Cyberpunk 2077 Lawsuit Settled For An Insane Amount Of Money
Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt RED is paying $1.85 million in a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company had deliberately hid bugs from investors.
The class-action lawsuit against CD Projekt RED from its investors has reached a settlement, and the Cyberpunk 2077 developer has to pay out $1.85 million to plaintiffs, according to GameSpot. For those that aren’t in the know, CD Projekt RED investors have sued the company over Cyberpunk 2077’s rocky launch, which has caused the company’s stock price to plummet by approximately 65 percent in early 2021. The company has since fixed the game and recuperated its player base, but the disgruntled investors were still looking for someone to blame.
The class-action lawsuit was filed days following Cyberpunk 2077’s release, claiming that the bug-ridden state of the game’s PlayStation 4 and Xbox One releases were intentionally hidden from investors, causing them to incur losses. CD Projekt RED will cover all the eligible class members’ settlement administration costs, taxes, attorney fees, and costs, as well as other court expenditures. This means that CD Projekt RED has to pay reparations to any investor who has bought the company stock between January 16 and December 17, 2020.
The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan on behalf of company investors, who, at the time, alleged that the Cyberpunk 2077 developer knowingly released a virtually unplayable, bug riddled-game, which resulted in several stores delisting the game, and offering a refund to players—since CD Projekt RED didn’t have a refund policy in place, and never prepared for such an option. This allegedly damaged the reputation of the company and caused financial harm to investors (as stated at the beginning).
For example, Sony was among the first to remove Cyberpunk 2077 from PlayStation Store. Microsoft never resorted to such actions, but the tech giant that’s currently acquiring Activision Blizzard labeled the game as unstable, limiting its own liability. It took CD Projekt RED more than a year to fix the game through intensive patching and hotfixes. Despite Cyberpunk 2077 being a stable, playable game at this point, it will forever remain synonymous with disaster. The alternative was to remove the game themselves and re-develop it—something that apparently wasn’t an option.
Regardless, the settlement probably won’t impact CD Project RED’s operations, considering that the developer and publisher have a massive number of AAA titles in development at the moment, including the sequel for The Witcher and a paid expansion pack for now-playable Cyberpunk 2077. The latter has recuperated its player base, and it started turning a profit for the company, so it’s safe to assume that CD Project RED has the means to pay out the settlement.
The expansion pack for Cyberpunk 2077 is expected to drop sometime in 2023 as a paid DLC, while The Witcher 4 doesn’t have a release date, but the rumors suggest that the game should drop sometime in 2025. The last we heard about the franchise that lost Henry Cavill is that the upcoming game is likely going to run using the newest version of Unreal Engine, so we can expect unprecedented graphical fidelity and in-game physics. And though the details are still scarce, we’ll keep you updated on both games.
