CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 Has Been Delayed Again, by 2 Months To November

Looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077? Well, get ready to wait a little bit longer. The game’s Sept. 17 release has been delayed by just over two months.

“‘Ready when it’s done’ is not just a phrase we say it sounds right, it’s something we live by even when we know we’ll take the heat for it,” Co-founder Marcin Iwinski and Head of Studio Adam Badowski wrote in a post to Cyberpunk 2077’s Twitter account. “At the same time, we are fully aware that making such a decision costs us your trust and trading trust for additional time is one of the hardest decisions a game developer can make. And despite we think it’s the right decision for the game, we’d still like to apologize for making you wait longer. Our intention is to make [Cyberpunk 2077] something that will stay with you for years to come. In the end, we hope you understand why we did what we did.”

You can read the full message here:

An important development update pic.twitter.com/uFGrt9Tqpi

— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) June 18, 2020

However, they write that the game’s development is finished in terms of content, with all the quests, cutscenes, skills and items fully integrated into the game. Unfortunately, that still leaves a good deal of balancing and bug-fixing to do, and it wasn’t going to live up to CD Projekt Red’s standards if it met its September release date.

Even if you can’t play the game until November, we (not me specifically, but games journalists worldwide) are playing an early build of the game. Iwinski and Badowski expressed their excitement and anxiety at reading their previews, which will begin going out after their “Night City Wire” presentation on the game on June 25. As a lowly intern, I’m not sure if Paste is among those gifted preview privileges, but regardless we’ll be sure to cover whatever news comes out of the event.

After Projekt Red’s incredibly ambitious and impressive The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, it makes sense that Cyberpunk 2077’s massive world would need more time to iron out the kinks, especially since developers’ transitioned to working from home under the coronavirus pandemic. So the call to delay the game is understandable.

However, especially given comments from the studio admitting crunch, this deadline extension means developers will be forced to crunch even more, separated from their families even though they live in the same house as them. Crunch is not a problem unique to CD Projekt Red, but with over a thousand employees, it’s probably making a lot of people’s lives actively worse. Cyberpunk 2077 might be great, but if it meant it would make conditions better for developers, I’d be willing to wait until actual 2077 to get my hands on it. That won’t happen in a capitalistic society, however, but it could get better if the games industry decided to unionize. Just saying.

Cyberpunk is now planned to release for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on Nov. 19, and Xbox Series X and Stadia at an undisclosed date. No word yet on a release for PlayStation 5, but considering how both it and the Xbox Series X might be out by then, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game came out for those platforms at around the same time.

Remember when Final Fantasy VII Remake was scheduled to release February, The Last of Us Part II in March and Cyberpunk 2077 in April? Me neither.