Cyberpunk 2077 [split from video games]

[Relic]

6 hours ago, Ran said:

CDPR has revealed in a financial report that the profit from the release of CP2077 more or less tripled the profit they made in the year The Witcher 3 was released, and that includes refunds being factored in,

The calls for them to abandon the property and move on seems even more premature, IMO.

The power of hype. 

[Ran]

Pawel Sasko, the lead quest designer, livestreamed today on Twitch, answering questions about his work while playing the start of the Nomad lifepath. He was primarily responsible for "The Pickup", apparently, along with one of his senior quest developers that was part of his team.

[Werthead]

CDPR have confirmed that only 30,000 out of 13 million copies were refunded.

I mean, that's a huge amount by any normal standards, but considering the vilification of the game, it seems much lower than what people expected.

[Fez]

5 minutes ago, Werthead said:

CDPR have confirmed that only 30,000 out of 13 million copies were refunded.

I mean, that's a huge amount by any normal standards, but considering the vilification of the game, it seems much lower than what people expected.

But from the article:

Quote

Players were also able to get refunds through Sony and Microsoft, which were not included in this tally.

I've no idea if that might be a minuscule number, or the vast majority.

[Werthead]

4 minutes ago, Fez said:

I've no idea if that might be a minuscule number, or the vast majority.

I think we can safely assume that the majority of refunds were on PS4 and maybe X-Box One, so yeah, that ends up not being quite as useful information as CDPR thought.

That's an indication then of how many of the ~5 million PC copies were refunded, which seems to be a pretty tiny number (0.6%). I couldn't find the average refund rate on Steam, but for indie games there seems to be an expectation that anything under 10% (!) is good. For an AAA game people seem to be saying anything over 0.3% is bad but others that 1% is when it starts becoming a concern.

I wonder if some wag will find a way of going through Reddit, Twitter and video game forums and find if the number of people saying they refunded the game on Steam is actually much greater than 30,000.

[Kalbear]

48 minutes ago, Werthead said:

CDPR have confirmed that only 30,000 out of 13 million copies were refunded.

I mean, that's a huge amount by any normal standards, but considering the vilification of the game, it seems much lower than what people expected.

Hah, no. Not remotely true. That might have been how many were refunded directly to CDPR, but it's not close to the number that was refunded elsewhere. 

(looks at the number)

BOY is that not true

If I had to guess, I'd say it doesn't count any refunded from Sony or MS stores directly, any refunds from best buy/amazon/gamestop directly, any refunds from steam (which is still likely the biggest refund source), and any other subretailers. 

[Ran]

Yeah, that was purely direct refunds through CDPR itself that they offered to people who could not get the refunds from other sources.

 

[Luzifer's right hand]

Was a refund on steam possible? They had the silly 2 hour rule the last time I tried to refund something.

[Ran]

6 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Was a refund on steam possible? They had the silly 2 hour rule the last time I tried to refund something.

Yes. I don't know if Steam changed its rules for CP2077 at CDPR's request, but as I understand it CDPR said that if Steam wouldn't accept the refund request they would honor it instead. And people on Reddit said that they were able to appeal when Steam turned them down because of that rule, and got their refunds. One guy had 7 hours of play when he decided to request it and ultimately got it.

I

[Kalbear]

Some people on Xbox had a lot more than that. 

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Karlbear said:

Some people on Xbox had a lot more than that. 

Yeah, I recall seeing people bragging of having a hundred hours and getting a refund. One guy was pissed off that they actually removed the game from his collection, he seemed to think they'd just give him the money back and let him keep it. (IIRC, CDPR actually didn't bother to ask people to return physical media if they asked for refunds, saying they'd figure that out at a later date.)

[sifth]

I got my refund from Amazon. You have 30 days to get a refund from any game you purchase.

[Werthead]

I'm still trying to parse this one.

[Slurktan]

On 5/3/2021 at 11:56 AM, Werthead said:

I'm still trying to parse this one.

Worded quite... poorly and using an & instead of "and" in that context just throws me off.  I guess general point is that Dr. Seuss can get cancelled but hyperviolent stuff does not?  Why he singled out Cyberpunk for that I have no idea other than it being a big selling game. 

[Ran]

Heh. (I was one of those who definitely prioritized paying back Vik. Was rather surprised to learn that there were a not-insubstantial bunch who shrugged their shoulders and didn't bother.)

The Witcher 3: Game of the Year Edition at 10 euros on Steam, the lowest price it's ever had. Picked it up  and will be playing it on GeForce Now later this summer, I expect.

[Ran]

A very interesting thread on Reddit in which someone noted some things that made them wonder about the Panam/Aldecaldos storyline seemingly being a bit unbalanced in terms of how present Johnny makes himself in it, and after digging into game files found a likely reason: Saul, leader of the Aldecaldos, was initially going to be Santiago Aldecaldo, the mercenary who had teamed up with Rogue and ended up taking part in the raid on Arasaka Tower. 

The person's speculations do make me think that this would have been a more interesting way to take that story, and could have made the Star ending feel much tighter and more impactful. Why they went away from this is unclear, of course -- they speculate that it may have been something they iterated until they met with Mike Pondsmith and he insisted Santiago had to be out of the picture by 2077, but I'm not so sure about that one. OTOH, their speculation that the existence of Trace (Santiago's son) proves Santiago was still around by 2077 seems rather off.

 

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Ranivaka said:

A very interesting thread on Reddit in which someone noted some things that made them wonder about the Panam/Aldecaldos storyline seemingly being a bit unbalanced in terms of how present Johnny makes himself in it, and after digging into game files found a likely reason: Saul, leader of the Aldecaldos, was initially going to be Santiago Aldecaldo, the mercenary who had teamed up with Rogue and ended up taking part in the raid on Arasaka Tower. 

The person's speculations do make me think that this would have been a more interesting way to take that story, and could have made the Star ending feeling much tighter and more impactful. Why they went away from this is unclear, of course -- they speculate that it may have been something they iterated until they met with Mike Pondsmith and he insisted Santiago had to be out of the picture by 2077, but I'm not so sure about that one. OTOH, their speculation that the existence of Trace (Santiago's son) proves Santiago was still around by 2077 seems rather off.

Pondsmith was in meetings with CDPR about the story and ideas as early as 2012, so the idea they'd go some way into developing that storyline without telling Pondsmith about it and then nixing it on his say-so seems unlikely.

[Ran]

Agreed, it doesn't make much sense. I think only CDPR can answer as to what happened with Santiago becoming Saul. As someone speculated in the comments to the thread, it  could just be that they all decided that it wasn't working to shoe-horn in Santiago as a present-day player, that it detracted from rather than enhanced the present-day story, and so they changed it up but had to cut dialog around it.

 

[Werthead]

On 6/12/2021 at 8:33 AM, Ranivaka said:

Agreed, it doesn't make much sense. I think only CDPR can answer as to what happened with Santiago becoming Saul. As someone speculated in the comments to the thread, it  could just be that they all decided that it wasn't working to shoe-horn in Santiago as a present-day player, that it detracted from rather than enhanced the present-day story, and so they changed it up but had to cut dialog around it.

 

Yeah, later in the thread someone points to a quote from a CDPR dev that they had concerns about to what degree the video game was leaning on the existing lore: millions of people had read the Witcher novels so that wasn't a concern there, but only thousands to tens of thousands of people at best had read a lot of the Cyberpunk tabletop game materials and they felt at a certain point that leaning on the 2023 characters and events so heavily was a mistake, so pulled out a number of the iconic characters (I could well believe Adam Smasher had more stuff planned, as the end-of-game bad guy, but they ripped it out, because he's curiously absent from most of the game) and changed the story to focus really only on a few 2023 elements, like Johnny, Kerry and Rogue. I think that's also why Morgan Blackhand didn't show up, despite some hints he might.

[Werthead]

CP77 is returning to the PS5 store, at least.