It’s hard to imagine an anticipated game launch going worse than Cyberpunk 2077’s. Released on December 10, 2020, the followup to one of the most acclaimed RPGs ever arrived after years of hype in a barely finished state, full of bugs and missing features. While it was a joke at the time, the game was totally reworked in the years that followed, eventually approaching the groundbreaking game that it was originally promised as — but even that can’t fully cover up the messy road that got it there.
Cyberpunk 2077’s troubles started well before it was released. Announced in 2012, it would get a teaser trailer the next year, followed by several years of little to no word on the game from CD Projekt Red. In 2015, The Witcher 3 was released, and its success both gave CD Projekt Red some breathing room as players dived deep into the fantasy RPG and intensified the desire for its next project.
