GYGO: It’s Still Basically All About Cyberpunk

Warning: This GYGO contains discussion of death threats and other gross behaviors from entitled people at all levels of power within the gaming community.

Cyberpunk 2077 Delayed Again

So, Cyberpunk 2077 got delayed again, this time for three weeks, pushing release back from Nov. 19th to Dec. 10th.

This move, while undoubtedly necessary to ensure peak performance across the 1.5 million platforms this game is supposed to be playable on, has had far-reaching ramifications for the game and the community, and dominated the news cycle this week for better or worse. Well, definitely mostly for worse.

Developers CD Projekt Red were already under fire for going back on a previous promise of no crunch, and this most recent delay does not appear to mean employees will be getting a reprieve. In fact, Jason Schreier reported on comments from co-CEO Adam Kicinski that crunch was “not that bad” that he later apologized to employees for:

This negative press was accompanied by white-hot gamer rage, but these gamers weren’t mad about poor working conditions. Rather, they took to the internet and sent death threats to developers like Andrzej Zawadzki demanding the game be released. Zawadzki posted about it on Twitter, but it’s been linked instead of copied here because, well, death threats.

The delay also has had material repercussions for CDPR, with stock dropping as they get more and more negative press:

Finally, this delay officially pushes Cyberpunk out of consideration for any major awards in 2020, since it will be released too late in the year:

It remains to be seen if being considered for 2021 awards a full year after its release will damage the game’s chances at earning coveted GOTYs.

But Enough About Cyberpunk

In other gaming news this week, another delay was announced, this time for the crank-based handheld device the Playdate:

Orders are now scheduled for early next year and they’re promising an exciting game lineup, which is saying something from the people who published Untitled Goose Game and Firewatch.

Also, PlayStation announced the new PS Plus games for November, including a delightful surprise for those few lucky enough to snag a PS5 pre-order:

Dropping what will undoubtedly be GOTY for free is a bold move, but we’ll see how this goes for Sony and Bugsnax.