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'Cyberpunk 2077' Loses Massive 79% Of Player Base On Steam

'Cyberpunk 2077' Loses Massive 79% Of Player Base On Steam

The most hyped game of the century has faced countless bugs, controversies, refunds and player losses, even with over 13 million copies sold.

The most hyped game of the century has faced countless bugs, controversies, refunds and player losses, even with over 13 million copies sold.

Credit | TechRadar

Cyberpunk 2077 has been an incredibly successful mess. Yes, both a mess, and incredibly successful. Over 13 million copies are rumored to have been sold, with over 8 million having been sold exclusively in preorders. The game’s received quite a bit of criticism however, due to the massive amount of unfinished and unpolished parts of the game, as well as the countless bugs.

The game ran wayyyy better on PC than on consoles, if at all, but apparently that wasn’t enough to keep the PC going strong for the game. Cyberpunk 2077’s a complicated game of multiple genres. I’d classify it as a first person shooter, role playing, open-world, dystopian action game. That plays into this article later.

A report by GitHyp, a gaming statistics website, has noted that Cyberpunk 2077 launched at over 1 million concurrent players back in December. While that’s quite impressive, the game has already sunk to under 250k players remaining.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s still incredibly high. Most games only have a few thousand players, and Cyberpunk places in the top 5-10 games, with the likes of CS:GO or Dota. Most games also happen to lose around 60-70% of their playerbase within a few months, if they happen to be single player as well.

Where this doesn’t make sense, is when you take into account fellow open world, role playing games. These games hold on to their playerbases for much longer, sometimes even gaining fans and players over time. Open world games generally have more content and are more engaging with players, therefore keeping them around for longer.

Compare this to The Witcher 3, also developed by CDPR, which took multiple months to lose the same percentage of its fanbase as CP2077:

While this might be shocking for many people to find out, and might seem dangerous for CDPR, there’s really likely nothing to worry about. The company’s had some massive headwinds with refunds and bugs yes, but they’ve stated that they recouped development costs before the game even launched.

That was before a statement saying an additional ‘5 million copies sold’ was announced, and that was also before many people got access to the game. This alone is likely going to push the company further into profits, helping them to keep pushing out games.

Along with that bit of information, it’s likely that tons of people have seen the issues with the game, and will wait. Hundreds of millions of people have gaming consoles, 90% of which can’t play this game at all, with like 5% that can play this game incredibly poorly. People are likely waiting for performance tweaks or to upgrade to a better console.

A lot of the criticism for the game ironically isn’t even pointed towards bugs or console problems, but towards something a little more important: the story.

Gamers have said that the plot, setting, and quests for the game have felt incomplete or lacking, with no real want to continue with the game’s story. That’s an issue along requests for changes to the game’s combat and difficulty. Luckily for CDPR, a lot of these issues are easy to fix. This could push Cyberpunk 2077 to be a game more like No Man’s Sky, a cult classic. 

No Man’s Sky started off with amazing promises, failed, lost its player base, then grinded, released free DLC, and completely revamped the game. If CDPR could pull a move like Hello Games, then it could really work out.

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While it’s likely that CDPR and Cyberpunk 2077’s launch will go down in infamy, there’s still a big chance that the game can evolve into a lovable title with a dedicated fan base, continuous patches, new DLC, and added multiplayer. This could really work out eventually for CD Projekt Red and the playerbase of the game.