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Cyberpunk 2077 refunds hardly counteracted a very successful year for developer CD Projekt Red, despite the game's historically awful launch.
In case you haven't been around much lately, Cyberpunk 2077's long-awaited release last December didn't go so well. CD Projekt's baby saw generally favorable reviews from critics, but game-breaking performance issues on console caused public opinion to sour rapidly.
As spotted by Ars Technica, CD Projekt released its 2020 financial statement today, and it details about $51.2 million that the studio "has recognized [as] provisions for returns and expected adjustments of licensing reports related to sales of Cyberpunk 2077 in its release window, in Q4 2020."
Ars Technica, with some help from F-Squared's Mike Futter, translated the report's gibberish to mean that CD Projekt expects to lose over $50 million through currently processed refunds, future refunds, and lost sales (partially due to the PlayStation Store dilemma) through 2021 due to Cyberpunk 2077's fumbled launch.
That sounds like a lot, but in context it's pennies. The company made about $563 million in sales revenue and $301 million in net profit in 2020, no doubt largely from Cyberpunk sales. Suddenly the losses from Cyberpunk 2077 refunds don't sound like much, especially when you consider that $50 million includes projected refunds through 2021 and doesn't account for projected sales.
Of course, none of this is a testament to the quality of the product, meaning Cyberpunk 2077. As recently as last week, CD Projekt released another sweeping update meant to improve stability and fix bugs, but a quick scan through the game's subreddit suggests there's still a lot of work to be done.
For more, here's a great read from Edge on what we can learn from Cyberpunk 2077's disastrous launch.
