How Much Did CD Projekt Spend to Save Cyberpunk 2077? A Lot
The abysmal condition of Cyberpunk 2077 at launch meant that CD Projekt had to dig deep into its wallet to regain the trust of fans.
Since its release Cyberpunk 2077 has come a long, hard way. The 2020 game from CD Projekt RED was far from what the gamers had hoped for, at least in terms of technical condition. A plethora of bugs and poor optimization on previous-gen consoles meant that the studio faced its toughest task to date - salvaging not only the company's reputation, but also the game's.
Thus began the arduous process of fixing the title, which culminated in the release of the groundbreaking update 2.0, followe by the release of the Phantom Liberty DLC. As a result Cyberpunk 2077 no longer resembles what it was in 2020. However, this involved huge expenses.
During yesterday's financial results presentation, CD Projekt revealedthat the cost of developing Phantom Liberty amounted to 275 million zlotys (roughly $63 million). An additional PLN 95 million (about $21 million) was spent on the marketing campaign. This brings the total to 370 million zlotys, or nearly $84 million. Interestingly, the creation of the base game amounted to 174 million dollars.
This is not the end of the story, however, as to the amount spent to salvage the reputation of Cyberpunk 2077 one should also add the cost of porting the game to current-gen consoles and developing update 2.0. According to data provided by CD Projekt (via Kotaku), these activities cost the company PLN 178 million (about $40 million).
Adding up all the above expenses , it comes out that the Polish company has already invested PLN 548 million or, if you prefer, about $125 million in saving Cyberpunk 2077. These figures are proof of how expensive game development is these days. Making any mistake during their production can have serious consequences for the developers. Fortunately, in this case, Cyberpunk 2077 got a happy ending.
