I think that's what they're going for to be honest: "we didn't think it was this bad, it was kinda rushed, but that's because we were aiming for something oh so cool, we're sorry, now we'll get to fixing it." Of course it's just PR mop-up, another page from the book of PR tactics.

Same as their support staff put on cute faces and talk cutesies like little kids, so that you feel bad about getting angry with them (that anger is misdirected anyway). My point being: this is the same level of tactics you'd expect from a SWAT team, it's not exactly all left to chance or thrown together in a quick meeting.

Some of it is calculated corpo tactics, just like, well... you can see in the game :). CDPR is not a good guy or a bad guy - it's a business, and its goal, much like that of other businesses, is to make money. Leveraging anything they can pull off without getting hit financially.

To me GOGs foundation is its DRM Free principle and should be there number 1 priority. Sadly, there are a number of games on the store that have broken this principle and are not 100% DRM Free. Worse of all one of these games is Cyberpunk 2077 which is especially bad as it weakens their own argument that DRM is not needed.

This will hurt them when there try to get new game on the store and GOG says "it has to be DRM Free to be on are store" and there turn around and go but your own games are not even 100% DRM Free, why should we? You don’t even believe it yourself.

So, to regain my trust I would like to see them taking action against all the games that are not 100% DRM Free, start with saying there have to patch the games to be 100% DRM Free and if there don’t play ball, delist them from the store till there agree to GOGs foundation DRM Free principle.

There are also other issues I would like to see addressed but the main one is making sure the store is 100% truly DRM Free in offline installers.

1. Provide clear upfront communication about what they are going to do to fix the game both in general and per-platform going forward and an approximate time scale.

2. Do not announce even the development or intention to provide any paid expansion packs until AFTER the game has been fixed satisfactorily.

3. Issue a public promise to continue to support and patch the game for years if necessary to make it what they intended for it to be, and what they showed off in marketing materials that it would be.

The developer of No Man's Sky - Hello Games a few years ago released a game that was missing over 100 features they promised would be there, and hyped their game up to massive sales, and at $66 CAD for what was an indy game too. It became one of the most hated new release games of all time and dropped to ultra low ranking on Steam and elsewhere. Since then, the developers of the game have continued to develop and patch the game with new content and feature updates for 4 years now, all as free updates to the game. I have to admit that I was shocked that they didn't take the money and run, they actually supported their game and tried to come true to their promises despite not being able to meet them at launch.

As a result, in many people's eyes Hello Games has redeemed themselves, and the game's popularity and acceptance has only grown over time while rescuing them from one of the lowest rated games on Steam to something much better than that, currently holding a 66% positive rating with 144808 total reviews so far. It has a 95% positive rating over the last 30 days showing that the company's dedication to their game and their customers over time - despite fucking up big time at launch, have managed to do the right thing and earn back trust and respect in the process.

CD Projekt RED did an amazing job with the release of The Witcher 3, and patching up bugs in the game post-launch and IMHO did a great job of supporting their product and winning over fans across the board. I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077 since release day and while I'm enjoying the main story and side quests, it is pretty clear that Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that was released way before it was properly ready for release in order to hit the holiday season sales window and avoid displeasing investors by missing the window. Having said that, there are other ways to displease investors, like releasing a product before it is ready and having the entire Internet come down on you hard for doing so. #JustSaying

I have had a huge amount of faith in CDPR and in GOG over the years through thick and thin, and more often than not they fix things when they screw up. I don't expect anyone or any company to be perfect or to not screw things up sometimes, but I do expect that when they screw something up that they own up to it like a boss, and then commit fully to correcting the situation, and then executing that to a T.

Will they complete the development of the game to make it what it was supposed to be? Will they patch the multitude of bugs/flaws in the game to bring it up to par with the experience of their former titles? Can they save face now in light of their blunders and botched launch in the eyes of gamers? Time will tell. They should be contacting Hello Games now and asking for tips on how to fix things over the next several years.

Having said all of that, I'm more disappointed in the company than with the game overall. The story and side quests are pretty good, but the game has the crappiest NPC vehicle and pedestrian AI I've ever seen in any game ever. Many have said the city feels unlived in and sterile and I'd have to agree. People walking around like brainless robots for example, or trying to just take a step without bumping into someone and having a 3 mile radius around you panic like you are a terrorist for daring to bump into someone, then being shot to death by police that spawn in 10 feet away... just for accidentally bumping into someone due to the stupid dodge mechanic being too easy to trigger. <sigh>

I have seriously mixed feelings about the game. Going to withhold a full review until I've completed the game at least, and potentially until they've had a chance to patch it up significantly.

Witcher 3 was soooooooooo good, and I felt bad for only paying $37 with loyalty discount for what I deemed to be the best game ever made. I told my friends they should have charged $80 for it like any other AAA game, and that Cyberpunk should be $80 due to its likely epicness. I was happy to pay $80 for it in fact, feeling they earned the money for Witcher 3 being so good. But right now I'm feeling like they have taken advantage of everyone's trust and good sentiments and just hardline cashed in on it.

I guess every party has to come to an end.

Historically I've never bought pre-order games nor new releases in the past, but I started with Witcher 3 and it was a solid bet. Cyberpunk's current state I can't say the same, and that coming on the tail of GOG's announcement of integrating Epic Games and potentially other storefronts into Galaxy. It hurts me to say it, but I wont be buying CDPR pre-orders or new releases of games or expansion packs but will be waiting a bare minimum to see post-release reviews #knockonwood in the future as with all other game companies. Who knows, maybe I'll just wait until they become freebies on Epic Games Store and claim them for free through Galaxy client? #OofTooSoon

Honestly, I don't hate the company and I'm not even angry. I'm just extremely disappointed, but more disappointed at how bad it is for everyone else especially console players after all of the marketing hype etc.

So... I don't buy Early Access games... but Subnautica is one of the best games I ever played and Unknown Worlds has provided amazing long term support for the game, backporting fixes to the engine etc. from their sequel in progress Subnautica Below Zero. I've been eagerly awaiting the release of this game for eons also and it is now announced that it's being released on January 5th, and with a price bump to $29.99USD. I decided to buy it yesterday to get the early access pricing, and because the company has earned my trust by how well they've supported the first Subnautica game, plus Below Zero has 93% positive reviews on Steam. Will I regret this? Who knows, but it very well may be the last pre-order or new release purchase I make for years to come now after the big let down of the Cyberpunk release overall.

Please do the right thing and fix the game CD Projekt RED. You screwed up, but that can be forgiven if you do the right things and communicate properly. It's all up to you and how you want your company to be seen going forward. I want you to succeed and for us to get more games from you in the future, but you've got some work to do now to set things right.

They already did. Then they and ALL other companies should start allowing games where you can go full on trashin', smashin' and bashin'
those LGBT and other "protected" groups, allowing mildly racist jokes etc-etc. Because not allowing is also is also a censorship.

But... states and public entities without any censorship exist only in dreams of libertarians and anarchists, not in real life.

But let me remind you that main goal for commercial companies is to make profit, not political statements. Chinese market is big so between trendy outrage on "bad China" and money from Chinese customers they will choose the money. Same applies to bunch of kids who want to ban all trade with China. Imagine that happening. China won't be going anywhere because Asia will be trading with them as usual. Also China working on making internal market bigger.
So if that will happen those kids will have a surprised pikachu faces when they will go to buy a new PC and will see $6999 price tag, $3000 phones etc. Like it was 35 years ago. When average office PC was about 2500-3500 of *those* dollars.

Because a huge part of why consumer electronics prices went down that much is because China has a HUGE deposit of rare earth elements which are required to make electronic components. (other part is cutting costs here and there, that's why stuff doesn't last for 30 years anymore). And if they will stop selling those to the West... oops. Сonsole version should have stayed in the oven for a few more months, PC - for 2-3 at least.

And what people don't realize is that the only way to make companies to stop selling unfinished versions on release day is passing the law that forces companies to refund any products with serious bugs/faults as soon as user requests it unless it's marked as early access before release and start of pre-orders.

That will make releasing unfinished products unprofitable so shareholders etc. will stop pushing developers to release stuff on specific date (holidays, whatever) but when it's actually ready for release aka in case of games - no game breaking bugs and adequate performance on hardware that meets minimal system requirements.

Or else it will be going on and on and we'll be getting situations like this one or worse - Fallout 76, Sonic'06 (long list continues) all the time.

Can you point to some specific examples of games that trash on minority groups, which have been censored from GOG.com? Bearing in mind also that GOG is supposedly a 'curated' store, so they would also need to meet a minimum level of quality to qualify for being published here in the first place.

Devotion has had some very good reviews and by all accounts I have seen appears to be good game. I would genuinely buy it and play it, if it were offered here.

With regard to CD Projekt Red and their CP2077, well, the launch was a quite a bit of a shitshow. But this has happened before with other developers and publishers, and from experience one can expect that eventually the most severe bugs will get fixed. Just don't ask me how long this would take. But, are we here talking about "restoring trust" or rather about the reestablishment of romantical worship of a games company?

True, and i agree with your explanation.
But at least for me, this also means no purchases from GOG anymore. Not that i expect this to have any effect whatsoever as long as only i and a few dozen other people do it. But hey, i do what i can...


On a side note, i find the whole pre-orders circus that's so prevalent in the video games market far more of a shitshow than CP2077's launch.

Uuuuuuuuh!

I like that!

This, but neither GOG nor CDPR cares: heck, they went with the "my reward" BS, and this is only the tip of the iceberg; if you access to the my reward page, you can read that they want to keep giving "free stuff" from there. What does that means? A bunch of cut content for people like us who don't want to have it locked against 1) a client and 2) an active internet connection.

DRM-FREE my ass.

I'm not going to trust them but here's what would have to happen for me to give them any money again:

1. Release Devotion and I'll buy it at full price. I'll also consider making other purchases with GOG (until they make another inexcusable move). If they release Detention (Red Candle's other game), I'll instantly buy it too.

2. Requires (1) first. Allow the Cyberpunk 2077 locked content to be enabled with offline installers, and I'll instantly buy Cyberpunk 2077. One of the "rewards" is apparently a GOG Galaxy shirt, I don't need that one. They should provide an offline-installer shirt instead, but nothing is also fine. I don't care about other issues in the game, I expect they'll eventually be fixed as that's their only hope to make more money from it.

3. Requires (1) and (2) first. If they want me to pre-order any game, commit to making preload files (if any) available without the use of GOG Galaxy. Otherwise, no preorders from me, ever.

If even (1) doesn't happen, I have decided that from now on 0% of my money will go to CD Projekt Group. Thank you.

To give away The Witcher III.

Are you implying that not having DRM makes a game better?
DRM has nothing to do with the quality of a game