The life of a video game is a long road strewn with pitfalls. And in this game, the latest title from CD Projekt suffered several during its launch. A pitfall which was not without consequences for Cyberpunk 2077 where the teams had to make choices to restore their image. In the lot, it was the multiplayer mode that was canceled.
A choice made to ensure that the solo experience is at a sufficient level, as explained Philip Webersenior quest designer on the game, at Eurogamer. He is currently the Narrative Director on Project Polaris, the next installment in the series. The Witcher.
We really had to look at what the priorities were for Cyberpunk. The priority was for the main experience to take place for people in a very good condition. And essentially, the shift in priorities meant that other R&D projects had to be scrapped. With Cyberpunk, we wanted to do a lot of things at the same time, and we had to focus and be like, “Okay, what’s the important part? Yes, we are going to make this part absolutely successful”.
This multiplayer experience was to be an entirely separate game, a choice already re-evoked by Adam Kisinski, the president of the studio last year. Moreover, it seems that this is the first time that the launch is explicitly used as a cause of the cancellation of this one. It would have been the first step of the studio in this type of experience. An element that was an integral part of the communication around the game from its debut in 2013.
This multiplayer will therefore never see the light of day. In any case, not on the first opus because Adam made it clear that integrating an online experience was still in the studio’s projects.
Instead of focusing on one big online experience – or one game – we’re working to one day integrate e-commerce across all of our franchises. We are building online technology that can be seamlessly integrated into the development of our future games.