the release couldn't have been better, but from where I'm
| sitting it feels like 75% just another case of insane "gamer
| entitlement".
| mywittyname wrote:
| > I saw somebody on Reddit seriously suggesting that Steam
| should pull the game like Sony did, and it's like, what?
|
| I'm starting to think that some major players are
| capitalizing on the situation by bankrolling marketing and
| negative PR. CDPR stock has fallen dramatically and now they
| are facing punitive action from governments that on a level
| I've never heard of for a game studio.
|
| I'm not apologizing for them. They should not have released
| what they did for the PS4. But I'm seeing a bunch of articles
| about how the number of players one steam has fallen by X%
| and lots of others stuff not typically reported about on a
| game.
|
| I guess we'll see if they get acquired at a deep discount by
| Ubisoft or something.
| evilturnip wrote:
| Not really the issue, also anecdotal. Clearly a large enough
| base complained for Sony to pull it from their Playstation
| store, and they've never done that before.
|
| The real issue is what was promised and teased and what was
| delivered. Honestly might border on false advertising. There
| are countless videos breaking down what was advertised in their
| promotional feature walkthrough videos and what was actually
| delivered (not even withstanding pretty glaring bugs and
| performance issues).
| vlunkr wrote:
| IMO The fact that they chose not to deliver review copies of
| the last-gen version until after the PC reviews were already
| in is the worst part of it. It seems pretty clear that they
| wanted to buy the game based on the PC reviews, when the
| last-gen version is clearly inferior.
| evilturnip wrote:
| Another pretty underhanded move. They definitely knew the
| console versions had major issues and didn't want reviewers
| to see it.
| proc0 wrote:
| I think game companies underestimate how much the game will be
| explored in detail even in the first week by the community, and
| mistakenly release incomplete content thinking it will be fixed
| without notice. I don't know but hopefully they patch and it
| keeps improving.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Its fashionable right now to pile up hate on CDPR. Probably
| generates a lot of clicks.
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| IMO the real issue is less that it's unfinished and more that
| the product at its best doesn't seem to live up to its lofty
| expectations (disclaimer: have not played it and don't intend
| to until it goes on sale, just watched others and read a good
| number of reviews).
|
| From what I understand it's a fairly anodyne action-RPG, with
| routine quests, an underwhelming plot, and not too many
| interesting choices for character development - nothing bad,
| but nothing great. It doesn't have the script of The Witcher
| III, the humor and satire isn't as clever as Watch Dogs, it
| doesn't break new action-RPG gameplay ground like Fallout 4,
| and as an open world city it's a shallow clone of a GTA game.
| And it doesn't contribute anything particularly unique itself -
| outside of all the hype, the consensus seems to be that it's a
| fine choice if you're looking for a solid action-RPG, but not
| essential. Which would be fine if the game were finished and
| appropriately hyped! But neither were the case.
|
| People would be more forgiving of the bugs and even the
| unscrupulous marketing if the game was legitimately
| extraordinary and unlike anything else out there - the viral
| buggy footage would be offset by viral stories and videos of
| cool things in the game itself. But those cool things just
| aren't there in Cyberpunk - it's a B+ game, and doesn't seem to
| have much to offer compared to its competitors.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I thoroughly enjoyed the plot and felt like Panam is up there
| on the list of top NPCs in gaming. Like, you genuinely feel
| like you're becoming friends throughout the missions.
|
| I also thought Johnny was a really well executed. He really
| made me feel like some asshole is taking over my brain, and
| you slowly develop a bit of empathy with him and you can feel
| that he's doing the same with you.
|
| Plus, the scene where you play a gig as Johnny is so awesome.
| I've never played a first person game where something like
| that was done. Looking out on that crowd of people, I really
| felt like a rockstar.
|
| Yeah, the side missions were filler. And every NCPD job was
| identical. But they didn't feel any worse than Spiderman, and
| much better than FF7R (the cats...). You didn't even have to
| do any of them anyway. It was just something to occupy you if
| you wanted to run around and explore the city.
| munk-a wrote:
| > And every NCPD job was identical.
|
| I actually disagree with this pretty solidly - I've seen
| absolutely trash side missions like Dragon's Age 2 where a
| handful of dungeon templates had slices taken off of them
| and were repackaged endlessly. The NCPD jobs (especially
| the Assault ones) are cheapo quests - but they're placed
| interestingly in the world with custom prop work and
| differing tactical options. Depending on your build it may
| be more or less of "Just rush in with a sword" but viewing
| them as the random world encounters they appear to be
| created as makes them rather high quality in my eyes.
|
| It's optional content for completionists or for you to trip
| over when wandering around and for that role I think it was
| well done.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > disclaimer: have not played it
|
| > routine quests, an underwhelming plot, and not too many
| interesting choices for character development
|
| Come on, man.
| haskellandchill wrote:
| Well I've played it and is has routine quests, an
| underwhelming plot, and not too many interesting choices
| for character development. I was most disappointed that
| crafting is useless because I wanted to roleplay that skill
| tree. The game is so boring I've been playing Far Cry
| instead and Far Cry is trash. Coming from a Deus Ex
| background there is nothing there to Cyberpunk. However
| most people liked the game so what's the big deal, it works
| and the audience is mostly happy.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| > I was most disappointed that crafting is useless
|
| Crafting/engineering is one of the the most OP paths you
| can invest in. There's a great build posted some time ago
| on YT.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUMlmI685rc
| slfnflctd wrote:
| > Far Cry is trash
|
| Having recently played around with this series (3 and 5)
| for the first time in my life - since they were heavily
| discounted over the holidays - I have to say, for
| shooters they could be a lot worse. FC3 has clearly
| influenced other games that came out since. Production
| value is high, graphics are great, they run fine on 5+
| year old computers and the stories are fun. I'm neither
| bored nor overly frustrated.
|
| Really my only issue is the lack of non-lethal play
| options, but you can play stealth most of the time and
| it's a good challenge for me. Not a shill or anything, I
| was just surprised to be enjoying them.
| throwanem wrote:
| You left something out:
|
| > watched others and read a good number of reviews
|
| What's the point of reviews, if not to give people this
| kind of general sense of a game before they decide whether
| or not to buy it? Why else would AAA studios be so anxious
| to impose and enforce pre-release embargos, except to
| reduce the risk of the preorder hype and FOMO being in any
| way ameliorated by reality?
| [deleted]
| mpfundstein wrote:
| the game is absolutely great. I love every second of it. It
| never crashed on me, and I also havent encountered many
| glitches..
|
| rig:
|
| - threadripper 1920X 12-core
|
| - 2080ti
|
| - 32gb ecc ram
| jayd16 wrote:
| Seems like everyone I talk to likes the game even if its not
| bug free and the combat isn't perfect.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Yeah, I like it. I've seen some bugs, like NPCs walking 10
| feet above ground, or vehicles clipping into each other.
| Nothing seriously immersion-breaking though, and definitely
| nothing game-breaking.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| The writing and depth were way too lacking for me.
|
| I can deal with bugs, but the lack of depth constantly breaks
| immersion, and some of the writing is just really
| cringeworthy
| sudosteph wrote:
| I agree that the writing for the main quest was
| underwhelming, but there were a couple side quests that
| really stood out enough to redeem the writing in my eyes.
| Specifically, the Peralez and the Sinnerman quest chains
| felt really memorable, interesting, and engaging. It's a
| shame the main story wasn't up to the same the level.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > e writing is just really cringeworthy
|
| Which games writing is not cringeworthy please?
| Tarsul wrote:
| well it depends on your definition of cringeworthy but
| there's for example a huge difference between new vegas
| (good, from Obsidian Entertainment) vs. Fallout 3 (well,
| could be worse actually, from Bethesda). Cyberpunk feels
| quite mainstreamy in that regard (meaning its writing is
| not up to par to less mainstreamy RPGs). Well, if we're
| on the topic: The writing actually is pretty bad. There's
| a lot of talking without saying shit. I mean how
| difficult must it be to put some real character into the
| characters? Meaning some semblance of real backstories
| and not just blips about how bad everything is without
| really saying anything. argh.
| blhack wrote:
| Yeah I'm with you on this. I installed it to see what all of
| the fuss was about and have been loving it. I haven't run into
| a single glitch or problem of any kind.
| Reedx wrote:
| It's mostly that the loudest, angriest voices tend to drown out
| everyone else.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Yep, gamers especially are a particularly tough crowd, and
| quite a few of them have large audiences.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| I considered going into the gaming industry years ago, but
| the audience is such a turnoff. It really holds the medium
| back as an art form.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > I considered going into the gaming industry years ago,
| but the audience is such a turnoff.
|
| I think that the issue isn't so much 'the audience' but
| the terrible work conditions associated with the gaming
| industry.
|
| > It really holds the medium back as an art form
|
| How? games are probably the most diverse art form in
| existence today, there is literally no rules to what a
| game can be.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| The audience of gamers strikes me as perhaps the most
| immature, needlessly difficult group of art consumers in
| the world today. Even movies don't get the same kind of
| petulant obsession and hostility that games do. I'm not
| sure if it's just a consequence of gamers being younger
| or what, but it's a major turnoff to me. The fact that
| CDPR devs got death threats because of game delays just
| says it all. Can you imagine something similar happening
| to a filmmaker?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > The audience of gamers strikes me as perhaps the most
| immature, needlessly difficult group of art consumers in
| the world today. Even movies don't get the same kind of
| petulant obsession and hostility that games do. I'm not
| sure if it's just a consequence of gamers being younger
| or what, but it's a major turnoff to me.
|
| It's like saying the people who play Call Of Duty online
| and Visual Novel X or Z are necessarily the same
| audience, no matter what game is produced, it's purely a
| stereotype, and it's not true.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Virtually all of the jobs in gaming will be for bigger
| budget games at large companies. The amount of revenue
| that COD or CDPR makes is vastly greater than any indie
| games.
| vlunkr wrote:
| > How? games are probably the most diverse art form in
| existence today, there is literally no rules to what a
| game can be.
|
| Really? Compared to film, music, visual arts? I would say
| it's the least diverse of them. It's starting to branch
| out, especially in the indie scene, but it's still in
| it's infancy.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Really? Compared to film, music, visual arts? I would
| say it's the least diverse of them. It's starting to
| branch out, especially in the indie scene, but it's still
| in it's infancy.
|
| Yes because gaming actually unify all other art medium
| without being burdened by their 'rules'. Movies today
| have clearly defined cinematographic rules, very little
| professional produced movies can be deemed experimental.
| Games do not suffer from these kind of 'academic'
| considerations.
| vlunkr wrote:
| This doesn't make sense. What are the rules of music?
| Sure if you want something on the radio it's wise to
| follow some guidelines, but obviously that's not where
| the diversity is. You can make a song with no defined key
| or time signature, it can be hours long or seconds long,
| it can have no vocals, only vocals, or controversially,
| no sound at all. You could go on and on. Video games have
| not pushed the limits in this way.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| I have to strongly disagree with this.
|
| What we call "video games" now encompasses pretty much
| all other art forms except cooking. Whatever you can do
| with one form, you can do the same thing _plus more_ in a
| game. There is much greater artistic potential in this
| kind of software than anywhere else that doesn 't require
| physical presence (and even that can be simulated). It
| also requires massive engineering skill, itself an art.
|
| That being said, the medium has a very long way to go yet
| and there are still many areas it has yet to explore. I'm
| very glad there's a thriving indie scene where developers
| are continually experimenting with fresh, crazy new
| ideas.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| I don't think you have much knowledge of film if you say
| "professional produced movies are not experimental."
| [deleted]
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Sony itself removed that game from the playstation store
| and still has not put it back yet, because it doesn't meet
| Sony's playstation certification requirements. I don't
| think 'gamers' are the issue here.
| wavefunction wrote:
| They offered it in their store so it obviously met their
| certification requirements at one point in the past.
| Perhaps they don't really have certification
| requirements...
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > They offered it in their store so it obviously met
| their certification requirements at one point in the
| past. Perhaps they don't really have certification
| requirements...
|
| Because CDPR promised to Sony they'd fix it at launch, it
| was Sony being lenient, obviously that was a mistake from
| Sony.
| hcnews wrote:
| Active steam users for this game dropped much faster than
| that of Witcher 3 (which was similarly/less flawed at launch)
| based on public steam data. So, there's lot of evidence
| behind the message.
|
| Anecdotally, the players I knew have stopped playing it
| altogether due to a variety of issues.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| W3 was released in May of a non-pandemic year. CP2077 was
| released in December in a pandemic year.
|
| The game-hours-to-calendar-days translation won't be 1:1.
| krzyk wrote:
| Well, it was quite obvious becasue of two reasons: 1. W3
| players count was in few thousands (maybe 10 thousands) -
| so it had mostly hard core fans of the franchise 2. W3 main
| campain is ~51 hours, and CP2077 has campaing for 25 hours.
|
| And also note, the massive amount of players of CP2077, 3x
| less is still few orders of magnitude more than W3 had.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Probably because most of the pre-orders had enough time to
| beat the game.
|
| The main story lines are not crazy long, maybe 30hrs or so.
| The side quests aren't nearly the quality of Witcher 3.
| Most are just, "run into this building and kill this guy /
| steal data from the terminal, then run out." They only
| serve as something to do while you're exploring the city.
|
| With no multiplayer or generated content, I can't imagine
| why anyone would spend more than 60-80 hours playing the
| game. It makes sense that fewer people would be playing it
| by now.
| jonathanyc wrote:
| I've been playing it through Stadia (wanted to try out Stadia
| and Cyberpunk at the same time) and I agree people are hating
| on the game seemingly way out of proportion. It's definitely
| buggy, I had to restart at one point because the game refused
| to allow me to reload in the middle of a fight, but claiming
| it's fraud or "unplayable" is hyperbole.
|
| I think people just got way too excited about from having
| nothing to do during this pandemic and then ended up really
| disappointed. I empathize with that but I don't know, it's a
| $60 game. That's like four movies. I've enjoyed it more than
| the last four movies I've watched for sure.
| dindresto wrote:
| Also I spent more time on it than on four movies already, and
| I'm far from finished.
| uep wrote:
| I think one could randomly choose a Betheseda or Ubisoft
| release, and have a similar level of bugs.
|
| I also played it through Stadia, because Google was having
| really good deals on Stadia. The first month was free
| (through a Google Music promotion), and buying Cyberpunk for
| $50 got you a Chromecast Ultra. I have actually been
| pleasantly surprised by how good the Stadia experience is.
| kissickas wrote:
| You're playing on literally the most playable platform there
| is (the game is even less buggy on Stadia than on latest-gen
| consoles).
| outworlder wrote:
| That's very curious given that on Stadia it's a Linux port.
| maccard wrote:
| Have you seen the game played on a base PS4? [0] is a
| timestamp to skip the beginning of a digital foundry video.
| It's really not in a good place.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/C5pHpQqhmR4?t=160
| krzyk wrote:
| So why there are so many PS4 players that play and enjoy
| it?
|
| Look in the comments here.
| haunter wrote:
| I have the PS4 version (yes, base not Pro) and it's 900p-720p
| dynamically switching and 25fps, maybe 30 in better cases.
| Which is utter trash. It's like watching movies in 360p on
| Youtube. Or listening to music in 64kbsp. On top of that the
| story doesn't save the game either which is mediocre at best
| especially compared to what was promised.
|
| Then look at Ghost of Tsushima or RDR2 on the same console.
| yulaow wrote:
| Same experience for me. It caused so much migraines, eyes
| pain and nausea that I had to stop playing it. Never had a
| game capable of switching so fast and erratically in the
| range 900p-700p and 28-15 fps to actually cause physical
| symptoms on my body.
|
| I got a refund, bought the xbox version and played on xbox
| series s and it was actually pretty good even with graphics
| clearly "old gen"-level compared to the pc version.
| pawelos wrote:
| I don't think it is fair to compare it to Ghost of Tsushima
| or RDR2.
|
| Both games have worlds that are mostly empty, with few
| buildings here and there. As far as I remember, RDR2 dropped
| to ~25FPS in Saint Denis on my PS4 just after launch (not
| sure now), and Saint Denis is a tiny comparing to Night City.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I remember walking out of your apartment complex for the
| first time, and being really amazed at the number of NPCs
| walking and driving around. It's the first game I've played
| that actually made me feel like I was in a major city.
| chundicus wrote:
| I hope this will encourage big studios to stop releasing broken
| games, but I doubt it will. The incentives are just so broken due
| to ease of patching, a need/desire for cash after a drawn out dev
| process, and a general disrespect for their customers.
|
| I think releasing a "broken" game in the form of "early access"
| from smaller studios can be good in terms of iterative and
| community development, but also that can be abused too. These
| bigger studios really don't have as much of an excuse in my
| opinion.
|
| The only solution I see is to stop pre-ordering games and don't
| reward studios that do this, but easier said than done.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Somehow I doubt Polish law is going to have much impact on the
| larger game industry.
| outworlder wrote:
| > I hope this will encourage big studios to stop releasing
| broken games
|
| The game wasn't "broken" at all. I've finished it a couple of
| days ago. It works fine on the PC.
|
| It wasn't a matter of releasing an unfinished game as in the
| "early access" model like you are describing. It was a matter
| of deciding to release the game in platforms that were
| underpowered, like the PS4.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| The problem isn't releasing a broken game. There's a huge
| challenge in making and releasing games and meeting a specific
| quality bar.
|
| That said, knowing you have a broken game and saying it's great
| is extremely avoidable and totally should stop. Tell me the
| game is a mess and let me play with it.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > The problem isn't releasing a broken game. There's a huge
| challenge in making and releasing games and meeting a
| specific quality bar.
|
| That's true for any complex product. There are reasonable
| expectations, and indeed laws, about products being fit for
| purpose. I don't see why video games are unique.
|
| It's possible to patch them after release. This partially
| explains, but does not excuse, the pattern of games releasing
| in a broken state.
| enahs-sf wrote:
| Having played Cyberpunk on a PS4 and then a PS5, It is
| nowhere near what you'd expect from a AAA title in terms of
| quality. Had to stop playing it because it's not worth it to
| ruin the experience.
|
| I can only imagine what the folks at Rockstar are thinking
| about this launch and what they can take away from it.
| threeseed wrote:
| > I can only imagine what the folks at Rockstar are
| thinking
|
| I imagine they are thinking the same thing since GTA5
| Online was released.
|
| Why even bother making new games when you can just drip
| feed some DLC every now and again and continue to print
| billions.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I'm not going to say that's a worse model.
|
| We saw outsourcing of engines to companies who focused on
| that as their core competency. Then middleware. As AAA
| budgets go up to maintain pace with SotA, it makes less
| sense to trash-and-start-from-scratch (traditional
| practice).
|
| DLC on online games is the ultimate realization of this.
| Why sink the cost of rebuilding a game, when you have a
| battle-tested core, with bugs already fixed, and content
| tooling already created, that you can start from?
| Essentially: EA {Sport} {Year} model, for everything
| else.
| munk-a wrote:
| > It is nowhere near what you'd expect from a AAA title in
| terms of quality. Had to stop playing it because it's not
| worth it to ruin the experience.
|
| Can you clarify a bit whether you were hitting game play
| bugs or visual issues?
|
| On the PC side there are occasional visual glitches but the
| game play is relatively stable - I've had trouble with one
| quest line (the delamain one) and the enemy AI can get
| stuck sometimes - but it hasn't interrupted game play too
| badly.
| krzyk wrote:
| And to have a counterpoint, I'm playing on PC and have a
| lot of fun. I've seen so far only one bug (Panams phone
| somehow freezed in mid air during her talking scene)
|
| I must say that I'm a bit glad that this time consoles were
| taken less seriously than a PC, in majority of cases is
| quite opposite (with a few exceptions like GTA V and
| CP2077).
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| I played the game on PC too, and for the first half or so
| of the game I agree, the first half of the game was more
| "very very unpolished and rough" as opposed to "broken
| bugs".
|
| However it got worse and worse the closer I got to the
| finale, on total I encountered around 10-12 situations
| that prevented me from continuing and required game
| restarts and/or loading of older saves, and I had to
| repeat my final mission 3 times because of a game
| breaking bug. That is on top of all the minor bugs others
| have already mentioned.
|
| While I was able to at least get between 50 and 80 fps,
| the performance was absolutely terrible if I consider my
| specs (>3500$ PC build).
|
| All in all I was "relatively bug free" compared to the
| experiences of others. What I don't understand are people
| saying it would be "a masterpiece" without the bugs, I
| disagree, the game was very bland in my opinion and I
| regret my purchase and the time I invested regardless of
| the bugs and problems. It wasn't TERRIBLE, but I wish I
| had spent the money on another game.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| My PC experience was good too. I saw the "T-pose on a
| motorcycle" bug a couple times and I sequence-broke a
| mission once, but that's it. If 2077 had been enterprise
| software, it would be the smoothest and least-buggy
| enterprise software I had ever used by a mile.
|
| It sounds like last-gen consoles leaned very heavily on
| the LOD system, it caused more bugs than expected, and
| they didn't allocate enough time to fix them.
| falcolas wrote:
| > releasing games and meeting a specific quality bar.
|
| Only if you're holding yourself to an impossible deadline.
| Given time - and, I'll argue, developers who weren't burnt
| out by the work schedule - and this could have been resolved.
| But they didn't take that time, they went ahead with a non-
| functional game just to meet the deadline.
|
| They abused their developers to meet an (demonstrably)
| impossible deadline. This is a terribly way to run a business
| on many levels.
| warpech wrote:
| I wonder if CDPR released the game at that stage because they
| thought that the window of opportunity on last-gen consoles was
| closing
| jgust wrote:
| It's a tragedy of the commons situation with gamer enthusiasts
| acting against their own best interest.
|
| If people can't delay gratification for something as
| inconsequential as "non-broken video games", I don't see how
| any personal responsibility campaign has any chance of working
| for things impacting society at large such as climate change,
| overfishing, public health, etc.
| falcolas wrote:
| This isn't on the players. That's very much in the same line
| as blaming someone driving their car for the Gulf Oil Spill.
|
| This is 100% on CDPR management. It's their job to set the
| right deadlines, to manage expectation and hype.
|
| They failed, and should be held accountable for that failure.
|
| EDIT: Yes, downvote this. Support CDPR's management and their
| shitty practices with their employees and their lying to
| players and investors. I'm sure you'll love the games that
| come about as a result.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think there were some really big marketing mistakes but
| most of the backlash on CP2077 seems to be over the insane
| levels of hype. I had pre-ordered this game a long time ago
| and it was genuinely fun on release, there are some bugged
| quests and I don't have a card capable of rendering
| ridiculously good graphics but it's playable and fun.
|
| From what I've heard the PS release is absolutely worth
| getting mad over - it's likely that CDPR should have just
| given up on even attempting a PS release given how poor the
| performance is but it probably needs some serious
| investigation to see what pressure Sony was putting on them
| to make sure it was available.
| [deleted]
| Sodman wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to blame this on gamers. With all of
| the hyperbole over various games being "broken", most people
| that are hyped about a specific game are just going to buy it
| and see for themselves. Unless it's literally unplayable (as
| may actually have been the case here), most people won't
| refund it.
|
| This has been going on for years and years, it's just getting
| worse over time. It's always some variant of this
| conversation at $GAMEDEV_STUDIO:
|
| Focus group feedback: Our test groups are noticing 10% of
| players are running into this bug/issue. It's frustrating
| them, but there are workarounds.
|
| Management: All of our marketing materials target release
| date XX/XX/XXXX. If we try to fix this bug we'll have to push
| the release... How many people will _not_ buy the game
| because of this bug?
|
| Focus group feedback: Nobody that would have otherwise bought
| this game would decide not to buy it over this issue.
|
| Management: So we ship as planned, and fix the bugs in a
| patch.
|
| Over time studios realized that you can get away with much
| bigger bugs affecting much larger portions of players. Ship
| sooner, start recognizing revenue, and push post-launch
| patches to fix the "really bad bugs". It's shocking how bad
| the quality has to get before it starts making headlines.
| jgust wrote:
| > I don't think it's fair to blame this on gamers
|
| That's sort of what I'm alluding to. Personal
| responsibility doesn't work when you need collective
| action, so something else needs to step in to fix this.
| Reminding gamers to not pre-order is pointless.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _Management: So we ship as planned, and fix the bugs in a
| patch._
|
| What's curious, and I assume therefore legally-reasoned, is
| the consistent lack of preparation for blow-back by
| companies. Some part of CD Projekt Red knew the game was
| broken on older consoles.
|
| It feels like the only real solution to this is to have
| legal QA documents, signed off on by QA (as factual) and
| executive leadership (as read and understood).
|
| If there's a magically missing set of older console tests,
| someone in leadership goes to jail. If leadership publicly
| misrepresents the stability of the game despite knowing
| about substantial defects from QA reports, someone goes to
| jail.
|
| Who cares about video games, but this is indicative of a
| broader social problem allowing executives to feign
| ignorance and create systems that deflect blame downward.
| Either you're running the company or not. And if you are...
| then the legal ramifications should ultimately land at your
| feet.
| cheschire wrote:
| I waited for the reviews. When they were over 90% I pulled
| the trigger.
|
| Now I realize I purchased a game that was reviewed on what
| it will eventually become a la No Man's Sky, not what it
| was on the day of review.
|
| Sure, the crashing didn't affect me, my configuration was
| more or less normal I guess. Instead what I got was a
| hollow game that has a lot of hooks ready for eventual
| expansion sometime in future patches. That didn't deserve
| the 91% it had when I first bought the game.
|
| I don't blame fellow gamers. I blame the reviewers.
| surge wrote:
| Reviewers had the access media problem, it was discussed
| at length on the 1-up podcast. They can't be trusted,
| especially on AAA titles or they risk being shut out of
| preview copies on the next releases, which is bad for
| business. I just wait for user reviews, after a couple of
| weeks for the hype to die down and people to actually
| spend some time in it, then I generally look at the worse
| reviews first. Unless there's a compelling reason to have
| a game immediately (like its primarily online and all my
| friends are playing it), its better to be a patient
| gamer.
| ROFISH wrote:
| Without too much detail due to contracts/NDA/etc, slipping
| a release date is even worse of a bother for others down-
| chain also. There are planned times for manufacturing,
| warehousing, distribution, all that fun stuff for the
| physical versions of titles. All that would basically need
| to be re-dated from scratch. You can't slip one week, you
| have to slip at least a month. More for platforms that
| don't use standard disc formats which are not made locally.
| (Which hilariously, CP2077 already did slip a month before
| release.)
|
| Even for digital games, there's still approval processes
| where the first parties would have to test the game out.
| This process involves scheduling people for it; you can't
| just go to the front of the line as there are other games
| that have been scheduled for certain slots. (Which
| hilariously, it was rumored that CP2077 was given the
| 'don't test, push live ASAP' treatment.)
|
| At lastly, all payments from the platforms and retailers
| are based on the actual release date. Unless there's a
| specific contract, games are not paid until months after
| release. Physical preorders don't pay the developers, they
| just help with preventing over/under stocking. (And digital
| preorders are... functionally worthless beyond the
| psychological value.) The release date starts the payment
| timer. When hurting for cash, releasing can start that
| timer.
|
| The processes above can really benefit abusers who decide
| that "making street-date" is the most important thing above
| all other concerns.
| surge wrote:
| Stop announcing release dates until its 90% finished or all
| major bugs are fixed and you're just 3 months away from
| being ready.
|
| Publishers are a problem too, they pressure to release
| games around the holidays, or the console manufacturers do
| cause it helps sell hardware around the holidays.
|
| From what I gathered its mostly fine on PC, they're a PC
| shop after all, the console versions needed probably at
| least 6 months of work to be polished. People were
| screaming for it to be released no matter what or to stop
| making excuses no matter how much crunch the devs were
| already doing. If they released it as an "early-beta" like
| a lot of games or just said up front, okay we're releasing
| it but its not finished, so you can play it but you're
| getting the beta now and we'll be fixing it with updates. I
| think hardcore gamers would understand. It would just not
| look good for release sales and I'm not sure if the game
| media would care.
| this_user wrote:
| There is also the component of building hype via marketing
| in order to generate pre-orders. With CP2077, they had made
| back the entire development costs immediately after launch.
| This means, refunds notwithstanding, that by the time your
| customers notice the state the game is in, you are already
| profitable, and have all the time in the world for PR
| damage control and patches.
| ekianjo wrote:
| There is no need for action. The only thing people need to do
| is to stop preordering games.
| nightski wrote:
| The thing is CD Project Red has released it's games in a really
| rough state before. All of the Witcher games were brutal on
| release.
|
| But every time they have not only released thousands of bug
| fixes/improvements for free, but also delivered large
| dlc/content updates.
|
| The difference with CP2077 I believe is that it was just the
| highest profile launch they have ever had by a wide margin.
| They are too big now.
|
| I don't regret pre-ordering at all, because they have always
| done right by me.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > I don't regret pre-ordering at all, because they have
| always done right by me.
|
| Same here. I bought it on PC via GOG, and while it was rough
| and unstable, I happily put about 100hrs of game play into
| it.
|
| Honestly, they should have released it as under-development
| on platforms like Steam that support such designations. It's
| pretty common for studios to release games in an alpha/beta
| state. At least that way, gamers would know that they are
| getting a potentially buggy release.
|
| For consoles, they straight up should not have released it
| until v1.07 at minimum. That's where they really screwed up.
| The game is in a much less playable state on the PS4, and
| console gamers in general are used to a much more polished
| gaming experience.
| okprod wrote:
| They also dragged out the release for a long time, all while
| continuing to build hype, like Anthem.
| zamalek wrote:
| > I don't regret pre-ordering at all, because they have
| always done right by me.
|
| I bought the game a few days ago and, apart from the NVIDIA
| RTX timed-exclusive, I haven't run into any issues with it.
| It's already a touch above the usual Witcher release.
|
| It's also worth noting that, at least from my perspective,
| there was a vocal crowd begging for the game on account of
| "something to do during the pandemic, assuming bugs warts and
| all". I'm not sure if this is why they released an
| objectively broken game to previous-gen consoles, but I would
| be inclined to believe the excuse.
| devonkim wrote:
| Yeah, the other situation is that PC players have oftentimes
| gotten buggy and unplayable ports from consoles for years,
| and now that a PC first development studio wound up screwing
| console players first it's much more visible and the outcry
| worse. They never launched simultaneously on 9 platforms at a
| time. Heck, not a lot of titles do that at all that are well
| established veteran studios across many prior console
| generations.
|
| CDPR is no saint but compared to the rest of the industry
| they are relatively. I'm thoroughly enjoying it despite some
| small bugs here and there but given the massive size of the
| game and the really ambitious stuff they've done in animation
| it's amazing what they got done in the time window they had
| between Witcher 3 and the original launch timeframe.
|
| I hope CDPR learns the right lessons though and focuses upon
| engineering management and how to rein in their marketing
| better.
| lumost wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is broken QA throughout the industry.
| I burned ~60 hours in cyberpunk on a ps4 pro, the content of
| the game was fun - but the bugs were pretty dumb. Many of the
| worst bugs originated in story pathways that would only be
| triggered if various conditions had occurred (which undoubtedly
| changed during development).
|
| From a testing perspective It seems like it would require an
| impossible amount of QA time to vet all of the quest paths as a
| player, and it would be easy to miss game breaking bugs if QA
| testers were using manipulated save files. Issues like the bad
| police AI only crop up once in the main game, but are pretty
| noticeable throughout free roam.
|
| If players want games to get bigger, will we need smarter and
| more automated QA tools? what would these look like?
| pythonaut_16 wrote:
| > Q: Open-world games are often really buggy, because there's
| just so much going on. But I experienced very little of that
| in my time with Breath of the Wild. How did you pull that
| off? Was it just a really extensive QA process?
|
| > Dohta: There was another point that we developed during our
| QA process. We came up with a number of scripts that would
| basically allow the game to be played automatically, and
| allow Link to run through various parts of the game
| automatically. And as that was happening, on the QA side of
| things, if a bug did appear I'd suddenly get a flood of
| emails about it. That was one tool that we found to be really
| handy.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/11/14881076/the-legend-of-
| ze...
|
| Breath of the Wild used a tool to do automated run throughs
| as part of their bug testing suite. This is just a quote from
| one interview, but if you do a bit of Googling you can find
| some good information about their development and planning
| process.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It's not rocket science. It's devs treating QA like second-
| class citizens and substituting (cheap) person-hours for
| proper technical tools.
|
| Any sequence of events can be represented as a directed
| graph.
|
| Any event check can be validated against that directed graph
| as feasible.
|
| Instead, Bethesda (equally guilty) and CDPR seem to let their
| devs add whatever checks, and then trust QA to untangle and
| validate the infinite number of combinations.
|
| tl;dr - open world games are incompatible with traditional QA
| methods and tools
| slg wrote:
| >If UOKiK finds that CD Projekt Red acting misleadingly ahead of
| Cyberpunk 2077's launch, and has not done enough to address the
| game's issues, the developer could face a 10 per cent fine of its
| annual income.
|
| I have no idea the merits of this investigation, but it is
| refreshing to see a potential punishment like this. Fines for bad
| behavior often end up as simple fees for rich people and
| businesses. If you want these financial penalties to serve as any
| type of deterrent, you need to make sure the perpetrators feel
| the financial repercussions.
| ponow wrote:
| Why government intervention is necessary is unclear. At best
| one has an implicit contract during a pre-order, which was
| violated due to its bugs. That anyone could seriously believe
| that any complex software will be "bug free" strikes me as
| risible. It seems to me that people are making a bet on a pre-
| order. No regulation is necessary in any event: this can be
| handled using class action law, and true egregious
| misrepresentations are kept in check in this way. These kinds
| of regulations are a jobs program for the officious personality
| and a way for politicians to seem relevant, but is mostly a
| form of or invitation to corruption, as the powerful influence
| the crafting of law to keep the small fry at bay.
|
| Buyer beware, IMO. Wait 'til it's out, reviewed, etc., and then
| you'll know.
| slg wrote:
| I'm not sure how in the weeds you are with this specific
| issue, but it isn't just that this game wasn't "bug free". It
| is unfinished in noticeable ways, it doesn't match some of
| the expectations set by CDPR, and the company took active
| steps to ensure customers wouldn't know how poorly the game
| performed on certain hardware. Once again, I don't know if
| that rises to a criminal level, but this is much more serious
| than someone not liking a game they preordered.
| amyjess wrote:
| You might want to look at what happened to Takata. Their
| defective airbags killed several people, and the end result was
| that they were forced to pay about 250% of their annual EBIT.
| It was so much that the company went under.
|
| More companies should be punished this way.
| alacombe wrote:
| It's just a freaking game, for heaven's sake...
|
| By the same standard, Peter Jackson deceived me and stole 9h
| of my life with the turd which is "The Hobbit".
| amyjess wrote:
| It's not about the game being bad, it's about CDPR lying to
| their shareholders.
| csours wrote:
| "Everything is Securities Fraud" - Matt Levine
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| UOKiK is not concerned about shareholders, they might
| possibly fine CDPR for false advertising or violating
| customer rights in some way.
| alacombe wrote:
| Don't make it about consumers then.
|
| Though, I'm fairly certain shareholders and Board members
| are the first to blame in this mess, by pushing/forcing
| the company to release an unfinished/unpolished game.
| baq wrote:
| I fully expect 2077 to be a fantastic game sometime around winter
| or spring 2022 which is when I'm planning to get it. I get the
| desire to play something new but I'm only now finishing Witcher 3
| and I really enjoy the polished experience.
| drummer wrote:
| I was thinking just that, people playing in 2022 will have an
| awesome experience when everything is fixed.
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