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Cyberpunk 2077 studio co-founder explains what went wrong

Marcin Iwinski appeared in a video on Twitter apologizing for the debacle.

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The studio behind Cyberpunk 2077 offered an explanation and an apology for the game's problems. 

 Scott Stein/CNET

CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcin Iwinski shared an apology and an explanation Wednesday for what went wrong with Cyberpunk 2077's launch last month. The game debuted with many unfixed bugs, leading to dramatic performance problems on Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One. It also struggled on new devices like Microsoft's  Xbox Series X and Sony's  PlayStation 5. 

"Despite good reviews on PC, the console version of Cyberpunk 2077 did not meet the quality standard we wanted it to meet," Iwinski said in a video shared online. "I and the entire leadership team are deeply sorry for this, and this video is me publicly owning up to that. Please don't fault any of our teams for what happened."

He shared in-depth explanations for what went wrong, starting with the fact that the studio wanted "to make the game look epic on PCs" and then adjust for consoles, especially older ones. While this strategy didn't look too difficult at first, "I think that time has proven that we've underestimated the task," Iwinski said.

The primary issue, Iwinski added, is that the studio had to constantly improve its in-game streaming system for old-gen consoles. Because the game's city is so packed and old-gen consoles don't have the best disk bandwidth, the studio was "constantly challenged." Testing didn't show many of the issues players would later experience, he said.

"As we got closer to the final release, we saw significant improvements each and every day, and we really believed we'd deliver in the final day zero update," Iwinski said.

He also cited challenges brought on by COVID-19 work-from-home restrictions. "A lot of the dynamics we normally take for granted got lost over video calls or email."

Iwinski concluded by saying the studio's ultimate goal is to fix bugs and crashes across platforms. Patches will be rolling out regularly, with the first update coming out within 10 days, followed by "another, more significant one in the following weeks."

See also: Cyberpunk 2077: How to get a full refund before the Dec. 21 deadline