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PlayStation (Games) Sony Entertainment Games

Sony Is Pulling Cyberpunk 2077 From the PlayStation Store and Offering Full Refunds (theverge.com) 168

Sony is pulling Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store and offering full refunds for anyone who bought the game from the digital storefront, the company said on Thursday. The Verge reports: If you want to start a refund, Sony says to visit this site and sign into your PlayStation account to submit a request. The game has already been removed from the PlayStation Store for a few Verge staffers on their PS5s, and the game doesn't come up in a search for "Cyberpunk 2077" on the web version of the store.

Players have found that Cyberpunk 2077, which has only been out for a week, has been riddled with bugs. The game looks good on PS5, but in my few hours with the game, I've run into a few complete crashes to the PS5's home screen and a number of distracting visual glitches. On PS4, the game fares a lot worse -- Eurogamer reported poor performance, low framerate, and texture pop-in.
Further reading: 'Cyberpunk 2077' Players Are Fixing Parts of the Game Before CD Projekt
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Sony Is Pulling Cyberpunk 2077 From the PlayStation Store and Offering Full Refunds

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  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I find it a little crazy they remove a paid game and don't auto refund you. Some MBA must have thought it clever to require the customer to initiate the refund. Hopefully some lawyers decide to class action Sony for doing that.
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @09:39PM (#60843628)

        What if you bought it and want to keep it? If they remove it from your account you have a pissed off customer if you wanted it. If they don't, they likely still have to pay the publisher. This is the middle ground, let customers decide if they want it or not.

        • by Tuidjy ( 321055 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @11:25PM (#60843870)

          I second this.

          I have not played the game on PlayStation, but I am playing it on PC, and while it has bugs, it is very enjoyable. And it happens to be the first game my wife and I are playing 100% together since the birth of our youngest...

          I would be livid if Steam were to refund the game and prevent me from playing it. I could not care less about the sixty bucks (I had to check the price just now)

          The game needs work, even on PC. There are tons of bugs, more than Witcher I, II and III together, and we have played all three at release. We have agreed that we will wait for all the bugs to be fixed, before we replay it, because it is already clear that some side missions change the main narrative a lot. We both remember fondly how much fun our second play of Witcher II was.

          But Sony's decision is 100% the correct one. Everyone who wants a refund gets one, and everyone who is enjoying the game gets to keep enjoying it.

        • Buying a game that can vanish after you download it is weird. Is this normal on consoles? I know DRM can do this but it's very rare (outside of Amazon). It used to be a big advantage of consoles is that you just plug in a game and don't worry about updates, downloads, internet connectivity, etc.

      • by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @09:52PM (#60843666)

        They're not pulling the game from consoles, they're just pulling the game from sale. People who already have it can decide to keep it, or get a refund.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Seems like refunding and then re-buying it later at a fraction of the price might be a good option. It will hit the bargain bin sooner rather than later I imagine.

      • I find it a little crazy they remove a paid game and don't auto refund you. Some MBA must have thought it clever to require the customer to initiate the refund. Hopefully some lawyers decide to class action Sony for doing that.

        They removed it from the store, not from your machine...

      • Nothing crazy here (Score:4, Insightful)

        by martynhare ( 7125343 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @04:06AM (#60844208)
        They're not removing the game from purchasers, only from the storefront for potential customers. People with a copy can continue to play it and receive updates for it, same as physical buyers. So, you can keep it if you want or request a refund if you want and the game will still work.

        This is the same way Steam deals with removals (e.g. GEARCRACK Arena is banned from storefront but I still have my 12p copy) except in this case gamers will still get updates because CDPR have to patch Cyberpunk 2077 for all the people who don't refund or who are physical owners.
      • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @06:06AM (#60844374)

        Removing from sale != removing from customer's devices. There are plenty of people happy to put up with bugs to keep them entertained over a lockdown Christmas.

        Now can you mental people stop calling on lawyers for each and every stupid thing you don't understand.

  • Watching from the sidelines (I don't game much) I'm trying to decide whether this is the next Daikatana or Duke Nukem Forever...

    • Maybe it's the next No Man's Sky, which had a shitty launch but is now even better than the original hype. Or Civilization 5, which wouldn't run on most machines and was a clear step down from 4, before becoming the best of the series. This is an extreme example, but there's lots of games that launched shitty and ended up being very good.

      I'm actually playing the game on an XB1 and think it's very fun. The low res and frame rates is obvious though. The city is amazing although I wish there was more depth

    • I think it's more like No Man's Sky.
  • PC Player (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Arzaboa ( 2804779 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @09:34PM (#60843612)

    I've played it on the PC. There are bugs, but nothing that I found was a big issue. It didn't ruin the experience for me, or hasn't yet. One example: Fight scene with 3 larger guys. One of them spawned behind the wall. I had to redo the scene for it to work right. Not a huge issue for me.

    My review: Lots of dialogue and fluff. It feels like playing a movie with some crappy GTA driving in between scenes with bot fights breaking all of that up. It's entertaining. If I could, I'd get $20 back. It's worth $40.

    --
    Even in dark times, we cannot relinquish the things that make us human. -- Khan, Metro 2033

    • by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @10:44PM (#60843784)
      Yah, apparently Fallout 76 was much worse. There weren't any refunds or store pulls for that. What gives?
      • Besthesda is a bigger company, plays hard ball and their fandom is incredibly rabid. So they can get away with a lot more. CDPR probably bit off a bit more than they can chew here, trying to do a next gen game that straddled the console generations. Go look up vids of the PS3 version of Shadow of Mordor. It's in the same or worse state with sub 15 FPS.
        • CDPR has more rabid fans due to their better but smaller track record.

          But yeah, they are not a major publisher, and probably shouldn' have tried releasing on all platforms at the same time. Especially when their strength is PC.

          • by N1AK ( 864906 )

            CDPR has more rabid fans due to their better but smaller track record.

            This; just look at the abuse any gaming journalists, bloggers, or vloggers got for daring to even question anything CDPR do (including mistreating their staff) and the idea that any major publisher gets better treatment than CDPR because their fans are rabid looks more than dubious.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        They are getting better?

      • One company actually cares about their reputation, the other is Bethesda who consider fucking the end users part of the experience they paid for.

    • I've played it on the PC. There are bugs, but nothing that I found was a big issue.

      How funny, Penny Arcade made a comic just for you [penny-arcade.com]!

      Plenty of PC players having game breaking bugs as well.

    • There are bugs, but nothing that I found was a big issue.

      Maybe you're lucky. I have had a crash to desktop in the opening scene. I've also had NPC freeze. Dialogue stops. Both of which required reloading saves. I've had dead characters speak. Dead characters come back to life so I get to watch them die a second time. Bodies disappear. Unlootable bodies. Rides that I get out of sink into the ground so I can't get in again. I've had high level badies jus stand there and watch me as I just continuously shoot them in the face. I had a mission character clip threw a w

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      The PC version isn't that bad. The console versions are in such a shoddy state that if it wasn't CD Projekt Red, it probably wouldn't have been approved.

      Compared ton the consoles, the PC version is bug free and runs perfectly. And this was before the first PC patch that fixed up a whole pile of things.

      There were good reasons why there were no advanced copies of the console versions given for review, why no one was allowed to take video of the console versions and other things. The only version you could get

    • My review: Lots of dialogue and fluff. It feels like playing a movie with some crappy GTA driving in between scenes with bot fights breaking all of that up.

      Yeah I don't understand these "games" that want to be interactive movies. The writing is B-movie quality and the acting is like a high school production. Everyone speaks in monotone. Just make a damn game. Luckily they let you skip cut scenes in this one.

  • Hype (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dohzer ( 867770 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @09:37PM (#60843622)

    I really believe that the refund announcements have been over-hyped. People's expectations for this game's refund are so far ahead of what will be released in the end. Personally, I'm going to wait until the refund is actually in my bank account.

  • sux shit to game (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @09:43PM (#60843632) Homepage
    It's shit like this that drove me away from being a gaming enthusiast. The industry has always been like this and always will. Endless cycles of hype and disappointment. The product has never matched the promise under the shrink wrap. The entire industry is a fucking fraud. The fans get treated like shit. The employees get treated like shit. Even the journalists are treated like shit. It's all shit.
    • by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @10:00PM (#60843688) Homepage

      Which is boils down to, do not take the gaming seriously, wait a year before buying the game and miss out on all the worst bullshit. Only buy games on big discounts and at no other times, seriously never. If it is a DLC ridden game, most of the good stuff left out of the game to sell as an add on, wait as many years as it takes for a complete edition to come out, who cares how long, plenty of other games to idle away some time.

      Shit play computer games with US politics, that shit is a crazy corrupt as fuck, so you might as well join in the game and mock and troll the hell out of it, not matter how badly you play, you will still be playing better the corporate main stream media and the corrupt social media corporations.

      There are plenty of games to be played on the internet.

      • by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @10:25PM (#60843746)
        Yep, years ago, because of all the crap you mentioned, I decided to remain three years behind when it comes to gaming. It saves on the sanity as well as the pocket book.
        • Yep, years ago, because of all the crap you mentioned, I decided to remain three years behind when it comes to gaming. It saves on the sanity as well as the pocket book.

          I mean you could just read a review 2 days after release. It's pretty obvious when games are bug riddled.

          Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/606/ [xkcd.com]

          • Review scores take a few years to settle. The early professional reviews will be from those with skin in the game and biased high. The early customer reviews will be biased high from the hype and fanboying. After a year or two, the reviews from real people stack up enough that the aggregate scores approximate an appropriate scoring.
      • than it's not that big a deal to deal with some launch bugs for a game you're already planning on replaying. It's sold well over 8 million copies. Yeah, some folks are having a lot of trouble, but a lot of folks aren't.
      • Which is boils down to, do not take the gaming seriously

        It doesn't boil down to anything of the sort because the OP is talking out of his arse. There's a reason this is newsworthy because it's not actually the norm. There are several studios who release shit continuously, and there are several odd releases like this which are just buggy as heck, but they are the incredible minority among the games released in any given year.

        Wait 2 days after release. If the reviews are good, then go for it. No need to wait a year or do other drastic shit like that.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @10:00PM (#60843690)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • they stuck a lot of new tech into the game. I don't think the problem is the rewards and hard driving, everybody in the game industry gets treated like crap. It's more likely they were pushing to meet the PS5 launch window. There's literally no games out, so the 1st person to get one out is going to make a killing.
    • by eth1 ( 94901 )

      It's shit like this that drove me away from being a gaming enthusiast. The industry has always been like this and always will. Endless cycles of hype and disappointment. The product has never matched the promise under the shrink wrap. The entire industry is a fucking fraud. The fans get treated like shit. The employees get treated like shit. Even the journalists are treated like shit. It's all shit.

      Instead of giving up on gaming, try my rule of thumb instead: Any game these days that costs more than about $20-25 needs a good hard look to make sure it doesn't suck, and anything more than $40-50 is practically guaranteed to be a buggy shit show that's been dumbed down for console interfaces and the least common denominator.

    • Treat AAA games the same way I treat a celebrity.

      Assume that everything that comes out of their mouths is bullshit, that every good deed is publicity, that every tragedy is falsified and orchestrated, and that all political opinions are to make sales.

      And like the term "celebrity", the term AAA is completely subjective and anyone can claim it. Remember, Pong was for a period of time the pinnacle of videogames with the highest budget, the best graphics, and the best gameplay.

    • The industry has always been like this and always will.

      No. The industry has never been like this. A few select studios have been like this, and a few select releases have been like this, and they are fully deserving of the bad name they get.

      Gamespot's game of the year this year, I've played it 3 times this year already. I have not encountered a bug. Not a single one. Likewise I have had bug free experiences with most games I've played this year and games with the visual fidelity of this release (at comparable settings) run far better than it does.

      The industry i

  • by boudie2 ( 1134233 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @09:48PM (#60843648)
    Does this mean an end to all the Keanu Reeves commercials on tv? They've hyped the shit out of this game.
    • What's a TV?

    • Is that why this game gets soooo much press and even so far at least 3 Slashvertisements? Of course every Slashdot article about it has been negative, and yet this seems only to indicate that this game is on a lot of people's minds. I'll probably buy it when it's down to $10...
  • They have until 2077 to get it right.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Months of crunch
    https://games.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]

    leads to cost overruns, delays, recalls
    https://games.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]

    and siezure-inducing gameplay.
    https://games.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]

  • Surprise! (Score:5, Informative)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @12:53AM (#60843980) Homepage Journal

    This, boys and girls, is what a lot of crunch time gets you.

    • Crunch time is a symptom, not the disease. The problems start when management make promises they can not deliver in attempt to get investors hooked. Crunch time is what happens when investors hold management to their promises.

      Crunch time, in turn, results in bad work, cut corners, and a general lack of polish.

      I've been through this a couple of times myself, and while hanging out with your game dev colleagues 24/7, sleeping under your desk, and consuming copious amounts of sugary drinks and pizza can be fun

      • Bad work and cut corners, yes, but any game developed by cd project red can't have a lack of polish by the definition.

      • I pre-ordered the game

        Then you've contributed to the problem.

      • studios that produce anything artistic (be it movies, games, music) really would be better off not going public.
        once the moneymen get involved and demand their ROI; shit goes south, fast.

  • Wake the Fuck Up Samurai. We have profits to burn.

  • The Verge (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LenKagetsu ( 6196102 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @04:16AM (#60844220)

    The same The Verge that disguises undeclared affiliate links with URL shorteners? [archive.is]
    The same The Verge that sicced a harassment mob on a scientist for wearing a shirt they didn't like? [archive.is]

    Link to a news source, not a ragebait shithole.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @10:03AM (#60844800)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re:The Verge (Score:4, Informative)

      by jason777 ( 557591 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @10:55AM (#60844960)
      Don't forget about the horrible PC building video that was factually incorrect, and where the host did literally everything wrong in building that PC. Then, had a parody video's channel taken down for "infringement" and then pulled the video accusing people of bullying the host and making racist remarks which didn't happen.
    • Link to a news source, not a ragebait shithole.

      A UID in the 6million? Checks out. Welcome. here's your Slashdot crash course:
      We don't read articles.
      We don't read summaries.
      For the most prat we don't even read our posts to ensure they are free of typos before hitting submit.

  • by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @05:09AM (#60844302)
    ... it would be interesting to read any internal triage of what went wrong.

    CD Projekt have been around the block... With this game coming after the releases of the Witcher series [OK, as others have pointed out, all of which had release day bugs], all reports suggest that this game was ludicrously flawed when it shipped.

    They must have known that. Obviously the decision to ship was taken based on the number of bugs in their "unresolved issues" queue against their need for a cash injection.

    Is it something as simple as the development cost of 2077 was bankrupting them? Was the bank account empty? Were they getting pressure to pick up holiday season sales? Was this a case of "risky shift" decision making?

    Wonder if there is anything beyond the obvious that we could learn from this escapade?

    It doesn't seem all that realistic to hope for, but maybe there's some redemption for CD Projekt if they go public with what they've learned and what they'll change going forward? If they survive this, that is...
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The console ports seem like they were done by the B team in a rush. PC version first, then try to get it running on the latest gen consoles. Probably didn't get the dev kits until late in the development cycle.

      A lot of the problems look like they are due to poor optimisation for those platforms. Things failing to load in or take several seconds to load in, for example.

  • ... that no one bought into the scam that is pre-orders. At least the company will have to produce an actual working product before people pay for what may or may not be hot garbage.

    At least that's one bullet dodged!

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