It appears that the polish game developer CDPR might be in for some big trouble. Back in December 2020, Rosen Law Firm filed a class action lawsuit against CD Projekt. The lawsuit was aimed to recover damages for CD Projekt investors under the federal securities laws.
According to the lawsuit, defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements to investors. Right now CD Projekt seems to be under hot water, because a total of five separate U.S.-based law firms have already filed class-action lawsuits against the company for possibly misleading investors.
CD Projekt is currently being sued by five U.S. law firms, as outlined: RM Law, Schall Law, Rosen Law, Bragar Eagel & Squire, Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz. But this doesn’t stop here, because if all that didn’t cause enough damage to CD Projekt’s reputation, Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection has now opened a formal investigation into CD Projekt S.A. for Cyberpunk 2077’s performance.
This news comes via the Polish newspaper Dziennik.pl, and according to their report, the Urz?d Ochrony Konkurencji i Konsumentów, Poland’s consumer protection agency, is investigating CD Projekt Red.
The UOKiK has been watching how CD Projekt Red is fixing the broken versions of the game and addressing customer complaints. Cyberpunk 2077’s poor PS4 and Xbox One performance has caused massive controversy, and shares have also dropped by 33% since the game’s release.
The current technical state on PS4 and Xbox One ended up getting the game pulled from the PlayStation Store, with many major stores also offering refunds to disgruntled customers. CD Projekt has also been taken to court over allegedly misleading investors about the state of the game on last-gen consoles.
This current investigation and if the UOKiK finds CD Projekt Red liable, then they might even fine the company/developer up to 10% of its annual yearly income. That’s a lot of money; even with Cyberpunk 2077 selling as well as it did despite refunds. My guess is that, such refunds are one of the key aspect areas where the UOKiK agency may find some serious loophole or a fault.
The UOKiK branch’s PR spokesperson Ma?gorzata Cieloch told the newspaper, via translation:
“We are asking the company for explanation regarding problems with the game and actions taken by them. We will check how the developer is working on patches or solving issues preventing playing on various consoles, but also what steps [the company] is planning to take regarding people [who requested refunds] and are not happy with their purchase because they can’t play the game on owned hardware, despite assurances by the producer.”
Dominik J?drzejko, an attorney from law firm Kaszubiak J?drzejko Adwokaci, was also quoted by the paper. J?drzejko claimed that CD Projekt Red’s efforts to fix the game’s performance issues may not protect it from being accused of “unfair market practice.”
The developer recently denied a slate of rumoured development details, but there have been reports of internal conflict between developers and CDPR leadership. The game has, among all of this, remained commercially successful, selling over 13 million copies across all formats, even accounting for refunds.
As John has previously mentioned, in short, things are about to get ugly. CD Projekt has basically shot itself in the foot by preventing reviewers from covering the old-gen console versions. We can guarantee you that this is exactly why this whole thing is happening.
It’s all about the fact that CD Projekt has misled people. And no, this isn’t about the game’s actual performance. I mean, we’ve seen games running worse in PS3 and Xbox 360. Hell, GTA5 ran similar or worse than Cyberpunk 2077. So yeah, Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t unplayable on PS4 or Xbox One. Not only that, but Bethesda’s games had the same number of bugs as CP2077 has.
As the Steam player count of Cyberpunk 2077 continues to drop, it is clear the fallout of the game’s hype and release are not over yet. Unfortunately, Cyberpunk 2077 hasn’t been able to maintain its player base on Steam. And when comparing the new IP to CDPR’s previous biggest project, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the dev/publisher could be in even more trouble.
Within a short period of time, Cyberpunk 2077 has lost 79% of its initial concurrent player count. The Witcher 3 took three months to lose that share of its initial players. Cyberpunk 2077‘s player counts are sure to spike again as more bugs are squashed, hopefully.
We’ve already seen it happen numerous times in the past with Witcher games. But with the developer now having to focus on trying to fix the last-gen console versions, we’re probably going to have to wait even longer for new content and multiplayer to help revive the PC player base.
Cyberpunk 2077 is now available on the PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One, and is in development for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S as well. It will be interesting to see how CD Projekt will respond to this.
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Hello, my name is NICK Richardson. I’m an avid PC and tech fan since the good old days of RIVA TNT2, and 3DFX interactive “Voodoo” gaming cards. I love playing mostly First-person shooters, and I’m a die-hard fan of this FPS genre, since the good ‘old Doom and Wolfenstein days.
MUSIC has always been my passion/roots, but I started gaming “casually” when I was young on Nvidia’s GeForce3 series of cards. I’m by no means an avid or a hardcore gamer though, but I just love stuff related to the PC, Games, and technology in general. I’ve been involved with many indie Metal bands worldwide, and have helped them promote their albums in record labels. I’m a very broad-minded down to earth guy. MUSIC is my inner expression, and soul.
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