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The success of the anime has brought curious viewers back to the game.
2020’s Cyberpunk 2077 was a deeply controversial game release. Despite the game’s incredibly ambitious design, the release was severely hampered by a glut of bugs and glitches, as well as worrying stories of severe crunch from its developer, CD Projekt Red. The game was in such a broken state that it was temporarily delisted from the PlayStation store, not returning until June of 2021.
In the time since then, the developers have been quietly rolling out a series of patches for the game, fixing bugs and repairing glitches, but the initial reception had already done severe damage to the game’s reputation. However, in the past couple of weeks, the game has suddenly seen a resurgence in sales and active players on Steam thanks to the release of the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime on Netflix.
Reception to the anime was so positive that it got many viewers curious about the game on which it was based, and since the game is in a much more complete state now, the new reception has been more positive. One person that’s particularly happy about this resurgence is the game’s quest director Pawel Sasko.
Each day of this week Night City has been visited by 1 million players, both new and returning.
We wanted to use this opportunity to thank you for being with us and playing the game. Thanks, Chooms! 💛 pic.twitter.com/zqggblztF8— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) September 21, 2022
“It’s hard to express, when you’re putting so much heart and work into something,” Sasko said in a livestream on his personal Twitch channel. “And you know for some of us it’s been six, seven, eight years sometimes, especially for those who started at the very beginning. So, to have this moment, of people liking something that we did, it’s really feeling a bit unreal. That finally people are appreciating it.”
“After the release, I couldn’t believe – after some time, I did – but at the beginning I couldn’t believe, and I remember […] my dear girlfriend, she was seeing me f—— completely wrecked,” said Sasko. “But it’s good to be back. It’s f—— good to be back. That was really so heartbreaking.”
