The District of California Central District Court has granted a settlement settlement of $1.85 million in shareholder claims against CD Projects for the release of Cyberpunk 2077.
Judge Fernando Holguin of the California Central District Court approved a $1.85 million (about 2.35 billion won) settlement in relation to the lawsuit filed by the investors through a 3rd time local time ruling. The original deal was made public via CD Project in December 2021, but Judge Holguin rejected the approval request in April last year and required more information to be submitted.
The investor cows started with a number of bugs that have been reported since the game’s 2020 release, the game not being able to run, and the store being removed. Initially, CD Project claimed that the game could be fully played on consoles of the time, but many errors occurred and it was removed from the PlayStation Store. A number of lawsuits were filed and the lawsuits were consolidated and heard in the Central District Court of California.
CD Projekt said in April 2021 that Cyberpunk 2077 helped the company sell 13.7 million copies, the highest ever for the company. It was also reported that only 30,000 copies were refunded, and that the record development cost of 1.2 billion zlotys (about 340 billion won) was only recouped with digital pre-orders.
However, the plaintiffs argued that despite the seemingly decent sales figures, US analysts lowered their sales forecasts by 65% and the company’s shares fell more than 50% in one year. CD project attorneys said that under this settlement, they would recover 16.7 percent of investors’ maximum anticipated loss of $11.02 million.
On the other hand, CDPR continued to improve gameplay elements, optimization and bugs that didn’t meet expectations. In particular, the interest in gaming has increased again through the Netflix animation Cyberpunk Edge Runner, which shares the worldview. As a result, both user ratings and sales speed have improved, and the company recently announced that it has surpassed 20 million copies in total sales of the game.
As the long-running 2020 lawsuit was resolved after two years, CDPR was able to focus more on developing the game. CD Project is currently planning to release Phantom Liberty, an expansion pack for Cyberpunk 2077, in 2023, and is developing a number of Witcher projects, including the recently released next-gen version of Witcher 3.
