In brief: What a ride it’s been for Cyberpunk 2077: the most hyped game of all time before its release, one of the most disappointing at launch, and now a beloved RPG with a Very Positive Steam rating. But the three-and-a-half-year journey is over, with no developers at CD Projekt Red working on the RPG.
Cyberpunk 2077’s December 2020 launch was a crushing blow to those who couldn’t wait to step into the shoes of a Night City merc. Rife with bugs on the PC and pretty much unplayable on consoles, CD Projekt Red has released a slew of patches and updates since then, including the brilliant Phantom Liberty expansion.
The Lazarus-like revival culminated in the game reaching a recent Overwhelmingly Positive review rating on Steam with 95% of players giving it a thumbs up – though that has since fallen to 94%, giving it a still excellent Very Positive rating.
You can’t imagine how much it means to me ð I have never been close to giving up and always believed this could be somehow possible, but never thought I will actually see it.
Thank you so much for the second chance choomsðÂ¥º https://t.co/HLr1Ykphu1
– PaweÅÂ Sasko (@PaweSasko) May 10, 2024
It now appears that all work on Cyberpunk 2077 has stopped. CD Projekt’s last financial update showed that just 17 people were still working on the game as of February 29 this year. The company’s latest report shows that all of those employees have left Cyberpunk 2077; they’ve likely been moved to other teams.
The vast majority of CD Projekt is now working on the next game in the Witcher series, codenamed Polaris. Joint CEO Michal Nowakowski said during the earnings presentation that the studio plans to move on to the production phase in the second half of the year.
While the next Witcher game is receiving most of the focus, smaller teams are working on other titles, including 56 people doing early work on the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, codenamed Orion.
Elsewhere, 39 employees are working on a multiplayer spin-off of The Witcher. It’s codenamed Sirius, and is mostly being developed by internal studio The Molasses Flood. There are also 20 people working on a new franchise, codenamed Project Hadar.
It appears that we won’t see any more updates or patches for Cyberpunk 2077. As someone who’s spent 172 hours in Night City, I’m already looking forward to the sequel.
