Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Sony has finally removed the Cyberpunk 2077 video game from its PlayStation Store. Sony’s action shocked analysts of the global gaming industry and added to the decline in the stock price of CD Projekt, the Polish game developer.
In a brief statement, the Japanese company’s gaming unit, Sony Interactive Entertainment, said it was “trying to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction” and would offer gamers a full refund for the digital copy of the game.
Meanwhile, CNBC International noted, the shares of the Polish Cyberpunk developer, CD Projekt, in the Warsaw Exchange, collapsed by 20% last Friday due to this news, then the decline in its shares decreased at closing to minus 12.23%.
The company’s market value has lost about US $ 1.4 billion since the game was released on December 10. Analysts say it’s rare for a console, including PS, to remove AAA-type games because of quality issues.
AAA Game is a classification for a game with a very large production budget (usually above US $ 50-100 million), both on a production and distribution scale.
Since its launch, Cyberpunk has drawn harsh criticism from gamers for its numerous bugs and made the performance of their old consoles, such as the Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Xbox One.
The reviewers also said they could only play it on PC before launch, not consoles.
This sci-fi game is one of the most eagerly awaited titles for gamers of 2020, along with significant hype at industry events and CD Projekt’s success in previous games.
But Cyberpunk’s steep graphics requirements leave the game with hardware bottlenecks. Gamers playing games on PS4 and Xbox One find the game crashes frequently, the game textures also take a long time to load, and the unplayable character displays are sometimes blurry.
“It’s not an easy decision, but they have taken the right steps,” Steve Bailey, lead analyst for games at technology research firm Omdia, told CNBC.
“This game has been removed for fear not only consumers will be disappointed with the quality of the game, but also the potential damage to the console brand.”
On Monday, CD Projekt said it would offer refunds to customers if they bought the game on an old console and didn’t like it.
The company also apologized for not showing how the game performed on those consoles prior to releasing it, and said it would issue updates over the next few months.
Sony has come under fire after previously rejecting people’s requests for a refund of the digital copy of the game. A PR blunder has now resulted in Sony offering full refunds to gamers who purchased the game digitally.
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