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[GermanZepp]

For the amount of people defending cdpr I can tell developers and companies will continue to ship broken games.

Look , cdpr got like 8 million preorders. The math is done and they know that if even they go full refunds they still win money. So the bullshit is for them to ship a broken game in last gen, for Sony (and Microsoft) to allow to sell a broken game.

As many said here, lots of 'broken' or unfinished games were sold in psn. But the amount of full refunds is obviously unprecedented.
As far as I know in a normal situation Sony has a one time (1) goodwill refund policy for digital games. So this was a kick in the nuts for them.

Time to update digital games policy.
And improve quality control. If cyberpunk was early access in ps4 and xbox the situation could be different.

 

[Herr Edgy]

What you said doesn't even make sense. Why would someone buy a game they don't want?

You aren't being reasonable. In life there is a certain level of standards people expect out of companies and products. And for a game like 2077, and MS/Sony with their "we certify games so they work" protocols, you'd think 2077 at least doesn't bomb and crash every hour or run at 15 fps.

What you're thinking is that every product purchase in life should be a total free for all, there's no standards and every customer should research every game, bag of chips or roll of toilet paper because there are no minimum quality standards, where everything sold can be the equivalent of dog shit.

That's not what good economies, companies, stores and society should resort to...... cloak and dagger products quality.

And as people have stated (including me), it's even worse with games because Sony and MS supposedly QA test games. And if their QA testing is green lighting last gen games that barely work , that's got to be the shittiest QA certification department ever. And that assumes they even tested it.

As for your mention about Gold testing and assuming the final game will be better, that's a terrible process and assumption Sony and MS makes. How can any company in charge of approvals and certification just wing it and assume a final product a month from now will be better without testing it themselves?

You don't want CP 2077 at 15 fps. Yet you bought that. Because you are assuming it's not going to be 15 fps. It's a reasonable assumption, but you are blaming the platform holders without knowing jackshit about what the certification process is. You are just assuming you do so it fits your world perspective. It's not on any platform holder to ensure quality, you'd just like it that way.

I'm all for quality control, I'm just using your thought process of blaming the guys that got dragged into this. But instead of blaming yourself, you blame Sony, because that's easier than waiting five hours to see what exactly it is you are going to buy. Imagine Sony needing to pay out of their own pockets because CDPR lied on multiple occasions, and consumers couldn't wait to see what they are buying.

And, once again, you are operating under the assumption of you understanding the process, when you don't. It's the norm to have big day 1 patches nowadays for AAA. Explain to me how certification is supposed to go when there's massive amounts of logistics at play, and the developer needs to supply a large day 1 patch.
Explain to me how Sony, Microsoft, anyone for that matter, can travel to the future to test the game in release state, when the patch they receive is extremely recent.

It's completely normal to work towards release, print discs, ship them out, go for the release marketing push before the game is released. Do you think they can just pause all of that to wait for this one update that is submitted a week before release to pass a quality assurance test that doesn't even test what you think it tests?

If you can't understand the points I outlined, you should maybe just refrain from talking about things you don't understand. I get being upset about a disappointing game you were looking forward to, but instead of looking for the external guys to blame here, go look more inwards and at the guys pushing for a release in this state.

EDIT:

I understand what you're getting at - but the final call to 'pull the lever' so to speak rests solely on MS and Sony's store policies. Costco can knowingly sell me camel piss laced Coke all they want - that they knew it was spoiled when they took my money is a big fucking problem.

The platform holders of the games industry have not operated under the premise that they are responsible for devs releasing games that consumers consider unplayable, when it is technically playable - just bug-ridden and badly performing. Nor have they operated under the premise that consumers buying things they don't want is something that is worth a refund. Of course Sony could have avoided this if they predicted that the day 1 patch would in fact not fix all those problems. But they are the victims here just as much as the consumers are, because ultimately they don't work on the game and don't make the promise that the game is going to be fine.

 

[Explosive Zombie]

Maybe he just appreciated some people going to bat for his game? I feel like getting upset about likes on Twitter is kinda cringe, honestly, especially when they're doing right by the customers by offering refunds and delisting it.

It's unfair to tell people they should have expected this because of the delays and because of pre-order culture and maybe because every other CDPR game launched buggy and got better over time... because this is still unprecedented to be this level of jank, and we know it. To make a little joke that I can't even tell if it's a joke any more... if there's a reason people should have expected this... it's because the year is 2020, lol. Like even the good things this year have such massive caveats to them.

Also, this does shine a light on SONY's refund policies as much as it does CDPR's problems. Digital or not people need a recourse for broken products. Are some people going to take advantage? Sure, some people are going to eat the whole pizza before asking for a full refund and under normal circumstances we shouldn't allow that because as much as we care about the consumer if we allow the consumer to get away with anything we ruin the industry.

I think this should also bring us into the idea of false advertising... why are video games uniquely allowed to advertise themselves falsely? Think about how many people bought The Last of Us II digitally based on the adverts which sometimes openly lied to them. I'm at a crossroads on this one because personally I like big surprises, I like having the big stuff hidden from me, but to what extent should it be hidden? To the extent you digitally replace one character with another in ads? It's a tough one for me, I feel like anyone who feels scammed by that should also have some sort of recourse while those of us glad the experience wasn't spoiled via advertising can simply enjoy that fact. Cyberpunk is similar, though many elements they hyped and removed they told us they had removed, giving the customer time to adjust there are a lot of problems you had no idea would be present.

While it's unprecedented for a company to advertise how buggy a game is (besides straight up doing early access) there are options they could take that they didn't. Tell us that every NPC having a routine had to be temporarily dropped due to stress on old systems or something. Tell us the police AI won't be ready for launch and if you want to play this like GTA you're gonna have a bad time... imagine if they told us those things? People would be upset, but you'd also have lots of "well, I'm buying it for the RPG stuff, not to goof around in the open world so I'm fine" you'd get way more acceptance I feel if they were straight up... I mean... are people still upset about all the features they've cut? Not really, it's not the discussion right now even if the list is rather long, I once posted a list created by 4chan users of things cut from the game over time, this was prior to release.

I also don't believe they could just keep delaying, maybe this was the wrong time to release but it doesn't mean they would have released with the game in a perfect state, sometimes things just eventually have to come out or become vaporware. I think of how the last A Song of Ice and Fire came out in 2011, I've kinda given up hoping for book 6 to release at this point, stopped caring, it doesn't help how the show ended and that since I am to understand he told them how the book series ends that his ending won't be much different, though I'm sure it'll have more build up and justification. This might seem like a random analogy but honestly there's a level of tolerance for delays gamers have and you can go beyond it. This isn't to say gamers are at fault, though, while sure... what the consumer accepts to an extent governs the industry, practices we refuse to engage in aren't practices that will last but there's something to be said for the way hype dies for games that keep receiving delays, so few people even care at this point a new Metroid Prime is being made (I'm one of the few it feels like, I don't even care the Switch exists until that shit does, too) and at one point do you delay so far the industry has eclipsed what you're doing? Becoming say a Duke Nukem Forever, hah. I think we all could have handled another delay to spring for Cyberpunk, but maybe I'm being too generous to gamers? I saw some of the upset on Twitter over a 1 month delay, I saw an angry, vindictive person leak TLOU II story beats when it had an indefinite delay due to COVID-19 forcing the release, for some reason we can't just enjoy our backlogs we are furious over delays on a pretty consistent basis. You can say it's eventually remedied by a game released but that's sort of true of buggy games these days, too, right? Certainly not all, especially if its games people want nothing to do with but some of the funniest Cyberpunk glitch compilations are full of things you now can't replicate.

I want to get into something else. There are certain problems with the game I'm capable of replicating on my PC that console gamers have but other PC guys don't really complain about. I think a real lot of console issues are because of mechanical harddrives, which I'm foolishly using to play on PC. The worst issues for me happen when I drive a car too fast through the city and go to different parts of it in one long ride. I find I need to stop and wait for the game to catch up to what I did, there's no question to me a lot of this is streaming issues and while the game is built around SSDs (it even has a slow hard drive option on PC because of how SSD reliant it is) it still released on PS4s and XB1s which is... such a weird decision. The Next-Gen patch isn't ready yet on a game that doesn't work properly without an SSD? How does this make sense? What were they thinking? Were they assuming console gamers knew their place and couldn't expect to run the game as well as PC gamers? Because it's one thing to have better visuals/framerates on PC but it's another for the game to be like this for console gamers, to have all footage shown be for PC so you have no idea the population density is unattainble on your HDD, you have no idea you gotta take driving slow because the game is trying to load the damn world for you.

The part of me that has fun being a console warrior wants to say this is a great day for those of us worried about games being held back, look at that, they did what they wanted and ancient hardware didn't even factor into it for them, you get what you get. But the shitstorm it caused, the refunds, the delisting means, to me, this is the first and last game of this new generation that will forsake old for new, held back isn't a meme, I know because if they had made this game to run on the lowest spec like other devs there'd be less NPCs or the city would have load screens between sections, maybe they'd even decide not to do open world and make a sort of hub world. When games come out that are less than they could have been due to ancient hardware it might not always be easy to put your finger on it and say what could have been, cross-gen games like the new Horizon and God of War might look and play amazing and figuring out what could have been without them being also on a PS4 might be hard to pinpoint... but unless it's unplayable garbage on PS4 you're going to know SOMETHING was compromised. Not to bang on SONY, because Halo Infinite will be the same... in fact the original gameplay demo everyone hated was a perfect example of what next-gen gaming is like when it's held back, we'll see what happens when it actually releases, though.

So much of Cyberpunk on PC is drop dead gorgeous, the story NPCs are some of the best ever and it does really well with mechanics it didn't need to do well with to be liked... shooting, stealth and though I see a lot of complaints even the driving is fine to me, someone else compared it to GTA IV, there's a feel of weight to the cars and I agree, I always thought GTA IV was the first GTA to get driving right. There are some aspects that are a little less praise-worthy, both the inventory system and upgrade system feel sort of cumbersome. I can attest to the rewards of speccing into a specific tree because it really can pay off but the way it's structured it looks like you aren't doing much and you truly aren't until you get deep within a tree and it becomes noticeable more through the combined effect of multiple perks than because of certain individual ones. Inventory has some problems as well, they put no weight on many objects that clutter it so you don't mind the clutter as much and there's a lot of clutter, but because of it the guns have ridiculous weights attached and you'll find yourself far too often sitting around deleting guns or driving to a spot to sell them. So much of my game time is creating space in the inventory, you might say "just don't pick all that stuff up" but not only am I OCD but the game puts little x's on your map for the stuff you haven't picked up, plus some of the best stuff in the game costs serious money. I can appreciate an in-game economy that seems to work (no, I have not viewed the videos of people breaking it, I'm preserving my experience), where I really need to do a lot of stuff to afford the thing I want. So many games have the problem of useless economies but I think Cyberpunk escapes that issue.

The biggest problem for many, though is going to be the choices. Because you play a fully voiced protagonist there are only so many dialogue options and they often lead you to the same dialogue from the other NPCs. There are a few missions that truly feel full of choices, one of them is from the 2018 demo but most missions feel more cinematic action movie type stuff with little ability to change the outcome, it's more about how the NPCs view you it feels but I'm not sure how much it'll matter in the end. I've heard there's at least 5 different endings and I've heard they're actually pretty different, I haven't beaten the game yet (I've started over from the beginning to try a different life path and play differently, so despite 50-60 hours gametime I'm still on Act II) so I can't say for sure but I think a lot of us expected more choice within the structure of the game and less of a "your choices will open up endings but the missions along the way are the same" to be fair, the game feels most like a Deus Ex and that's the way those games functioned, to the point where the first few let you choose any ending AT THE END regardless of past choices. But the way it was advertised (the way they showed off the Maelstrom mission) I thought it'd be closer to Fallout: New Vegas, I think the issue becomes how much is put into voicing and animating these NPCs for the story, who are incredible, lifelike and believable to the point where you're not sure you can blame them for a lack of divergent options. As much as Fallout: New Vegas impressed me with its many ways to solve a quest it's sort of the opposite where the cumulative effect of the things you do doesn't do much about the endgame, it changes the still images with voice over at the very end but the way the endgame is handled is mostly the same with only 2 real big different endings. Had Cyberpunk settled for the route many RPGs go and you just get blocks of text at the end or voiceover telling you what occurred it could have had more endings than it does but how satisfying have those ever been in any RPG? Someone listed games they felt were better for choice than this to me recently and they included Tyranny... I own that one and enjoyed it, but it's a similar story, there isn't much you miss by doing one path or another, the most that happens is different blocks of text at the end. Alpha Protocol was one of my favorite choice games but all the levels are the same no matter what, the climax is always the same level with slight divergences but it was still crazy for the amount of choices you could make. Many mission choices in CP2077 just mean more or less money/rewards, it's true but I never felt like I was promised a revolution in how choices work in the industry, even Witcher III is a game where most people are most impressed by the Bloody Baron quest but there isn't much to say about the rest is there?

For me, the game is an ambitious step forward with enough problems to also feel like a step backwards. The true tale of the game hopefully won't be told for months, fingers crossed for massive fixes, massive and amazing DLCs and a legacy that somehow eclipses this fiasco. If it can't do that... it's still a fun game for me, the most fun I've had in 2020. The big positives for me are what this does to the industry, I feel like all eyes are on this mess and how CDPR react, if they can win back the gamers, etc. They put out a game that will change the industry, just not necessarily for the reasons they wanted it to.

 

[Stitch]

So how many Cyberpunk Threads do you want?

NeoGAF: Yes

 

[NathanDiego]

Trying to blame someone else for their fiasco and stupid brainwashed fans is buying this shit.

 

[The Shift]

The platform holders of the games industry have not operated under the premise that they are responsible for devs releasing games that consumers consider unplayable, when it is technically playable - just bug-ridden and badly performing. Nor have they operated under the premise that consumers buying things they don't want is something that is worth a refund. Of course Sony could have avoided this if they predicted that the day 1 patch would in fact not fix all those problems. But they are the victims here just as much as the consumers are, because ultimately they don't work on the game and don't make the promise that the game is going to be fine.

That's fine. This title is the this (last?) generations premiere third party release. The biggest saturation of purchasers are on PSN and XBL. The second largest financial beneficiaries from the sale of this title are Microsoft and Sony. They could have delayed it until March 2021(or any reasonable date when the game was in a presentable state). But I think they looked at their margins, especially considering the massive pre-orders, and shipped the game knowing it was in the state it is and made bank. I'm just not going to accept they were relying on a day one patch after they play tested it internally - something that very rarely pans out until much further along after release.

Agree to disagree

 

[metareferential]

And what a fucked up anti-consumer store policy is that. Fuck Sony and their policies.

This.

People will never learn that these companies are just trying to rip us all off.

 

[Astral Dog]

Sony Ponies shifting blame on the developer for their shit store policies? Hilarious.

tbf this will only make CDPR look more embarrassing for shipping such a broken product, now the patches will arrive sooner

 

[GeorgPrime]

People also get angry at Microsoft and Sony due to removing Cyberpunk 20777 from their consoles AFTER they got a REFUND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everywhere, Idiots, everywhere.

 

[Herr Edgy]

That's fine. This title is the this (last?) generations premiere third party release. The biggest saturation of purchasers are on PSN and XBL. The second largest financial beneficiaries from the sale of this title are Microsoft and Sony. They could have delayed it until March 2021(or any reasonable date when the game was in a presentable state). But I think they looked at their margins, especially considering the massive pre-orders, and shipped the game knowing it was in the state it is and made bank. I'm just not going to accept they were relying on a day one patch after they play tested it internally - something that very rarely pans out until much further along after release.

Agree to disagree

No platform holder is going to deny a big developer's extremely hyped game - and possibly leave it to the competition. Of course they are going to take the risk and trust the statements of management of high profile multi billion dollar company instead of thinking that some people might not like it so therefore they are going to ditch the game completely and have the competitor get all the marketshare and profits.

Like, what are they supposed to do? It's completely unreasonable to stop a game from shipping, especially when they are thinking that some people will ask for a refund but not the developer themselves telling everyone publically to go seek a refund, putting all the burden on the platform holder. It's all completely unprecedented. The promise between devs/publishers and platform holders to deliver on the hype of an AAA game to at least a minimal level was broken, something that hasn't happened before.

CDPR could have delayed it, not Sony or Microsoft, because that's completely unrealistic, even under more moral standards for companies. It just wouldn't make any sense, even when wanting to protect customers from making bad decisions.

 

[GeorgPrime]

This guy needs to step down as CEO.

What they did destroyed the company.

6 months of more polish to deliver a quality product on all platforms and all of this could have been avoided.

These companies need to stop promising delivery dates and just release when it's ready.

Announcement Trailers with "Release: When its done"

 

[Astral Dog]

This guy needs to step down as CEO.

What they did destroyed the company.

6 months of more polish to deliver a quality product on all platforms and all of this could have been avoided.

These companies need to stop promising delivery dates and just release when it's ready.

I don't believe its a matter of more dev time, they admitted they just didn't give a shit about the PS4/ONE versions, all attention was on the next gen patch and PC (that version is mostly fine and getting good reviews) their mustake was not releasing the next gen patch on launch day, they should have delayed the console port to avoid such embarrassment

 

[Edgelord79]

You don't want CP 2077 at 15 fps. Yet you bought that. Because you are assuming it's not going to be 15 fps. It's a reasonable assumption, but you are blaming the platform holders without knowing jackshit about what the certification process is. You are just assuming you do so it fits your world perspective. It's not on any platform holder to ensure quality, you'd just like it that way.

I'm all for quality control, I'm just using your thought process of blaming the guys that got dragged into this. But instead of blaming yourself, you blame Sony, because that's easier than waiting five hours to see what exactly it is you are going to buy. Imagine Sony needing to pay out of their own pockets because CDPR lied on multiple occasions, and consumers couldn't wait to see what they are buying.

And, once again, you are operating under the assumption of you understanding the process, when you don't. It's the norm to have big day 1 patches nowadays for AAA. Explain to me how certification is supposed to go when there's massive amounts of logistics at play, and the developer needs to supply a large day 1 patch.
Explain to me how Sony, Microsoft, anyone for that matter, can travel to the future to test the game in release state, when the patch they receive is extremely recent.

It's completely normal to work towards release, print discs, ship them out, go for the release marketing push before the game is released. Do you think they can just pause all of that to wait for this one update that is submitted a week before release to pass a quality assurance test that doesn't even test what you think it tests?

If you can't understand the points I outlined, you should maybe just refrain from talking about things you don't understand. I get being upset about a disappointing game you were looking forward to, but instead of looking for the external guys to blame here, go look more inwards and at the guys pushing for a release in this state.

EDIT:

The platform holders of the games industry have not operated under the premise that they are responsible for devs releasing games that consumers consider unplayable, when it is technically playable - just bug-ridden and badly performing. Nor have they operated under the premise that consumers buying things they don't want is something that is worth a refund. Of course Sony could have avoided this if they predicted that the day 1 patch would in fact not fix all those problems. But they are the victims here just as much as the consumers are, because ultimately they don't work on the game and don't make the promise that the game is going to be fine.

Good post. You raise some good points. Not sure I would go as far as calling Sony a victim here as they most likely had an inkling at how this would play out with the last gen consoles.

Hopefully Sony and Microsoft look at the certification process from their end and make some fine adjustments based on this experience. Maybe the game has to meet a certain level of polish before the Day One patch can be applied. Not sure what it would entail though as I'm unaware of how the process actually works.

 

[Kumomeme]

i wonder how much their stock affected by this. surely investor not gonna happy

biggest console manufacturer remove the game. this is not good. also surely gonna affect other publisher or other digital gaming library brand out there. even ms store has warning about the issue.


people really loves cdpr eh? always try hard to cover their asses. imagine if this is another company lmao.

 

[FunkMiller]

People siding with CDPR and blaming Sony in this thread is just bizarre to me. Is it Stockholm Syndrome or something? Or is it just sarcasm?

CDPR has no business pulling a whataboutism after the insane, insane way they deliberately kept base PS4/Xbox versions hidden until it was literally too late. And then they forced Sony's hand by saying consumers should go to Sony for a refund. Which is not how the Playstation Store operates, so either Sony has to completely change their policies on the fly just to accomodate the insane statement from CDPR, or eject 2077 from the store to be able to actually refund.

There is literally no situation where CDPR did not bring this on themselves at this point.

Console warring, pure and simple. Some have decided that a broken ass game on all consoles is a banner to rally around for their cause.

 

[Herr Edgy]

Good post. You raise some good points. Not sure I would go as far as calling Sony a victim here as they most likely had an inkling at how this would play out with the last gen consoles.

Hopefully Sony and Microsoft look at the certification process from their end and make some fine adjustments based on this experience. Maybe the game has to meet a certain level of polish before the Day One patch can be applied. Not sure what it would entail though as I'm unaware of how the process actually works.

I don't think they are victims in the sense that they couldn't have thought that the game would have bad performance on release; I'm sure they anticipated it or at least thought it could happen. But they definitely became victims of the situation when CDPR publically told everyone to go for refunds without having spoken to Sony first. It was a very uncoordinated move from CDPR that shifted responsibility to Sony. "Well, sorry you didn't like what you bought, but you can always get your money back, just go ask Sony!" - which shifts attention from "bad game, bad CDPR" to "bad game, bad Sony", effectively hurting the brand. Sony's move to accept all refunds and delist CP was because they were forced by the now entitled feeling customers "the devs said I can refund, why won't you let me?!" x100000, and let CDPR know what they did was not okay. It's a power play to retain their reputation and to show CDPR that they can't just be used.

I am pretty sure that this will have positive consequences for the industry. Not necessarily in the form of certification changing a lot, but instead it sensitivizes people in general, from investors to consumers.

 

[ArtHands]

The whole “people will just play the game for a week then refund it to get a free game essentially” smells like the fearmongering people passed when Valve first introduced the refund system to Steam. If the various digital stores on PC does it just fine, no excuse why Sony couldn’t.

 

[kyoji]

Are you really going to defend Sony for not letting people return a broken game WHEN TOLD BY A DEVELOPER? Your head is warped.

Someone enlighten me, How do you "return" a digitally downloaded game?

 

[Explosive Zombie]

The whole “people will just play the game for a week then refund it to get a free game essentially” smells like the fearmongering people passed when Valve first introduced the refund system to Steam. If the various digital stores on PC does it just fine, no excuse why Sony couldn’t.

But you can't refund on Steam if you play more than 2 hours.

 

[Edgelord79]

It was a very uncoordinated move from CDPR that shifted responsibility to Sony.

I thought this was shockingly absent-minded as well and was completely reactionary especially for a larger company. There are also legal ramifications to offering something in which you may not have control over. Sony pulling the game from their store wasn't just about protecting consumers, but themselves also. I'm sure lawyers were involved. You can't bite the hand that helps feed you and expect no repercussions. I firmly believe also that Sony is livid at having to set sort of a refund precedence with this, although in all fairness Sony's refund systems could be improved.

Edit. I would revise the above portion to submit that its more about protecting themselves and much less about their customers. I could see a lawsuit down the road and pulling CB2007 is something they were told to do by their lawyers.

 

[Edgelord79]

Someone enlighten me, How do you "return" a digitally downloaded game?

The license that was given to use that product is revoked from your account. The game was never yours to own in the first place.

 

[kyoji]

And maybe sony should have more robust and consumer friendly refund policies.


There's room for improvement across the whole board.

I buy 95% of my titles on disc so im out of the loop. Do people really expect refund for a downloaded game thats broken? what happens when/if the game is fixed does the consumer still have access to play the game even if they were refunded? or is the game disabled somehow.

 

[kyoji]

The license that was given to use that product is revoked from your account. The game was never yours to own in the first place.

ok i see thankyou

 

[B-universe]

Maybe he just appreciated some people going to bat for his game? I feel like getting upset about likes on Twitter is kinda cringe, honestly, especially when they're doing right by the customers by offering refunds and delisting it.

Maybe he did. The problem, though, is one can't be sure and so he, as member of the board and game director, should stop doing things that can easily be misinterpreted and/or misconstrued.

I'd say he doesn't need any of that at this point.

It's unfair to tell people they should have expected this because of the delays and because of pre-order culture and maybe because every other CDPR game launched buggy and got better over time... because this is still unprecedented to be this level of jank, and we know it.

Yes, that seems to be the consensus.

To make a little joke that I can't even tell if it's a joke any more... if there's a reason people should have expected this... it's because the year is 2020, lol. Like even the good things this year have such massive caveats to them.

Also, this does shine a light on SONY's refund policies as much as it does CDPR's problems. Digital or not people need a recourse for broken products. Are some people going to take advantage? Sure, some people are going to eat the whole pizza before asking for a full refund and under normal circumstances we shouldn't allow that because as much as we care about the consumer if we allow the consumer to get away with anything we ruin the industry.

So-deemed abnormal circumstances do not suspend moral judgement. You can't assert the situation is abnormal because of the moral conundrum it presents and then suspend morality on the back of that.

I called out the member who played the game for 70 hours, finished it, asked for a refund , came bragging in about it and got the support of one or two members. And I shall keep repeating that to his face and the faces of like-minded people.

In their inane myopia, these people don't realize they're indulging in the kind of behaviour they're criticising the company for, and they're also helping to create a potential disaster down the line. What's going to happen if refunds-after-completion become the norm? Do you think the price tag is going to stay the same?

I think this should also bring us into the idea of false advertising... why are video games uniquely allowed to advertise themselves falsely? Think about how many people bought The Last of Us II digitally based on the adverts which sometimes openly lied to them. I'm at a crossroads on this one because personally I like big surprises, I like having the big stuff hidden from me, but to what extent should it be hidden? To the extent you digitally replace one character with another in ads? It's a tough one for me, I feel like anyone who feels scammed by that should also have some sort of recourse while those of us glad the experience wasn't spoiled via advertising can simply enjoy that fact.

Crosspost:

- About pre-order Bonus:

" CD Projekt Red reveals that there won't be any pre-order bonuses for Cyberpunk 2077 " (source)
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- About pre-order bonus on PS4

"No we don't do that," "Every person that buys the game gets exactly the same in-game content, no matter if they buy in pre-orders, on release date or two years later." (source)

Cyberpunk 2077 official Twitter account
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- About pre-ordering 2077

"Therefore, if you like what you see, we will appreciate you "voting yes" for CP2077 with a pre-order. If you are still hesitating though, we would rather you wait for more materials or reviews. " (source)

CD Projekt RED , 2019
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- About Expansion pass for TW3

“While we’re offering the Expansion Pass now, we want to make one thing clear: don’t buy it if you have any doubts,” “Wait for reviews or play The Witcher and see if you like it first. As always, it’s your call.” (source)

CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcin Iwinski
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-About pre-ordering Cyberpunk 2077

"please wait for reviews, check whoever you trust after it launches and get their input. Not every game is for everyone, we don't have the power to change that, haha. No one is forcing you to buy the game day one and no one at CDPR wants you to be disappointed with a game you might not enjoy. "(source)

Miles Tost, level designer at CD Projekt RED

Cyberpunk is similar, though many elements they hyped and removed they told us they had removed, giving the customer time to adjust there are a lot of problems you had no idea would be present.

They made several big mistakes. But definitive claims about Intent to deceive need specific evidence. For example, the podcast Triple S League, which apparently has some vague ties with CDPR employees, has a different explanation for the "it runs surprisingly well " comment. According to them, it was truthful at the time it was made, but when the final build was compiled together everything went awry.

Evidently, I have no idea whether that's true or not and I am certainly not vouching for that explanation. But it underlines the case that several possible explanations fit the fact and one needs to present specific evidence in support for one of them. One's instincts and indignation do not qualify as evidence, no matter how strongly one feels.

While it's unprecedented for a company to advertise how buggy a game is (besides straight up doing early access) there are options they could take that they didn't. Tell us that every NPC having a routine had to be temporarily dropped due to stress on old systems or something. Tell us the police AI won't be ready for launch and if you want to play this like GTA you're gonna have a bad time... imagine if they told us those things?

Yes, Essentially, they need to stop telling and start showing more, especially two years in advance.

Anyone who's been around for more than a week knows the Big AI debacle is not completely new. Do you recall Oblivion's Radiant AI? The claims made, the video shown, the examples given? And the end product?

As I said before, they should adopt the shortest marketing campaign possible from now on. Put everyone under a mandatory tight-lipped policy. No one opens their mouth unless explicitly told to, and only about things they directly work on. Gosh, you wouldn't want, I don't know, an UI artist dropping pearls of wisdom about AI routines, would you?

Shut your trap.

People would be upset, but you'd also have lots of "well, I'm buying it for the RPG stuff, not to goof around in the open world so I'm fine" you'd get way more acceptance I feel if they were straight up... I mean... are people still upset about all the features they've cut? Not really, it's not the discussion right now even if the list is rather long, I once posted a list created by 4chan users of things cut from the game over time, this was prior to release.

Probably.

Yet another reason to adopt the shortest marketing campaign possible.

I also don't believe they could just keep delaying, maybe this was the wrong time to release but it doesn't mean they would have released with the game in a perfect state, sometimes things just eventually have to come out or become vaporware.

The hard reality is none of us knows an awful lot about what goes on in there. Gamers don't know the pipeline, don't know how many, how competent, how well-organized developers are, the hierarchy, gamers don't know the technicalities, the last-minute problems, the unforeseen and unforeseeable problems, the financial obligations, the contractual obligations, the marketing deals, shareholders pressures, future plans, etc.

Gamers know very, very little of the crucial information required to make definitive pronouncements. The problems are easy to spot. Solutions and explanations are much harder to come by.

For me, the game is an ambitious step forward with enough problems to also feel like a step backwards. The true tale of the game hopefully won't be told for months, fingers crossed for massive fixes, massive and amazing DLCs and a legacy that somehow eclipses this fiasco.

Absolutely. One just has to be dismayed at those cheering for a swift demise of CD Projekt RED. It does seem to be the usual combination of resentment, mock selective self-aggrandizing empathy, and anti-Corporate childishness.

If it can't do that... it's still a fun game for me, the most fun I've had in 2020. The big positives for me are what this does to the industry, I feel like all eyes are on this mess and how CDPR react, if they can win back the gamers, etc. They put out a game that will change the industry, just not necessarily for the reasons they wanted it to.

Well put.
I agree.

I think they're going to try very hard to bounce back. In all probability, some people will never forgive them but others will be won over by their efforts. I'm also tempted to believe marketing for AAA titles won't go back to what it was.

 

[KyoZz]

CD PROJEKT RED BOSS LIKES TWEETS, NUMBER 6 WILL SURPRISE YOU (and you won't believe number 4 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I don't like what this forum is becoming, ffs if I want Facebook level news I'll go on Kotaku

 

[Edgelord79]

One just has to be dismayed at those cheering for a swift demise of CD Projekt RED. It does seem to be the usual combination of resentment, mock selective self-aggrandizing empathy, and anti-Corporate childishness.

100% in agreement with this. I literally wrote the same thing (even used self-aggrandizing) in a post on another thread as it was the only word I could come up with that described the situation. The moral grandstanding by the same posters over and over again borders on idiocy. The solution is not to destroy CDPR, but to make them learn the error of their ways. So we can get good games again from them.

The gaming world would not be a better place without CDPR.

For a forum that hates Kotaku and Polygon so much, there are an awful lot of people who would fit right in over there with some of their blind hatred.

 

[Elios83]

CDProject simply gambled and lost.
They thought they could run away hiding the state of the game on base consoles not only from consumers but even from MS and Sony (it seems that during certification they told them not to look into the state of the game because everything would be fixed with the day on patch), they tried to get the best metacritic they could sending on purpose review codes just for PC.
When people started asking for refunds they didn't ask the platform holders what to do together and they simply told everyone to ask refunds to Sony and MS (something that Sony does not allow with their current policy if you have already downloaded and played the game for more than 2h and this was fatal for them for the PS Store version).
They have been amateurishly malicious in the way they handled this. It's not just the state of the game but also how they actively tried to get away with it.

That being said I hope they can fix all the issues and find ways to be forgiven by consumers because their reputation is tainted.
And tbh I'm playing the game right now on PS5 and the game has lots of great stuff in it, a great main campaign, incredible atmosphere and it performs well on that platform. The product is still not polished but beneath the roughness there is the greatness they promised so it would be a shame to see this game failing long term.

 

[ArtHands]

But you can't refund on Steam if you play more than 2 hours.

You can still appeal if you have a legit case. That's a general and fair guideline to protect both sides.

 

[B-universe]

100% in agreement with this. I literally wrote the same thing (even used self-aggrandizing) in a post on another thread as it was the only word I could come up with that described the situation. The moral grandstanding by the same posters over and over again borders on idiocy. The solution is not to destroy CDPR, but to make them learn the error of their ways. So we can get good games again from them.

The gaming world would not be a better place without CDPR.

For a forum that hates Kotaku and Polygon so much, there are an awful lot of people who would fit right in over there with some of their blind hatred.

I could be wrong, but this sentiment seems to come predominantly from newcomers. I wonder what's the explanation.

The solution is you, me and anyone who recognizes the bitterness for what it is to call posters out. And, absolutely, the best possible outcome is for CD Projekt RED to learn from their mistakes and come back stronger than ever. Hopefully, they will now extend their consumer-friendly business practices to their PR and marketing, even if that means having shorter and much more modest influencer-free campaigns, where every platform is showcased.

The best, most useful service this forum can pay CD Projekt RED and the gaming industry is to enumerate things they'd like the polish studio to do in order to address the current mess and avoid future ones. I've already posted a list of ten possible steps.

This is from CD Projekt RED's founder 's LinkedIn page (my emphasis) (source):

"Entrepreneur, old-school gamer, curious traveller, avid language learner. Co-founder, Joint CEO and guardian of values at CD PROJEKT. "

I would think Marcin still has it in him.
I think he'll fight back.

I, for one, sure hope he does.

 

[Fake]

Are we really doing this? Investigating whatever this man push the 'like' button or not?

Wow.

 

[Edgelord79]

I could be wrong, but this sentiment seems to come predominantly from newcomers. I wonder what's the explanation.

The solution is you, me and anyone who recognizes the bitterness for what it is to call posters out. And, absolutely, the best possible outcome is for CD Projekt RED to learn from their mistakes and come back stronger than ever. Hopefully, they will now extend their consumer-friendly business practices to their PR and marketing, even if that means having shorter and much more modest influencer-free campaigns, where every platform is showcased.

The best, most useful service this forum can pay CD Projekt RED and the gaming industry is to enumerate things they'd like the polish studio to do in order to address the current mess and avoid future ones. I've already posted a list of ten possible steps.

This is from CD Projekt RED's founder 's LinkedIn page (my emphasis) (source):

"Entrepreneur, old-school gamer, curious traveller, avid language learner. Co-founder, Joint CEO and guardian of values at CD PROJEKT. "

I would think Marcin still has it in him.
I think he'll fight back.

I, for one, sure hope he does.

It's definitely some veteran posters as well. These are the reaction hunters. They grandstand knowing it will garner the appropriate reactions to increase their ratio. I've been watching a few for a while trumpeting the same talking points over various subject matters, although in some cases they've confessed to not even being invested in the product. Instead they use mantras like "it's the right thing" over and over because hey... who isn't going to agree with that?

It's bizarre and unhealthy.

 

[Nazr]

I imagine the dude is fighting to keep his job.

I quite like the game so far... but its clear that everything surrounding this game has been a disaster and so much of the reputation and goodwill CDPR spent a decade cultivating has been torched in 2 weeks. It was the hot stock just a few months ago, considered the most valuable EU game dev. They've lost over a billion in market value since launch. And say what you want about "unfair" media dogpiling or Sony's shit store policies -- but, ultimately, all of this is a consequence of horrible decisions that came from the top. Investors are probably going to want more than just excuses.

 

[iHaunter]

He can cry all he wants. They lied to their customers AND investors. CDPR boss can fuck off.

 

[hemo memo]

You don't want CP 2077 at 15 fps. Yet you bought that. Because you are assuming it's not going to be 15 fps. It's a reasonable assumption, but you are blaming the platform holders without knowing jackshit about what the certification process is. You are just assuming you do so it fits your world perspective. It's not on any platform holder to ensure quality, you'd just like it that way.

Have quality control or a refund system. You can’t have it both ways. Acting the victim because “We just sell the games here” and at the same time refusing refunds because “It is our policy” is a stupid defence.

Again, have quality control on what is sold on the store beyond the “Oh it is a slide show but don’t worry it is not going to brick your system, we checked” oh wow thank you Sony.

 

[ethomaz]

Crashes every 5 minutes? Stop spreading FUD. There are tons of people who have beaten the game on Playstation and tons of people say they've only encountered a handful of bugs. Yes there are bugs. Yes performance leaves a lot to be desired. That doesn't make the game broken for everyone.

I challenge you to show one guy that did not had many crashes while suffering to beat the game on these consoles.

BTW only 6.8% beat the main story on PS4... that is ridiculous low... year we have data to counter your bullshit.

 

[ethomaz]

That line is an incredibly shit justification to Sony's part in all this.

You can hate one side while not supporting the other fam.

Sorry? What Sony part?

 

[zwiggelbig]

Maybe he just appreciated some people going to bat for his game? I feel like getting upset about likes on Twitter is kinda cringe, honestly, especially when they're doing right by the customers by offering refunds and delisting it.

It's unfair to tell people they should have expected this because of the delays and because of pre-order culture and maybe because every other CDPR game launched buggy and got better over time... because this is still unprecedented to be this level of jank, and we know it. To make a little joke that I can't even tell if it's a joke any more... if there's a reason people should have expected this... it's because the year is 2020, lol. Like even the good things this year have such massive caveats to them.

Also, this does shine a light on SONY's refund policies as much as it does CDPR's problems. Digital or not people need a recourse for broken products. Are some people going to take advantage? Sure, some people are going to eat the whole pizza before asking for a full refund and under normal circumstances we shouldn't allow that because as much as we care about the consumer if we allow the consumer to get away with anything we ruin the industry.

I think this should also bring us into the idea of false advertising... why are video games uniquely allowed to advertise themselves falsely? Think about how many people bought The Last of Us II digitally based on the adverts which sometimes openly lied to them. I'm at a crossroads on this one because personally I like big surprises, I like having the big stuff hidden from me, but to what extent should it be hidden? To the extent you digitally replace one character with another in ads? It's a tough one for me, I feel like anyone who feels scammed by that should also have some sort of recourse while those of us glad the experience wasn't spoiled via advertising can simply enjoy that fact. Cyberpunk is similar, though many elements they hyped and removed they told us they had removed, giving the customer time to adjust there are a lot of problems you had no idea would be present.

While it's unprecedented for a company to advertise how buggy a game is (besides straight up doing early access) there are options they could take that they didn't. Tell us that every NPC having a routine had to be temporarily dropped due to stress on old systems or something. Tell us the police AI won't be ready for launch and if you want to play this like GTA you're gonna have a bad time... imagine if they told us those things? People would be upset, but you'd also have lots of "well, I'm buying it for the RPG stuff, not to goof around in the open world so I'm fine" you'd get way more acceptance I feel if they were straight up... I mean... are people still upset about all the features they've cut? Not really, it's not the discussion right now even if the list is rather long, I once posted a list created by 4chan users of things cut from the game over time, this was prior to release.

I also don't believe they could just keep delaying, maybe this was the wrong time to release but it doesn't mean they would have released with the game in a perfect state, sometimes things just eventually have to come out or become vaporware. I think of how the last A Song of Ice and Fire came out in 2011, I've kinda given up hoping for book 6 to release at this point, stopped caring, it doesn't help how the show ended and that since I am to understand he told them how the book series ends that his ending won't be much different, though I'm sure it'll have more build up and justification. This might seem like a random analogy but honestly there's a level of tolerance for delays gamers have and you can go beyond it. This isn't to say gamers are at fault, though, while sure... what the consumer accepts to an extent governs the industry, practices we refuse to engage in aren't practices that will last but there's something to be said for the way hype dies for games that keep receiving delays, so few people even care at this point a new Metroid Prime is being made (I'm one of the few it feels like, I don't even care the Switch exists until that shit does, too) and at one point do you delay so far the industry has eclipsed what you're doing? Becoming say a Duke Nukem Forever, hah. I think we all could have handled another delay to spring for Cyberpunk, but maybe I'm being too generous to gamers? I saw some of the upset on Twitter over a 1 month delay, I saw an angry, vindictive person leak TLOU II story beats when it had an indefinite delay due to COVID-19 forcing the release, for some reason we can't just enjoy our backlogs we are furious over delays on a pretty consistent basis. You can say it's eventually remedied by a game released but that's sort of true of buggy games these days, too, right? Certainly not all, especially if its games people want nothing to do with but some of the funniest Cyberpunk glitch compilations are full of things you now can't replicate.

I want to get into something else. There are certain problems with the game I'm capable of replicating on my PC that console gamers have but other PC guys don't really complain about. I think a real lot of console issues are because of mechanical harddrives, which I'm foolishly using to play on PC. The worst issues for me happen when I drive a car too fast through the city and go to different parts of it in one long ride. I find I need to stop and wait for the game to catch up to what I did, there's no question to me a lot of this is streaming issues and while the game is built around SSDs (it even has a slow hard drive option on PC because of how SSD reliant it is) it still released on PS4s and XB1s which is... such a weird decision. The Next-Gen patch isn't ready yet on a game that doesn't work properly without an SSD? How does this make sense? What were they thinking? Were they assuming console gamers knew their place and couldn't expect to run the game as well as PC gamers? Because it's one thing to have better visuals/framerates on PC but it's another for the game to be like this for console gamers, to have all footage shown be for PC so you have no idea the population density is unattainble on your HDD, you have no idea you gotta take driving slow because the game is trying to load the damn world for you.

The part of me that has fun being a console warrior wants to say this is a great day for those of us worried about games being held back, look at that, they did what they wanted and ancient hardware didn't even factor into it for them, you get what you get. But the shitstorm it caused, the refunds, the delisting means, to me, this is the first and last game of this new generation that will forsake old for new, held back isn't a meme, I know because if they had made this game to run on the lowest spec like other devs there'd be less NPCs or the city would have load screens between sections, maybe they'd even decide not to do open world and make a sort of hub world. When games come out that are less than they could have been due to ancient hardware it might not always be easy to put your finger on it and say what could have been, cross-gen games like the new Horizon and God of War might look and play amazing and figuring out what could have been without them being also on a PS4 might be hard to pinpoint... but unless it's unplayable garbage on PS4 you're going to know SOMETHING was compromised. Not to bang on SONY, because Halo Infinite will be the same... in fact the original gameplay demo everyone hated was a perfect example of what next-gen gaming is like when it's held back, we'll see what happens when it actually releases, though.

So much of Cyberpunk on PC is drop dead gorgeous, the story NPCs are some of the best ever and it does really well with mechanics it didn't need to do well with to be liked... shooting, stealth and though I see a lot of complaints even the driving is fine to me, someone else compared it to GTA IV, there's a feel of weight to the cars and I agree, I always thought GTA IV was the first GTA to get driving right. There are some aspects that are a little less praise-worthy, both the inventory system and upgrade system feel sort of cumbersome. I can attest to the rewards of speccing into a specific tree because it really can pay off but the way it's structured it looks like you aren't doing much and you truly aren't until you get deep within a tree and it becomes noticeable more through the combined effect of multiple perks than because of certain individual ones. Inventory has some problems as well, they put no weight on many objects that clutter it so you don't mind the clutter as much and there's a lot of clutter, but because of it the guns have ridiculous weights attached and you'll find yourself far too often sitting around deleting guns or driving to a spot to sell them. So much of my game time is creating space in the inventory, you might say "just don't pick all that stuff up" but not only am I OCD but the game puts little x's on your map for the stuff you haven't picked up, plus some of the best stuff in the game costs serious money. I can appreciate an in-game economy that seems to work (no, I have not viewed the videos of people breaking it, I'm preserving my experience), where I really need to do a lot of stuff to afford the thing I want. So many games have the problem of useless economies but I think Cyberpunk escapes that issue.

The biggest problem for many, though is going to be the choices. Because you play a fully voiced protagonist there are only so many dialogue options and they often lead you to the same dialogue from the other NPCs. There are a few missions that truly feel full of choices, one of them is from the 2018 demo but most missions feel more cinematic action movie type stuff with little ability to change the outcome, it's more about how the NPCs view you it feels but I'm not sure how much it'll matter in the end. I've heard there's at least 5 different endings and I've heard they're actually pretty different, I haven't beaten the game yet (I've started over from the beginning to try a different life path and play differently, so despite 50-60 hours gametime I'm still on Act II) so I can't say for sure but I think a lot of us expected more choice within the structure of the game and less of a "your choices will open up endings but the missions along the way are the same" to be fair, the game feels most like a Deus Ex and that's the way those games functioned, to the point where the first few let you choose any ending AT THE END regardless of past choices. But the way it was advertised (the way they showed off the Maelstrom mission) I thought it'd be closer to Fallout: New Vegas, I think the issue becomes how much is put into voicing and animating these NPCs for the story, who are incredible, lifelike and believable to the point where you're not sure you can blame them for a lack of divergent options. As much as Fallout: New Vegas impressed me with its many ways to solve a quest it's sort of the opposite where the cumulative effect of the things you do doesn't do much about the endgame, it changes the still images with voice over at the very end but the way the endgame is handled is mostly the same with only 2 real big different endings. Had Cyberpunk settled for the route many RPGs go and you just get blocks of text at the end or voiceover telling you what occurred it could have had more endings than it does but how satisfying have those ever been in any RPG? Someone listed games they felt were better for choice than this to me recently and they included Tyranny... I own that one and enjoyed it, but it's a similar story, there isn't much you miss by doing one path or another, the most that happens is different blocks of text at the end. Alpha Protocol was one of my favorite choice games but all the levels are the same no matter what, the climax is always the same level with slight divergences but it was still crazy for the amount of choices you could make. Many mission choices in CP2077 just mean more or less money/rewards, it's true but I never felt like I was promised a revolution in how choices work in the industry, even Witcher III is a game where most people are most impressed by the Bloody Baron quest but there isn't much to say about the rest is there?

For me, the game is an ambitious step forward with enough problems to also feel like a step backwards. The true tale of the game hopefully won't be told for months, fingers crossed for massive fixes, massive and amazing DLCs and a legacy that somehow eclipses this fiasco. If it can't do that... it's still a fun game for me, the most fun I've had in 2020. The big positives for me are what this does to the industry, I feel like all eyes are on this mess and how CDPR react, if they can win back the gamers, etc. They put out a game that will change the industry, just not necessarily for the reasons they wanted it to.

you say they could not keep on delaying it. How ever the problem already started there. Management set unrealistic dates and then had to announce delay upon delay. Thats ON THEM. They fucked that up. They should have not started with the april release date already. The fuck it could nowhere be near close at that point. And then the other delays all due to management wanting to rush it out and crunch their developers for it. And in the end stil release a broken last gen game. Just look how much it already improved in 2 weeks.. I blame management and the executives fully for this shitshow

 

[ethomaz]

It's not about being stuck in the past. We look to the past for context and information.

The reason we look to the past here, is to form a fully rounded opinion on what Sony's intention with CP2077 is. Sony has never pulled a game like this before, and no one has ever highlighted how poorly Sony's refund policies are before, so it stands to reason that Sony isn't doing this for the player and will still likely be fine selling us buggy games in the future. I wouldn't commend Sony for it. To me, it looks like they are trying to sweep dirt under the rug before anyone notices.

That is assumptions that the delist won’t happen to new games.
Until that happens there is nothing you can see about that.

I expect every new game that is broken at launch to be delisted... it needed to start and now we finally have a precedent for future titles.

 

[ethomaz]

People siding with CDPR and blaming Sony in this thread is just bizarre to me. Is it Stockholm Syndrome or something? Or is it just sarcasm?

CDPR has no business pulling a whataboutism after the insane, insane way they deliberately kept base PS4/Xbox versions hidden until it was literally too late. And then they forced Sony's hand by saying consumers should go to Sony for a refund. Which is not how the Playstation Store operates, so either Sony has to completely change their policies on the fly just to accomodate the insane statement from CDPR, or eject 2077 from the store to be able to actually refund.

There is literally no situation where CDPR did not bring this on themselves at this point.

Sony actually is doing refund using their bad system for all gamers that asked it no matter how many hours you played it (you can even finish it).

They choose to delist the game because no company wants to sell a game that people will ask refund after.
You can even buy the game, finish it and ask refund.

Both are separated actions and both are right.

How to you stop gamers to abuse the refund in this game? Stop to sell it until it is fixed.

Sony clear mistake was not doing his own QA right and allowing the game to be sold at launch to begin... the game should never be listed on PS Store on the promises of day one patch.

That should not happens again... ever... but let’s see if they learned with the situation.

 

[ArtHands]

Have quality control or a refund system. You can’t have it both ways. Acting the victim because “We just sell the games here” and at the same time refusing refunds because “It is our policy” is a stupid defence.

Again, have quality control on what is sold on the store beyond the “Oh it is a slide show but don’t worry it is not going to brick your system, we checked” oh wow thank you Sony.

Yah. When Steam allows a more relax policy in terms of hosting games, some people were up in arm about how they have no store curation unlike consoles where there is great curation and strict checks.

And now its suddenly 'oh they just make sure the game doesn't brick console' to brush off all responsibility from Sony.

 

[ethomaz]

Both at fault.

But I'd say Sony and any other certification process company (like MS and Nintendo) are more at fault now that I think of it more, since it's their platform and they certify quality and have the ultimate say whether it shows up to purchase or not.

I'm not sure if Steam does this.

If a game company makes a crap ass game that doesn't even get passed the title page, is that Random Game Studio X's fault? Or MS, Sony, Nintendo allowing it to pass through their walled garden of certification testers as a salable product?

Last line of defence is the platform holder. It can be argued they are more at fault. And even worse if they are stodgy on refund policies.

For example, if you buy an electrical product and it's certified by CSA or UL with a big stamp on it and zaps everyone's hands the second they turn on the switch, whose fault is it? The manufacturer? Or CSA/UL certifying it's a safe product?

I talked about how companies needs to have curation to their stores but I was trashed due PCMR thinks any game can enter in Steam no matter the quality/state because it is open lol

The QA to be listed in a story needs to reach the minimum that any gamer will have issues to play this game version brought in that store.

Sony is all at fault here.

 

[Freelance Yakuza]

So why did they not do this with.. um... Anthem?

Have you guys noticed that the only argument used by the CDPR defense force is based on whataboutism?
What about Anthem
What about NMS
What about Fallout 76


I mean, if your game needs to be compared to these to look a little better then your game sucks.
We've come a long way from "Dude, Witcher 3 was awesome, Cyberpunk will be as good as Witcher 3 was" to "Cyberpunk is better than Fallout 76, they don't deserve it"

 

[Captain Toad]

I can't believe they even want to sell this game on Xbox One or PS4. It's unplayable garbage. Kudos for Sony having the balls to put their money where their mouth is and not allowing their customers to be scammed.

Keeping it on PS5 and Series X digitally is a different debate, but honestly making a PS4/Xbox One game only playable on consoles other than PS4 and Xbox One seems pretty shady too.

 

[Trunim]

Let's just refund the game and forget it ever existed.

 

[ethomaz]

People also get angry at Microsoft and Sony due to removing Cyberpunk 20777 from their consoles AFTER they got a REFUND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everywhere, Idiots, everywhere.

It is a joke but people on refund thread did asked if they will refund it and let them play the game yet after the refund.
Several guys asked.

 

[CatLady]

CDProject simply gambled and lost.
When people started asking for refunds they didn't ask the platform holders what to do together and they simply told everyone to ask refunds to Sony and MS (something that Sony does not allow with their current policy if you have already downloaded and played the game for more than 2h and this was fatal for them for the PS Store version).
They have been amateurishly malicious in the way they handled this. It's not just the state of the game but also how they actively tried to get away with it.

Are you saying Sony DOES allow refunds on digital if it's been played 2hrs or less? If so, how is their refund policy any different than Xbox or Steam? And why is everyone bitching about Sony's refund policies?

The only experience I've ever had with PS Store was buying TLOU-R with $10 off coupon I got as a new PS4 owner. Great deal, went smoothly no complaints. All the bad things I've heard about Sony's refund policies are 2nd hand and possibly fanboy fueled. I was under the impression they don't give refunds EVER, not even if you cancel a preorder before it's released. If this is a bunch of BS I'd like to know the truth.

Can someone please tell me without any fanboying exactly what the refund policy is on PlayStation and why it is considered so terrible if it's essentially the same as other platforms.

 

[mr.dilya]

There are no good guys in this whole debacle. I feel like a weirdo for just playing games I like while at the same time not really caring about these companies bottom lines as if I’m getting compensated for it.

 

[Freelance Yakuza]

You guys forget Sony actually told people asking for refund to wait till January/February for patches. They never wanted to give refunds anyway.

I do believe sony delisted Cyberpunk 2077 because they absolutely HATE refunds and CDPR created a situation where they can't ban people who ask for cashback so they banned the game instead
lmao

 

[ethomaz]

The whole “people will just play the game for a week then refund it to get a free game essentially” smells like the fearmongering people passed when Valve first introduced the refund system to Steam. If the various digital stores on PC does it just fine, no excuse why Sony couldn’t.

Steam only allow refund if you played less than 2 hours.

Somy is allowing refunds for all without restriction even if you finished or played 100 or more hours.

Ask Steam they want to have a game listed in their store that can be refunded like that.

Someone enlighten me, How do you "return" a digitally downloaded game?

After the refund your game will stop to work when you try to launch it after you first login on PSN.

You can abuse if you keep your console offline but the first time you log PSN it will stop to work.

 

[Hendrick's]

I laugh at people acting like this is the first broken game ever released.