2020, this extremely turbulent year, is running to its end. For the gaming industry, this month was supposed to be productive: Around the beginning of November, Ubisoft launched Watch Dogs: Legion, an action-adventure game sets within dystopian London, a fictionalized representation of a near-future city. On Nov. 10, Ubisoft will release a new game of the well-known Assassin’s Creed series, a successor to the 2018 game. Nevertheless, gamers worldwide have been waiting for the release of Cyberpunk 2077: It bears so many expectations and has created so much hype for a long time. Unfortunately, Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed, and this is not the first time. Originally scheduled to be released in April, the game was delayed to Nov. 19, and now the game is tentatively set for lunch on Dec. 10. Gamers who have already been waiting a long time for this highly anticipated game obviously, and should be, reacting furiously to the news that they will have to wait another four weeks.
Let’s recap the story back to where the legend begins: Its developer, CD Projekt Red, has long announced the making of Cyberpunk 2077 in 2013 by releasing a trailer. There has been barely any words on it since then. Afterwards, the company’s other award-winning and critically adored Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt was released beforehand in 2015, bringing an incredibly positive reputation to the developer. Finally, in 2018, CD Projekt Red “hacked” the Microsoft E3 conference and released a new trailer for Cyberpunk 2077, which consisted of a storyline and major game features. Since the Witcher series, particularly theWitcher 3, was so well-received as it was titled the “Game of the Year (2015)”, CD Projekt Red has earned an outstanding reputation. In this manner, gamers put high expectations on the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, anticipating a good main story and side quests.
However, consecutive delays happening this year, postponing the release from April to December, have caused trust issues among the gaming community and the company’s severe public relations crisis. On Reddit, people are divided, with many people being very unhappy about the latest delay, complaining about the fact that they have been created by CD Projekt Red again and again. Among Chinese gaming forums, agitated gamers are becoming irrational, claiming that they will refund their pre-orders because of the developer’s wrongdoings. Things are becoming even worse for developers. On Oct. 27, 2020, senior game designer Andrzej Zawadzki responds to the delay announcement by calling on fans to exercise some basic human decency by not continuing to send the Polish studio death threats, “… I understand you’re feeling angry, disappointed, and want to voice your opinion about it. However, sending death threats to the developers is absolutely unacceptable and just wrong. We are people, just like you.”
In retrospect, CD Projekt Red is not doing the marketing communications right. First, it seems that they lost control of the project by not being able to stick to their promise: When the release date is approaching, they can always find excuses to postpone it. Second, the developer’s announcement is not sincere enough. Breaking one’s word is a severe trust issue, but CD Projekt Red is trying to pass the buck. At this moment, a relatively large number of gamers choose to forgive the kind of behavior CD Projekt Red has done because they tend to believe the developer will spend the extra time polishing the game. But in fact, most gamers are losing patience. All in all, the outcome of this controversy remains uncertain. The whole PR crisis event will need to be re-evaluated by adding the game’s quality and gamers reactions.