 2021. Here we go. Thank you to everyone that watched the Hades video. I had a lot of fun making that, and I'm really excited to be here even though we have a little bit of a negative topic to talk about. A big, uh, bloomberg, which I can't even read because it's making me subscribe $2 a month or 300 a year to read this article. Thankfully Jason Shryer. Sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong, Jayboy. Sorry if you hate being called Jayboy, Jayboy. Broke down some of the most important parts from the article. This is everything that went wrong with Cyberpunk 277. They interviewed a bunch of CD projects staff to get their opinion on what happened, and a lot of this now makes a lot of sense in the video I made, which by the way, if you haven't watched that video, probably watch that before this. I think it's safe to say that everyone did since it's one of my best performing videos on my channel ever, which thank you. I worked so hard on that video, and it's by far the biggest project I've ever done. The music video, writing that, coming up with the lyrics, singing it. Eric, my friend, helped me mix the whole thing. He played the music. That music video in itself took longer than one of my normal videos, and it was just three minutes in a 50-minute video. I was really proud of it, but worried about how it would perform, but also worried how people would perceive it because it's a big release that a lot of people were enjoying, and I was putting this video out there kind of, well, I was gonna say hating on it, but I really didn't. I really just showed the game for what it was. But anyway, this is kind of a follow-up to it. I want to go through all of this as positive as possible. You know, I don't want my first video of the year to be a poopy-smoopy negative one. We're just gonna read this, and then once we're done going through this, eye-opening experience, they actually have an apology video that I've watched, and I think that this is gonna be really interesting to watch together after we've read all of this. It's gonna hit differently than they intended. With that said, if you're new here, weird video for you to start on, but I'd appreciate a like. Subscribe if you want. Let's crack open it to start the year. This video is sponsored, by the way. Could be here. Could be later. Might be later. So Jason says, What went wrong with Cyberpunk 2077? Interviews with more than 20 current and former CD project staff paint a complex picture, unchecked ambition, technical woes, unrealistic deadlines, and above all, one belief. We made Witcher 3. It'll work out. Devs at CD Project said despite promises that Crunch would not be mandatory, they felt pressured to work overtime on and off for years. This goes into Crunch, which is essentially employees having to work overtime to meet the deadlines that the higher-ups set. And while the higher-ups did say on record publicly in tweets and everywhere online that there would not be mandatory Crunch, what that meant was other people had to pick up the slack for those that didn't want to Crunch. Nobody should have to work overtime. There were reports of people working 13-hour days for the entire week and then ended up quitting because they were too stressed out and they couldn't handle it. It seems like you could say to your management, I can't do Crunch. I don't want to work overtime when they'd be like, okay, it's not mandatory. But that means everyone else needs to pick up the slack because we've got to get this game out by December, which is essentially Crunch. That's like when my old job at Burger King told me they weren't going to fire me for taking a bottle of water before paying for it. But they would highly recommend I quit. I don't know if it's actually like that at all, but that's a true story. Veteran devs from other companies were shocked at CD Projekt Red's free-for-all production. One example, if someone needed a shader, they would make it with no pipeline in place to determine whether someone had already made one with the same function. When you're making a game, there's a lot of assets that are open to you. In this case, we're talking about shaders. Rather than have some kind of plan in place, they were just kind of left with a free-for-all mentality of if you need something, you've got to make it. So they were having to make things that they might have already had access to, but they didn't know. That takes a lot of time, a lot of extra time, days maybe. It goes back to the mismanagement that we talked about in my video, but also that you're going to see here. Anthem's developers talked about Bioware Magic, an unwavering belief that with hard enough work and Crunch, their games could come together. This is funny, actually, because I'm not funny. I thought it would be fun if I had a follow-up video where I just kind of looked at very disappointing games from the past. And so I've been looking at a lot of games, and a lot of Bioware's games ended up on that list, Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem. A thing I kept reading when I was looking up why these games failed so bad was that they only really went into full production in the last couple of years of the development cycle, and a lot of it came down to what they called Bioware Magic, the last like six months or so where the game would come together. And it seems like CD Projekt had a similar mentality of in the last few months, last six months, it'll come together, but it didn't, because that wasn't enough time. So it goes into a lot about the developers and what they went through, of course, like them only getting paid 400 a month after several years of working there. They upgraded to 700 a month, which is nothing for the job they're doing. And I do want to say that I titled my video CD Projekt Are All Liars. I did Aminar about that for the longest time. The reason why I went with it was because it rhymed mostly. Terrible excuse. Like I know not everyone there were liars, and I did say that in the video, and a lot of what they went through sounds awful, like absolutely horrible. And I want to reiterate one more time that I know not every dev or everyone that worked on the game lied. I am talking about the company itself, and specifically this man who we'll get to. Okay, this is where it starts getting, it gets juicy. If you're wondering just how much Cyberpunk 2077 changed over the past decade, wow. Up to 2016, it was a third person game. Features that were originally envisioned were running flying cars. Car ambushes were cut along the way. This sucks, but it is interesting and kind of cool because flying cars especially called it. Flying cars was something that I pulled out of my brain space because of that Easter egg in Witcher 3. And also it just seems obvious that you would have flying cars in the future. And I am not surprised at all that they were cut because the game I can tell you wouldn't be able to handle it. But the third person game too, like that's crazy. I know a lot of us expected it to be a third person game coming off of the Witcher when it went first person. It was like, okay, we'll give it a chance, but it did seem weird. And I think it's very telling that it changed so late in development. The way the character actually acts is kind of ridiculous when you can actually see it. The animations for the character are not good. For an eight year development cycle to get three years close to launch and cut something as huge as that, pretty crazy. If you're wondering why the police system in Cyberpunk is so janky, well it was all done at the last minute. As is evident by the final product. This is people that worked at the company saying this. One of the things that people definitely can't dispute is how ridiculous the police system is. But I have seen some people try and defend it and say they like it like that. You can only defend it to a point, especially when the people working there are like, if you're wondering why it's bad, it's because we throw it in at the last second. It was unclear to some of the team why they were trying to make an RPG and a GDA with the fraction of Rockstar Star. Again, I said in my video, Red Dead was made in eight years. And they made this game essentially in half the time with half the team. It was never going to happen. Not the way that they were promising and not the way they envisioned. The game that was promised needed four more years. A competent game needed at least two more years. But the fact that this police system was thrown in last minute and essentially is just when you do a crime, they will pop up immediately. It kind of takes you off guard, doesn't it? Like they just pop up and they do so much damage so quickly. You die really before you can really register what's happening. And I think that was the intent. They're supposed to just pop up, overwhelm, you kill you and respawn before you start realizing how janky it is. In conclusion, Cyberpunk was announced eight years ago, but development didn't really start until 2016. In 2018, they had little but mostly a fake demo. I can't remember if I actually mentioned this in the video. I know I talked about it, but I might have cut it out. I tried to stick to facts. And me saying this trailer was fake is me kind of having an opinion and throwing it out there like it's a fact. So I didn't want to say it, but I do feel it's pretty obvious and it's confirmed here. Just look at it. The NPCs are acting normal. They're acting like real people walking around with actual like walking cycles and animations. It looks good is what I'm trying to say. It looks good and it looks more real than whatever the crowds ended up looking like bumping into each other with horrible walk animations. It looked really good and you can tell that that trailer is fake. If you're wondering what that means by fake, it essentially means that they mocked up that trailer and then they kind of went to work designing the game to look like the trailer, whether they could hit that or not. Another example, Anthem's original trailer, the really cool one where they fly around and they shoot things. I do believe that that was a fake trailer too, because that's kind of the game that EA wanted and then the devs had to go to work after that trailer was launched, essentially making what people saw in the trailer. They had to try and put that together. You can see here that that's what happened again. They wanted to show something in 18, but they had little to show. So they released a fake trailer and then went to work trying to build that game in 18? So with two years left? Most of the staff knew and openly said it wouldn't be ready for release in 2020, but management believed in CD Project Magic. Again, that magic being the game just coming together. It seems like Cyberpunk was really made in two years. It started in 16, but they had little in 18. So it had four years, but really it was made in the last two years, which is the same story of some of the biggest failures in gaming that we've had. The same company that made Witcher 3, they had to have known. But now that we've seen all that, we've heard what the devs actually had to say about the development. Let's see what the management, what the higher ups again chose to tell us in this five minute apology video that says our commitment to quality. And this is what I meant by CD Project are all liars. I don't mean the devs. The devs are out here trying their hardest and the devs are even out here telling their side of the story. I consider CD Project to be management and the people that tells us things like the Twitter account, this man, people in charge. It doesn't extend to every visual artist that worked on the game. You know what I mean? I do apologize for that. My name is Marcin Iwinski. I'm the co-founder of CD Project. When CD Project red, the game development part of CD Project was born. The ambition to make the best games in the world. I don't have much to say about that other than you could have. You had the vision to make one of, if not the greatest game ever released. You had the hype for it. You had the team for it. You had everything for it. You just chose to release it way too early. And despite good reviews on PC, the console version of Cyberpunk 2077 did not meet the quality standard. Rubbs me weird when he says despite great reviews on PC, it's kind of blowing off a lot of the issues that we talked about, but a lot of issues that we've all had with the game. We know it looks great on PC. I played it on PC and I recorded hundreds of bugs and glitches. You know, let's talk about another reason why it got great reviews on PC. Because you only sent out review codes for the game for PC. You didn't send out console review codes until like the day or the day before the game released. The big publications all got your game weeks early on PC, reviewed it on Metacritic and then you drop it on consoles and it's an absolute disaster. And then obviously the console gamers aren't rating it as I. It's great. It's a great game on PC. I don't know. I don't like that. I and the entire leadership team are deeply sorry for this and this video is me publicly owning up to that. Please don't fault any of our teams for what happened. That in itself I love. They're owning up to it. They're acknowledging the fact that a lot of us were frustrated. They all are incredibly talented and hardworking. They are and you pushed them way too far to get this game out. Myself and the board are the final decision makers and it was our call to release the game. Can you believe that? There's so much more clarity once you read that article or the dot points of that article and then watch this to know that the dev team were saying to management this game's not ready. I can only come up with a couple of reasons why you would want to. One, you just want the money. You just wanted out. You don't want to spend any more time on dev development. Can't imagine why that would be a good idea since you could have made so much more money if this ended up being like a GDA 5 that you could re-release a billion times and make a ton of money off of it. The only other reason I can think of is that you were just so out of touch with your team and you just did not understand that the game wasn't done. You didn't play it. You didn't look at it. You weren't there for the development and you just trusted that it would get done. I can't imagine a third reason other than being out of touch with your own dev team and the game or money. But we made it even more difficult for ourselves by wanting to make the game look epic on PCs and then adjusting it to consoles. The only really excuse he gives for why it took so long is that. He said they focused on making it look amazing on PC. Making the game look amazing doesn't make it fun. I think the time has proven that we've underestimated the task. I don't know if you underestimated the task or you underestimated how much time it would take to complete the task, which is something else I said in my video. And as it turned out, our testing did not show a big part of the issues you experienced while playing the game. No, it did. I just struggled to believe it so much. Like, what were they playing the game on if they didn't have any of the issues we were experiencing? You experienced none of the issues that everyone else had. So what happened once you launched the game? Did the game change? Did you launch a different version of the game, an older version on accident? How could you experience none of the issues? And then you go back and people working there told you it wasn't ready. What do you think they meant by it wasn't ready? On launch day, December 10th, we hit the ground running with a really good start on PC. While not perfect, it's a version of Cyberpunk. We are very proud of that. That line strikes me as really strange. The whole thing about this game was coming when it's ready. So why wasn't it perfect if you released it? Like you are saying right now, we released a version on PC that while it wasn't perfect, it was a version we were very proud of. You know, a lot of people blamed outside media for overhyping the game or getting themselves hyped up. There was actually, let me let me look it up real quick. So a lot of people blamed gamers themselves for overhyping the game and then being let down by the game. But in the very first ever reveal trailer, eight years ago, there was a secret message. You're probably curious about the release date. It's currently scheduled a way off in 2015. Development didn't even start till the year after that. But in truth, the delivery date is more like when it's done. We will release Cyberpunk to you when we are convinced it's nothing but pure refined, unadulterated awesome. We want it to be the most kick ass futuristic RPG ever. Okay, maybe this sounds pretty bully, but it's our actual goal. You judge if we deliver. While not perfect, it's a version of Cyberpunk we're proud of, they lost, they lost sight. While working from home with all the challenges resulting from the COVID related restrictions. Obviously, it's easy to blame COVID, but COVID did ravage everything last year and it would have made things hard for them leading up to launch. So don't release the game. Now I'd like to tell you about our plans for the future. Our ultimate goal is to fix the bugs and crushes gamers are experiencing cross-platform. I couldn't imagine anything more sad than being a developer that worked even two years, if not four years on a game. And now the game being crapped on from every angle and your job is to now sit there trying to fix the game that everyone's already experienced just trying to fix it somehow. We decided to focus on the most important fixes and updates first and we'll be releasing the DLCs afterwards. The next gen console update. I don't get why this was a number one priority anyway. Okay, they didn't have much time to begin with a couple years and then the last six months were scrambling to get the game together, even adding in things like police mechanics at the last minute. And somewhere in there they were scrambling to try and get PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions up and running stable, which they couldn't even manage to pull that off. Nowhere in that did they even have time to think about next gen. That should be number one priority. Why focus so hard on the older versions, which clearly aren't working out, ignoring this was a huge mistake in my opinion. But that coming after free DLCs, I don't know how I feel about that. I really feel like this should be priority number one. Thank you for taking the time to watch this video. I watched this before reading all that stuff. I still kind of rolled my eyes at a lot of it. I am glad that they said something and that there was an apology on behalf of the team, but it doesn't really change anything, does it? The game's still the game. It's the game that we got and now that it's out, it's a matter of just trying to patch what's there and fix what's there, but the game is what it is. Honestly, it could have been the most badass and incredible futuristic RPG we've ever seen. They had the vision for it and they had the team for it, but it went through development hell for whatever reason and then was released way too early and now they're scrambling to fix what's there. It's an interesting situation and it is a shame and I do feel bad for the dev teams that worked hard on the game and put in the hours and did what they could. Again, if you've enjoyed the game, then that's great. I'm really happy for you really because there is things to enjoy in there, especially if you don't play a lot of games in general, you know, and you just wanted to pick up cyberpunk and run through it and blast through it. A lot of the issues might not bother you. You're just there to have some fun, blast some enemies, watch some Keanu Reeves, hit the credits and move on to the next game. That's fine, but a hardcore veteran gamer like myself. I wanted to do a follow up and watch this because everyone was sharing it to me like crazy and I do find it really interesting and also it brings delight. A lot of the issues that I hadn't talked about and kind of concrete a lot of it as there are issues and this is kind of why. I hope you liked the last couple of things I made that took a lot of work and you can expect more cool videos like that moving forward and a lot of my usual content. I hope you had a great holiday season. I am back, I'm refreshed, I'm raring to go. I love you all and I'll see you all in the next one. Thank you for taking the time to watch this video.