Cyberpunk 2077 Dev Explains Why the Game Was Plagued by Bugs at Launch. For CD Projekt RED, Choice Was Simple
Cyberpunk 2077 had its fair share of bugs, but the CD Projekt RED team preferred that to other, more serious problems that would have plagued the game at launch.
Premiere of Cyberpunk 2077 could have been much worse if not for the conscious choice of lesser evils (bugs) by the creators. Charles Tremblay, the game's lead programmer, revealed in an interview with Eurogamer the reason why CD Projekt RED's cyberpunk RPG was so bugged almost 4 years ago.
Even today, when after numerous updates CD Projekt's title is viewed very positively by most players, it is difficult to forget how many issues plagued Cyberpunk 2077 back in December 2020. Especially in the case of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One releases, but also on PCs and – later – on current-gen consoles, the technical condition of the game left much to be desired.
T-pose better than crash
This was partly due to the fact that traditional hard drives simply couldn't stream data at the rate required by Cyberpunk 2077. However, this is only part of the problem.
Tremblay admits that the game was plagued by major memory leaks at first, which meant that over time there was not enough RAM for other necessary processes. In that case, the developers had two options: either let the game "crash" (i.e. forcibly close), or leave minor defects such as "T-posing". CD Projekt RED team chose the latter option as the lesser of two evils.
Helpful save the game date from players
The complexity of the game's systems also had its effect, even if the final product was not as extensive as some players imagined. Moreover, some of these mechanics were based on the assumption that the game would run smoothly with streaming or lack of memory. Then "we multiply it by a million people" and we get a strange, one-of-a-kind "bug".
Tremblay is thus repeating what we've heard from many other developers: that no amount of internal testing can prepare a game for an encounter with millions of players.
That's why the studio greatly appreciated the save files sent by game buyers who encountered bugs unknown to the developers. Especially in the case of PC, as revealed by Karolina "Vinthir" Nieweglowska, the deputy director for Player Experience and Safety - it was the PC players who sent the most reports (which is not surprising in the context of the number of different hardware configurations).
There were also problems resulting from the coronavirus pandemic (remote work effectively made it impossible to have office conversations like those held during the release of The Witcher 3; no, conversations on Slack were not a good substitute), which, combined with the not-entirely-successful release of Cyberpunk 2077, effectively ruined the holiday spirit at the studio.
Michal Nowak, one of the current presidents of CD Projekt Group, considers the first month after the game's debut as "one of the worst in his life", but admits that players had reasons to complain. Let's hope that history will not repeat itself during the premiere of the next big game from CD Projekt. And at least not on such a scale as during the first digital visit to Night City.
