Ahead of its release, Cyberpunk 2077 had the potential to be one of the most impactful and important games in the industry’s history. It had such promise, and when it arrived in late 2020 it only fulfilled that promise to anyone rich or lucky enough to have the most tricked-out PC.
More than three and a half years later, an entire revamp of the game’s progression system and a DLC expansion that is arguably better than the base-game’s campaign, and Cyberpunk 2077 is overall an incredible RPG, though it’s impact has been felt in ways CD Projekt RED never really intended.
What matters is that CDPR is in a place where it can move on, and move on it has, as the Polish developer reported in its latest quarterly earnings call that there is no one left at CDPR working on Cyberpunk 2077.
Since the beginning of May, the various teams across CDPR have left Cyberpunk 2077 behind, and more focus has been put toward The Witcher 4, shown in the slide under its codename Polaris, since the official title has yet to be revealed.
What’s interesting to note is that it appears the developers previously working on Cyberpunk 2077 have been moved to to its sequel, currently codenamed project Orion. At least, that’s the story the numbers appear to be telling, since the amount of people working on Polaris hasn’t increased by 17.
The Cyberpunk world CD Projekt RED created with the first game will of course continue with the sequel, but this new breakdown of resources feels, at least in part, like the end of an era.
Fans waited over a decade for Cyberpunk 2077, and when it arrived it couldn’t even be played on the consoles it was announced for. The saga around its launch and the difficult path to its full redemption in September 2023 is a story that maintained the full attention of the games industry as it unfolded.
Now that CDPR has moved on, maybe we all now can too.
Source – [CD Project RED]