Michał Nowakowski, joint CEO of CD Projekt Red, has no illusions about the long shadow cast by Cyberpunk 2077’s 2020 launch. In a recent conversation at DevGAMM Gdańsk, republished via Edge and covered by PC Gamer, he stated plainly that the studio lost the faith of some players indefinitely, despite the comprehensive fixes in the 2.0 update and the acclaimed Phantom Liberty expansion. The disastrous debut—marked by severe bugs on last-gen consoles, its removal from the PlayStation Store, and widespread refunds—left scars that polish alone could not erase for everyone.

Nowakowski described the situation as an incomplete “redemption arc,” acknowledging the heartbreak for both the team and fans while expressing hope that The Witcher 4, slated for no earlier than 2027, might win back some of the permanently disillusioned. The studio has leveraged the commercial success and lessons from Cyberpunk to expand into multiple projects, including Cyberpunk 2 and Project Hadar, but Nowakowski stressed they aim to avoid flooding the market with annual releases.

The admission lands with the quiet weight of institutional self-awareness: a once-hyped RPG that became a byword for broken launches now serves as a cautionary tale the company itself refuses to mythologize away. Trust, once fractured at that scale, does not always mend with patches and expansions.

The damage from that week in December 2020 lingers in the collective memory, a reminder that hype cycles can exact permanent costs.