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After Cyberpunk 2077's disastrous launch, CD Projekt Red's joint CEO Michał Nowakowski believes the "faith" of some fans was lost "indefinitely," but he's hopeful that the studio "we will be able to make it back" with The Witcher 4 or whatever comes after it.
It's strange to look back on the state of Cyberpunk 2077 when it was first released, when you consider how popular and well-loved it is now. In the time since that fateful December 2020 launch, it's received many big updates, as well as its Phantom Liberty expansion, and it even surpassed 35 million sales in less than five years. But back then, major technical issues put a huge damper on things, and many players were understandably disappointed.
Speaking in an interview for Edge's Knowledge newsletter, Nowakowski calls Cyberpunk 2077's rocky start a "heartbreaking" time for CD Projekt Red. Of course, the devs did everything they could to turn things around for the RPG – he saw the studio's reputation as its "biggest asset," after all – but even though it's safe to say they succeeded with their fixes, he still believes the situation has left some scars.
"I'm not 100 percent convinced we went through the full redemption arc," he explains. "I'm convinced that we lost the faith of some people indefinitely, and that's a fair thing. But I do hope we will be able to make it back – if not with The Witcher 4, then with whatever comes next."
Currently, The Witcher 4 doesn't even have a release window, so it feels very futuristic to think what could be beyond that. The Witcher 3 is getting a brand new expansion next year in the form of Songs of the Past, though, so we're definitely going to have something Witcher-shaped then, and the studio is also hard at work on other projects including the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel and the mysterious new IP, Hadar.
There's no doubt going to be a lot of pressure on CD Projekt Red for the launch of its next game after what happened last time, though. It'll be a moment for the devs to dispel any remaining concerns about the quality of their work, and label Cyberpunk 2077 (or rather, that initial version of it) a true outlier rather than a sign of things to come. But to do that, you really do want everything to be immaculate – I certainly can't imagine The Witcher 4 being rushed out of the door before it's ready, anyway.
