Adam Badowski, the studio head of CD Projekt Red, has responded to the recent report on the supposed fake demo at E3 and development issues of Cyberpunk 2077.
I’ve read your piece and tweets, thank you for the read. I have some thoughts. https://t.co/T3qACdrnwM pic.twitter.com/wuzy5lXoqQ
– Adam Badowski⚡️ (@AdamBadowski) January 16, 2021
Badowski turned to Twitter to respond to certain points of Jason Schreier’s Bloomberg article on Cyberpunk 2077, and first addressed the claim that the E3 demo was “completely bogus.”
“It’s hard for a demo of a game at a trade show not to be a vision test or a vertical cut two years before the game is released, but that doesn’t mean it’s a fake,” Badowski wrote. “Compare the demo to the game. Look at the scene from Dumdum or the car chase, or many other things. What people reading your article might not know is that the games are not made in a linear fashion and they start to look like as the final product only a few months before launch. If you watch that demo now, it’s different, yes, but that’s what the “work in progress” watermark is for. Our final game looks and plays way better than it ever did. it was that demo. “
“As for the ‘missing’ features, that’s part of the creation process. Features come and go as we see if they work or not. Also, car ambushes exist in the final game almost literally to what we show in the demo. And if we go into the detail about our launch, the vision we presented in this demo turned into something that scored multiple 9/10 and 10/10 on PC from many renowned niche media outlets in the world. As for consoles of the old generation, yes that is another case, but we have assumed that and we are working very hard to eliminate errors (also on PC, we know that it is not a perfect version either) and we are proud of Cyberpunk 2077 as a game and an artistic vision. Not what I would call disastrous. “
Badowski then responded to the claim that many Cyberpunk 2077 developers knew that the game would not be ready for release in 2020.
“He has spoken to 20 people, some of whom are former employees, only one of whom is not anonymous,” Badowski said. “I would not call that ‘the majority’ of the staff of more than 500 people who openly said what you say.”
Finally, Badowski addressed the claim that Polish-speaking employees would speak Polish in front of non-Polish employees, which “violated company rules” and made them feel “excluded”.
“Everyone here speaks English during meetings, all company-wide emails and announcements are in English, all of that is required,” explained Badowski. “The general rule is to switch to English when there is a person who does not speak a certain language in an informal conversation. However, it is quite normal for Germans to speak German, Poles to speak Polish, Spanish to speak Spanish, and so on (there are 44 nationalities in the study) when there is no one else. We are working in a multicultural environment. If the question is whether it is difficult to move to another country, sometimes another culture, and work and live there, then the answer is yes. But that is universal for all companies around the world, and we’re doing everything we can to ease that transition. “
Schreier responded to Badowski’s message, saying “CD Projekt decided not to answer specific questions or make Badowski available for our article, so it’s interesting to see these comments coming in now.”
He also mentioned that he regrets bringing up the language issue as it has received a “disproportionate amount of attention and it is not a big issue” but also notes that Badowski did not address the “crunch brutal and an unrealistic schedule. “
To learn more about Cyberpunk 2077, see CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcin Iwiński’s public apology for the unstable launch of Cyberpunk 2077 and how he claims the next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X / S update is coming in the ” second half “of 2021.
