OpenCritic accuses Cyberpunk’s developer of ‘deceptive and selfish behaviour’ over console reviews

Review aggregation site OpenCritic has issued a strongly worded statement criticising CD Projekt Red and added a warning to its Cyberpunk 2077 page about the disparities between the PC and console versions of the game.

Cyberpunk 2077 released on December 10 following three delays. The PC version of the game was made available pre-release for review purposes and was largely well received in spite of numerous bugs.

The early positive reception meant “the game quickly ascended into the OpenCritic Hall of Fame, with an initial top critic average of 91 placing it at #6 in our 2020 Hall of Fame,” OpenCritic co-founder Matthew Enthoven wrote in an article on Monday.

However, pre-launch access to the console versions of Cyberpunk 2077 was heavily restricted, and following its release the game’s performance on base PS4 and Xbox One consoles has been heavily criticised by fans and the media, with a Digital Foundry analysis calling it “not acceptable”.

OpenCritic, which aggregates product reviews on all platforms into a single score, has now added the following warning to its Cyberpunk 2077 page: “This game has significant disparities in performance, player experience, and review scores between the PC, next-gen consoles, Xbox One, and PS4 versions.

“The OpenCritic team and several critics suspect that the developer, CD Projekt Red, intentionally sought to hide the true state of the game on Xbox One and PS4, with requirements such as only allowing pre-rendered game footage in reviews and not issuing review copies for PS4 and Xbox One versions.”

Co-founder Enthoven claimed: “They did it knowing that what they were doing was wrong. It was deceptive, selfish, and exploitative.”

In a statement issued earlier on Monday, CD Projekt Red conceded it “should have paid more attention” to improving the performance of the game on last-gen consoles.

It pledged to improve the overall experience via future updates, but also said customers not wanting to keep the game could opt for a refund – something it would help them with if they were having difficulties getting one, which many consumers claim they are.

OpenCritic said it intends to remove its Cyberpunk 2077 console warning in February 2021, which is when CD Projekt plans to release the second of two “large patches” which “should fix the most prominent problems gamers are facing on last-gen consoles”.

In VGC’s Cyberpunk 2077 review, which was based on our time with the PC version of the game, our critic called it “a stunning achievement, if you can overlook the glitches”.

We’ll be publishing a review based purely on the last-gen console experience in the coming days.

Further reading

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