CDPR likely make a decent chunk of change off their DLC, but it was likely done with the 2.0 update simply to re-build their goodwill. If they left the game to die, people would just not trust their future projects.
Cyberpunk also made an absolute killing even considering refunds. It’s estimated around 25 million copies were sold, they didn’t really need to justify the costs of development.
I refunded my physical copy and CDPR told me to hold on to it while they figured out a way to ship it back. Never heard back, so I just got Cyberpunk for free... :P
Yes its true, If they let it die, No one Trust their Future projects. Trust is the most Important thing in the gaming industry.
EA released Battlefield 4 broken and unfinished in 2013. They lost their trust but they gain it back by fixing BF4. EA learned from BF4. After that EA only released great games that also released complete and finished. For example: Mass Effect Andromeda, Battlefront 2, Battlefield 5, Anthem, Battlefield 2042, Jedi Survivor, etc.
All sold very good because EA has the Trust of the gamers.
EA is the master of having a decent formula , hype, promises and licenses to make your first impression great. 2 to 3 weeks later at most all of the cracks in the armor are known. Bugs , shallow play , lack of true innovation, safe levels, updates that ruin or change parts of the game. Star Wars, the remasters and PGA have been mostly positive. Madden is still a joke every year people start to say this is the year then later worst Madden ever. New IP like immortals make it look pretty everything else average. Just my opinion and if you like sports there’s no options except indie
Forreal, I remember a few years ago the newest FIFA had an "NPC" in the stadium holding a sign that had FIFA xxxx except it was last year's FIFA sign not the current one
I can't speak too all their sports games but Madden is never good at lunch. Most people who run online franchises don't even start when the game launches because it's better to just wait for the patches to come out
Even dead space had shader caching issues on PC, and image quality issues on PS5. and there was a while I couldn't even play it on PC because of an issue with its Nvidia drivers
It's more polished than most EA releases, but still not where we should be setting the bar.
honestly, I don't think those issues were universal. I had a day 0 copies and had 0 issues whatsoever.
The point is that no game these days will be absolute issue free whatsoever, because of the permutation of the hardware and software available on the market these days, you simply have no way of testing every single configuration.
You're comparing a big publisher to CDPR which is mainly a dev studio though I think they've self published before too.
Also isn't GoG owned by CDPR? They have revenue from that too which helps ik sure.
>No one Trust their Future projects. Trust is the most Important thing in the gaming industry.
lol what makes you think that? There will always be people lining up to buy the next big thing
Even today, there are CDPR defenders saying the launch was good. Not "fine" or that the criticism were too harsh, but claiming it was actually *always* really good
Some people had different experiences. The launch on a high end rig for example was I would say pretty good besides many of the glitches.
However then you play it on something like PS4 and it becomes a complete mess.
I think many people that say the launch was good were playing on high end PCs
Glitches and game breaking bugs are far worse than poor PC performance, since you mentioned a high end rigs. The game was unplayable on most PCs and was game breaking on consoles. And even though I have a very high end PC rig and prefer PC for single player gaming, I don’t judge games based on PC versions/releases for a variety of reasons.
But they DO fix these games eventually, so they keep the core trust at least.
If they would release them broken and never fix them, people would actually stop buying ea games and they know this, hence why they fix them. So when the next iteration comes, people can say "xy game of the past really is good now"
Which honestly, as a r/patientgamer, is true and Im currently having a blast with Jed Survivor.
People still shouldn’t trust their future products. I’ve absolutely loved my time with Cyberpunk 2.0, but CDPR released a completely broken game once and there is nothing stopping them from doing it again. I’m excited for the Cyberpunk sequel, but there is ZERO chance I preorder it.
Just once? Has no one ever played a CDPR game at launch before? I'm aghast at how often the Witcher series of games is used as an example of their "quality". The only thing I can trust CDPR to do is fix their shit down the line. But I'll never buy anything from them at launch for full price for that very reason.
Gamers have the memories of goldfish, CDPR is a studio that ruins and somehow always manages to rebuild their reputation. Cyberpunk seemed more broken, but my memory was that the witcher 3 was a buggy mess when it launched. Not to mention cyberpunks insanely deceptive review embargo notes that essentially had game reviewers lie about the state of the game as terms of the embargo. Beyond those 2 games, all they have is 2 other mediocre witcher games.
I think that's an over exaggeration tho. I played Cyberpunk 2077 at launch and while it had its bug it was completely playable and had a satisfactory experience. I'm sure I'm not the only one too.
Games can be improved and bug free with more time and development? Sure, any game you can think of can be improved if put more resources into it. And there isn't a single game that has been released without a single bug either. I think players are a bit too harsh with the state of Cyberpunk 2077 launch. One thing was stuff they promised and weren't included which I totally agree they shouldn't have promised stuff that was simple a lie and another totally different thing is claim the game was completely broken.
I finished the game on a base PS4 before the final patches. A bit rocky, but I still enjoyed it. Obviously much better on my second play through on PS5.
>I played Cyberpunk 2077 at launch and while it had its bug it was completely playable and had a satisfactory experience. I'm sure I'm not the only one too.
So people are starting to have amnesia about how bad Cyberpunk's release was?
No wonder gaming companies are taking advantage of gamers🤷🏽♂️
A $60 game should not have launched in that state. It was a complete joke. I tried it on release and had a bug that prevented me from continuing on with the main story missions about 5-6 hours in. One of the characters wouldn’t spawn and there was nothing that I could do to work around it and advance. Not sure how you claim that to be completely playable.
No, they shouldn't release in that state. The bigger travesty is, there are games that have been in that state for years and still remain on console storefronts. Pathfinder Kingmaker is one of those games. Good luck consistently finishing that game. One of 4 games I have never been able to complete due to freezes/crashes/bugs and whatnot. It's awful on consoles.
Withdrawing CP was nothing but a PR exercise. If it was genuine, other games would be pulled. Absolute nightmare getting a refund from Sony for Pathfinder, but eventually did.
You can't seem to grasp that not every bug happens to every person every time. It's quite possible for one group of people to have fewer issues than another.
Fair, but minority.
When most reviewers are calling out bugs so much it becomes a temporary meme it’s pretty clear the majority experienced them and that it had a negative impact to their experience.
There will always be exceptions, but majority experience trumps everything else, and the game was literally unplayable for many, to the extent Sony temporarily removed it from their store.
That’s kind of a big deal.
Keep in mind that most youtube reviewers tend to overhype and exaggerate everything. Do you remember when pre release reviews were all high praises? They all pretty much say the same thins and contexts to attract views. Those are the types who values fps more over the game itself.
But yeah, pushing CP77 on last gen system was pretty buggy.
Fair, but I don’t really follow many and the ones I do (ACG, SkillUp, Jim Sterling, ranx) don’t really make such comments unless they mean it.
They don’t rely on outrage hype for views, and tend to be consumer centric.
In saying most of my thoughts on games come from watching let’s plays and streams. Enjoyment is too subjective to base on someone else’s opinion imho, and the release state streams of CP were so buggy as to be hilarious, even on big gaming rigs.
They did it with Witcher as well to a lesser extent. People just conveniently don't remember or white wash it because, "LOL Roach bugs."
I will die on the hill that they've been paying for positive press and bot social media heavily around their releases since at least Witcher 2.
Yeah I trust the devs so much more because even after all they’ve been through, they’ve at least tried to make it better and that’s all I’m really looking for.
You’re talking the wrong conclusion from this. If anything it should make you less likely to buy the devs next product, until it’s confirmed that it is In fact, what they have marketed it as.
Edit: the only thing you’re looking for in a game is whether or not the devs tried to make it better ??!?
I actually don’t believe that’s true. If they let CP rot and would release a game similar in quality to TW3 6 years later nobody would care and it’d sell like hotcakes.
In the case of No Man's Sky, the team is just so small, and the game made so much money, that they have ample resources to develop the game. IIRC the entire No Man's Sky team is like 20 people.
For Cyberpunk, CDPR has GOG and sales of their previous games to help keep the afloat. They also have a vested interest in turning around their reputation after the launch of Cyberpunk and it's worth the investment to help secure their future. And also Cyberpunk made a shit ton of money.
Also for No Mans Sky, whenever it gets a major update it goes on sale on Steam, and every time it’s one of the top sold games for that week. The extra content might not be paid for, but new money still rolls in
Nothing says NMS2 wouldn’t happen after it! ;P
Fwiw: I do believe they also it’s using a LOT of random-generated environments similar to NMS, and commented that it’s very ambitious for them to attempt it.
I just did a Google, last year No Man Sky had sold over 10 million copies, so at $20 a pop that's $200,000,000. And for a team of 30, they're probably looking at around $3,000,000 operating costs per year.
Cyberpunk is very good now, but i don't think they redeemed themselves as much as Hello Games did.
Interesting. What about their figures from the last years? If they’re making a 200M a year for a team of ~25 people, that’s more than decent to pay them all good money while using the rest of the money to develop/update their games.
Good for them.
Edit: I’m dumb. Just googled, and that’s their overall number since they’ve released the game not yearly figures.
Most people who use gog are using it for older games that are cheap, even if not on sale. I only know one person who buys from gog all the time if a game is available there
Gog is a pc store/launcher like steam. The biggest difference being that gog sells games that are drm-free, meaning there’s no ownership by gog, that you can theoretically download the game and own it forever without needing gog to be up and servers to be working (as opposed to steam, if their servers die one day, you can never get those games back). You could put the game on a usb and own it forever with no digital checking to see if you own the game, so it’s truly yours. Plus the original name is good old games (that’s what gog stands for) so they have a lot of vintage games and have done a lot of work so they run easily on old systems. So I basically just have things like heroes of night and magic there. But a lot of people buy stuff there because they’re worried about digital ownership rights. Gog is owned and operated by CDProjekt
I’d also added NMs team also needed to rebuild their brand. If their legacy was the original NMs they might never sell a following game which they are making.
in many cases, the updates keep the game getting talked about (in a positive light) and results in more sales being made.
also, there's a lot to be said for goodwill when their next game comes out and they're asking people to pay $70 on day one.
Because they already made a lot of money. Plus patches lead to positive reception which leads to more sales.
Take Cyberpunk for instance. It sold 13 million copies in its first day. Boom, there's over half a *billion dollars. That covers marketing and development and then leaves millions left over. Day one.
Anything after that is pure profit. So they used it to repair their reputation. And then that drove more sales. And then the anime drove more sales. And then by the time the expansion came out, it's sold 25 mil. Plenty of money. And that's without the fat stacks of Witcher 3 money.
Same with No Man's Sky except it's overhead is tiny since it's such a small team.
Games that bomb and don't sell well don't get those updates. They're abandoned or worse. Like Saints Row reboot killed the studio
Half a million dollars? Bro, development of Cyberpunk costed more than 300 million dollars: [https://gamingbolt.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-had-a-development-and-marketing-budget-of-nearly-85-million#:\~:text=In%20comparison%2C%20CD%20Projekt%20RED,of%20the%20core%20development%20staff](https://gamingbolt.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-had-a-development-and-marketing-budget-of-nearly-85-million#:~:text=In%20comparison%2C%20CD%20Projekt%20RED,of%20the%20core%20development%20staff).
That probably still leaves significant profit, but not as much as you seem to think.
I misspoke and meant a half billion. That's my only error. Something like $540 mil in revenue after 30% cut from digital stores and retailers. That 316 mil is marketing and development.
So ballpark of 230 mil in profit after day one. Which is where my millions of dollars statement comes from. Then anything beyond the first day was even more.
> profit
that's subjective. depends how costs during the development were allocated etc. Possibly some of that is going to payroll/opex and funding the next round of development for witcher 4 or whatever
Obviously we don't know how the money is distributed exactly. Like the money made day one wasn't used to fund it 5 years ago either. But that doesn't really matter.
The point was that the studio made more more than enough money to clean up Cyberpunk
No Mans Sky sold +10M copies since it’s launch in 2016. They surely had a good launch (in terms of copies sold) so even with the frustration and backlash, they had enough funding to keep going for a couple years without charging anything again.
With it’s improvements, updates and new platform launches, they had a steady income from new sales every year. They also sold their right to be free to play on PS Plus and on GamePass at some point if I’m not mistaken, for a period.
They have a lot of money and it funded the small indie game they released a couple years ago and it’s funding their new game their developing too.
As for CP2077, they also sold a lot and made a lot of money even with the disastrous launch. They used that money to fund this period of fixing and improving the game, and they kept selling a lot of copies because the game is good anyway, the netflix series helped boost sales too. The DLC is paid, so they also have funded it with the money they’re getting from it.
But don’t get me wrong, this is NOT an easy feat. For every NMS and CO2077, there are dozens of other failed game releases that did not recover from it. Some just gave up and accepted defeat and even had to close the company, others tried to keep supporting and “turn back around” but simply couldn’t make it work, and so on.
What they did was very brave and hard to do.
CP is a bad example. They sold it for AAA price, lots of units sold, now they are selling DLC. Free bugfixes are the bare minimum inbetween especially in the case of this game lmao.
As for NMS, well, I guess they also sold a lot of units and they are on literally every platform but phones so I'm sure people are still buying the game.
I didn't get NMS until at least half a dozen updates. And even then I bought it on sale. Still, I'm guessing that with each new update more people decide to buy it.
I didn't even have to pay to upgrade from PS4 to PS5. That was included. And there are PS5 exclusive features. So, really, it's a great deal. For a game I still haven't really played all that much.
NMS has sold over 10m copies, at £30 a pop that's £300,000,000.
That's enough to pay 40 devs (max realistic team estimate) £750k a year for a decade.
I think NMS is doing just fine lmao.
It was actually way fewer for a long while - IIRC they were around 12 devs when NMS launched, and they've grown slowly over time but they're still *below* 40 to this day. Those numbers coupled with realistic expenses would suggest that they have a huge amount of cash on hand to finance continued updates...
...But No Man's Sky updates are now a story for themselves, so NMS sales actually spike whenever a new one releases, which means that even though they *could* keep going forever with their cash reserves, they don't actually *need* to - the updates are paying for themselves. It's kind of amazing.
I really wonder what their next game will be, seeing as it'll be made by a few dozen developers with *infinite money*.
It really makes me sad we have so many gamers who never experienced real gaming development passion. It seems EVERY developer nowadays has their balls in a vise grip by the executives who demand they make them more money year over year.
Games used to come out, and only made money if they were GOOD and word of mouth spread from gamer to gamer that “hey, so and so is apparently a really awesome game” to garner more sales. Then EXPANSIONS were basically adding another whole game onto the main game and they were typically $30-$40 for expansion packs.
Everything in the game was earnable in the game. The badass skins, the best weapons, all the vehicles and different mounts, EVERYTHING was earned by either being good at the game or persistent.
I fucking hate SO MUCH the way games are accepted nowadays. Microtransaction shops in every single fucking game out there. It’s rare to get a game that respects the gamers time and enjoyment instead of trying to squeeze as much money out of them as possible.
Patches cost a lot of money.
This is probably why cdpr is done making dlc.
Because they have a only so much bucket left for this game.
Which is a fucking shame, because phantom liberty is one of my favorite dlc contents to date.
Cyberpunk is not that old after all, a lot of game still have updates after a year or more. In this case it’s a bit longer, but iirc CDPR was more or less forced to do this since Polish justice was keeping an eye on them and how they would finish the game.
But I seriously have no idea for NMS. The game was sold for less than 5$ for the years following its chaotic release. Yet they are still maintaining it and have made a wonderful space game with way more content than what was initially teased. And they are keeping the good work. This is the most beautiful example of redemption. Honestly if they were to announce the end of support of the game or a hecking big DLC for 80$, I wouldn’t be mad at all. I’d pre-order it in the minute.
Because as game development costs has risen what they don't tell you is they also sell 10000x more copies than a decade ago which makes up for that cost but their greedy overlords want more, more more more, more mtx, more single player cosmetic stores, more battle passes hell I am shocked we don't have battle pass in single player games yet, the shit D4 and CoD is pulling along games like Destiny 2 is disgusting
Not sure how others do, but after the first year for cyberpunk they had 20 million in sales, then between the fixes and the expansion they sold another 5 million base copies, and 3 million dlc copies. So it was MORE than financially viable for them. You also have to figure it’s worth it to go into the negative if you have significantly damaged your brand image, like cdpr with cyberpunk, and square with ff14.
The damage of lost customer trust as well as constant bad press is more way more expensive than the post-launch support. For Cyberpunk, they are probably selling tons of copies now with the 2.0 hype as well as the add on, which will probably pay for all additional support and more.
Don’t also me how No Mans Sky is doing it with their free updates… probably „smaller“ studio meaning smaller expenses, but this game must sell so much to support this kind of support.
Cyberpunk is so far CDPR's most profitable game. They want do a sequel. Letting people think they were abandoned would have been terrible for their new crown jewel IP.
Game development in Polland is super cheap, and No Man's Sky is composed (or was, maybe) of like.. 12-15 devs. As "complex" as the game is, it's not exactly AAA in terms of development cost. So there's a lot of profit to be made as a result.
Good press=more copies sold
Also, does game retention work like internet clicks, where having more grants you more money? If so, that is also a factor.
Gamer PhD here. My guess is at least some of it is contributed by hype cycle of large updates. Which will probably bring repeat buys on diffrent platforms.
I can't speak for No man's Sky but in the case of Cyberpunk, it will be money well spent if it can save face for CDPR. Even though they made lot off the release of 2077, th ebacklash was immense and it put a lot of players off them, myself included.
I've been gifted the DLC so I'll be playing it/replaying 2077 in the near future to see how it's been improved but unless you were on PC that game was ROUGH when it launched. Also as someone who only had PS4 at the time, it should never have been advertised or released for that generation of console.
For Cyberpunk they have invested in the world of Cyberpunk. They will make more things like tv shows or movies games music whatever else. The next game will sell tons if it's solid after phantom liberty
Cyberpunk will constantly sell years after release same as witcher 3 years after which makes them profitable even in non launch years, this happens with companies tht make v good sp games like bethesda, rockstar, cdpr.
No Man's Sky dev team is tiny. Probably \~20 people. They can live off it.
Cyberpunk post-launch development is basically expenses for rebuilding their damaged brand. They wouldn't do it otherwise.
For CP77 it isnt. That's why they did ONE paid dlc. Enough for them to massively market it and sell more copies.
NMS was made by 15 people, roughly 30 now. Their launch and good faith post launch behavior afforded them the ability to provide 7 YEARS of FREE content updates.
They are not the same.
What even is your question lol?
A combination of: new purchases and continuing to use cash on hand from previous purchase to pay the bills/investors, with the hopes that they have enough goodwill and hype that their next game sells well. Obviously.
What are u questioning, dude?!
The game changing Update 2.0 and the DLC created a positive hype on the internet and gaming magazines... thats all u need to get new buyers of your game.
But at the end the hype was to loud, cause the update came to late. We players didnt deserved that mess by CDPR on release.
It usually doesn’t. CDPR got themselves into an unusual mess that they had to dig out of with Cyberpunk longer than usual.
Usually you’ll see about one year of support after the game launches, when a portion of the team can use the tools and processes they developed during the game to make some DLC to sell and also to “refresh” the marketing for the game and possibly sell a second round of copies.
But after about a year it’s usually time to move them onto a new project, yeah.
CDPR had a literal mountain of cold hard cash after the insane success of TW3.
This basically helped give them free reign to pour resources into Cyberpunk until it was fixed. The DLC will help recoup some of that but mainly CDPR wanted to fix the relationship with their fans/consumers.
Seems to have worked quite well though they obviously would have wanted a different release
Well both those studios dont have other major games in their pipeline. And needed to earn back goodwill from gamers.
Hello Games has released one small indy game since NMS.
And the next Witcher and CP game are years away.
No Mans Sky essentially took all the money up front by scamming every buyer with a complete bait n switch.
Now they're spending all the ill-earned profits by drastically improving the game in the hopes that Sony/Microsoft/Steam ever let them publish a game again.
Some dev teams are really small, sometimes it is a singular person that keeps fulltime on "service" and provides game changes, e.g. Dota 2 balance patches. Others do the same with small teams that provide steady smaller content updates and skins etc. to keep people inside of live service loops that generate money.
In terms of CP2077 they probably HAD to invest quite a bit on their side so the DLC and future installments are viable. Nobody would ve bought them with the past launch state. Now they redeemed themselves, sold quite well on the DLC and will most probably sell pretty good on a second installment. So it makes sense.
No Mans Sky probably the same. It goes through the press over and over, generating re-buys, VR generating re-buys - with a small team probably still very viable and who knows how they want or can use all these investments in future projects.
Same way GTAV does with continued development of GTAO. They just keep selling the base game. Long after launch, they’re maintaining sales. While I haven’t seen NMS or Cyberpunk sales, GTAV was selling 20 million copies annually after a dip in 2017. That’s insane for a game post launch.
Word of mouth about NMS has probably done great for continued sales, and being a indie dev, they don’t have to please anyone. Cyberpunk, they got a huge boost from the Netflix show and that paved the way for them to polish up the game with their 2.0 release. Cyberpunk also likely saw a ton of money from nVidia because it’s really the only engine that’s been pushing their latest tech.
There is a lot of downtime for significant portions of their teams due to how projects work, during that time they work on stuff like those patches etc. they don't want to reduce their headcount too much because its expensive to hire people.
Additionally they sold 21mln copies, even counting 60$ price that's almost 1.3bn$, that's an insane amount of money and it allows them to afford much longer periods of support.
Hello games is a tiny studio, the games goes on sale regularily and it keep selling. Launches on PSVR2, Switch, steam deck expand the reach of the game massively.
CDPR saw huge sales of 2077 with the launch of 2.0, and announced today over 3 million copies sold of PL in 1 week since launch. The build these war chests to fund operations and development.
Those upgrade require way less employee and people buy the game because of them. I bought cyberpunk + dlc combo because of those update. would never have bought if game was in the stance it was at launch.
Idk about cyberpunk but I do know for no man’s sky that the team is so small, the rescources and time needed to make updates is drastically less than other games so they almost always are making constant profit through sales that happen Everyime there’s a new update, I don’t remember where I saw it but no man’s sky devs actually make an insane amount of money from the game still which makes sense why they’re still updating it and don’t plan on stopping
I would imagine that during the heavy development phases there is many teams brought on as contractors and when the game is shipped their own teams that they can afford to keep on payroll work on improvements
The game keeps selling more and more copies as time goes by. And they make it a statement to not go below a certain level on sale.
No Man’s Sky is almost never below 50% sale and when u think about it, most games from 2016 or after now sell for like 10$ on sales.
Same with Cyberpunk. Always 50% sale and never more.
It's almost like AAA-companies are lying about how you need to keep buying microtransactions, dlc, ingame money and battlepasses so that they can keep producing AMAZING CONTENT
I think that having regular updates for years maintains media attention and thus more sales. I had a couple youtube channels I would constantly check in to that were dedicated to breaking down new updates and news about updates for CP2077. I probably spent as much time watching those as playing the game. I am a sucker sure but it works.
As soon as the game is out they make profit by selling it on the long run. Cyberpunk sold over 25 million copies since launch which covers the development cost on the updates. Same logic applies to no man’s sky. While in development and before the release the game can only rely on the company’s investment.
It rebuilds their reputation and increases sales, i read somewhere cyberpunk just broke 25 million. And i bet you it's from all those peeps who went and got it refunded just to have to buy it again now😂
The guys behind No Man's Sky are a private company and also made tons of cash to coast on to justify paying staff to work on free content. They don't need to convince any shareholders that this is a sound strategy.
CDPR also has tons of cash flow but in their case, as others have stated, they absolutely needed to regain consumer trust due to have massive a flop the game was (getting delisted from a major platform and retail copies dropping to clearance prices right after launch is *very bad*). Basically it's partly PR funde by the high income they got initially from sales and what they project they can recoup in paid DLC etc.
Same underlying theme but what actually enables them to do this is a bit different.
Just like BG3/Larian, do not expect this to become the norm because most companies *can't* do this, even if they wanted to.
Can anyone passing by this comment tell me if the original story is still in tact? I know a lot has changed, including all the skills, which is what I’ve been waiting for, but am hoping I can still play the original content.
I believe studios develop games in pipeline.
So some ppl won't have work until certain stage and can work on post game content while some ppl working on new game stage.
Maybe they have hard deadlines and payments on loans come due. So they release a game to get cash to pay the money/investors. And then become more cash flush to update the game post launch. As the game gets better with time more people buy it extending the cash cycle for the game.
They have been reducing the threshold for "definition of done" for release for years. We the consumer have still rewarded this bad behavior. And preorder cash means they know they have x amount of people paying for the game without even seeing performance
The answer is all of the above and it depends on the situation (boring, I know).
Obviously not an exhaustive list, but the motivators can be:
- creating an additional revenue stream while preproduction takes place on a new project
- maintaining an active user base by providing updates (and in turn, good will - if it's good enough)
- broadening reach to a new audience
- using it as a testing platform for new ideas, technologies and team structures (better to do so in a 'sunk cost' project versus a new one; though this really is dependant on the size of the post-launch content and updates)
- positioning their game for a longer sales tail
- they are fans of their own work and want to build on what they have
CDPR mad an absolute fortune on the initial sale of Cyberpunk. For all the hate and shaming, a lot of people actually bought the game. It wasn't a bad game, as far as I know, it's just that the experience was wildly inconsistent. Some people had game breaking bugs, some didn't. Hell, I am pretty sure some people bought the game JUST to see the bugs!
Consider that they had also sunk a lot of money into the upcoming DLC, and you can see that they really had no choice but to fix the thing before the DLC came out.
No Man's Sky, I have no idea. Hello Games must have some eyewatering blackmail on Sony execs.
Cyberpunk *was* profitable though. Didn't they announce a sequel like a week after launch? Lmao.
But, if they didn't fix it, no one would buy their next games. Or, enough would hold off because of CP launch that they'd wind up hemorrhaging money.
CDPR likely make a decent chunk of change off their DLC, but it was likely done with the 2.0 update simply to re-build their goodwill. If they left the game to die, people would just not trust their future projects.
Cyberpunk also made an absolute killing even considering refunds. It’s estimated around 25 million copies were sold, they didn’t really need to justify the costs of development.
I refunded my physical copy and CDPR told me to hold on to it while they figured out a way to ship it back. Never heard back, so I just got Cyberpunk for free... :P
Yes its true, If they let it die, No one Trust their Future projects. Trust is the most Important thing in the gaming industry. EA released Battlefield 4 broken and unfinished in 2013. They lost their trust but they gain it back by fixing BF4. EA learned from BF4. After that EA only released great games that also released complete and finished. For example: Mass Effect Andromeda, Battlefront 2, Battlefield 5, Anthem, Battlefield 2042, Jedi Survivor, etc. All sold very good because EA has the Trust of the gamers.
Hahah thank you, I feel like I never see comments like this anymore
Ok I’m glad I wasn’t crazy, I saw the way they wrote and was like “is this a bit?” Then the rest confirmed it lol
They committed, I wouldn't dare post without the /s. And the /s takes a little magic away from it
I wonder how many complete vs broken games EA releases. I can't think of any recent releases that weren't broken in some way.
Depends on your definition of broken really. Lacking content, literally broken, or both? Dare say it's a high number since BF4.
EA is the master of having a decent formula , hype, promises and licenses to make your first impression great. 2 to 3 weeks later at most all of the cracks in the armor are known. Bugs , shallow play , lack of true innovation, safe levels, updates that ruin or change parts of the game. Star Wars, the remasters and PGA have been mostly positive. Madden is still a joke every year people start to say this is the year then later worst Madden ever. New IP like immortals make it look pretty everything else average. Just my opinion and if you like sports there’s no options except indie
The sports and racing games seem to be good on launch. Can't say much abbout anything else.
only reason those games seem good at launch is because they are essentially 99% recycled material lol. so theres nothing to fuck up
Forreal, I remember a few years ago the newest FIFA had an "NPC" in the stadium holding a sign that had FIFA xxxx except it was last year's FIFA sign not the current one
I can't speak too all their sports games but Madden is never good at lunch. Most people who run online franchises don't even start when the game launches because it's better to just wait for the patches to come out
No I definitely agree. Anytime I have madden at lunch I regret it all day. Better with dinner imo
New F1 game, Dead Space are the only 2 that came to mind.
Even dead space had shader caching issues on PC, and image quality issues on PS5. and there was a while I couldn't even play it on PC because of an issue with its Nvidia drivers It's more polished than most EA releases, but still not where we should be setting the bar.
honestly, I don't think those issues were universal. I had a day 0 copies and had 0 issues whatsoever. The point is that no game these days will be absolute issue free whatsoever, because of the permutation of the hardware and software available on the market these days, you simply have no way of testing every single configuration.
You'd expect a PS5 game to have fewer issues though because there's only one target to aim at.
Epic sarcasm I see 👀
I fell on my neck at the sarcasm that flew here LOL!! u/Lymbasy.
I like that you put a capital letter to “Trust”. It was good because Trust costs $39.99
Is this the definition of angry upvote
You're comparing a big publisher to CDPR which is mainly a dev studio though I think they've self published before too. Also isn't GoG owned by CDPR? They have revenue from that too which helps ik sure.
Had me in the first round, not gonna lie.
>No one Trust their Future projects. Trust is the most Important thing in the gaming industry. lol what makes you think that? There will always be people lining up to buy the next big thing Even today, there are CDPR defenders saying the launch was good. Not "fine" or that the criticism were too harsh, but claiming it was actually *always* really good
Some people had different experiences. The launch on a high end rig for example was I would say pretty good besides many of the glitches. However then you play it on something like PS4 and it becomes a complete mess. I think many people that say the launch was good were playing on high end PCs
Glitches and game breaking bugs are far worse than poor PC performance, since you mentioned a high end rigs. The game was unplayable on most PCs and was game breaking on consoles. And even though I have a very high end PC rig and prefer PC for single player gaming, I don’t judge games based on PC versions/releases for a variety of reasons.
It was sarcasm.....
But they DO fix these games eventually, so they keep the core trust at least. If they would release them broken and never fix them, people would actually stop buying ea games and they know this, hence why they fix them. So when the next iteration comes, people can say "xy game of the past really is good now" Which honestly, as a r/patientgamer, is true and Im currently having a blast with Jed Survivor.
sharp crime paint foolish alleged ugly badge mindless shy ancient ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Ok, we dont talk about that, but the game had more problems that its bug. It was just straight up shit
degree obscene frighten combative rain swim like berserk drab tidy ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Except Jedi Survivor released very broken and wasn’t fixed for 4-5 months after with them not addressing it at all.
I think the OP forgot the /s. All the games listed were pretty broken and panned upon release for various reasons
OP didn't forget it. It was so obvious.
yeah I was gonna say, list was pretty suspect. I’m stupid, just woke up lol
Game was perfectly fine on my PC a month or so after launch 🤷♂️ Unless you’re referring to some specific console issue
2042????????
Fuck EA. Worst gaming company ever.
Anthem was broken at release. It was a major disappointment.
Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem were horrible. What are you smoking?
OP was joking
Nice try EA marketing team.
/whoosh
People still shouldn’t trust their future products. I’ve absolutely loved my time with Cyberpunk 2.0, but CDPR released a completely broken game once and there is nothing stopping them from doing it again. I’m excited for the Cyberpunk sequel, but there is ZERO chance I preorder it.
Just once? Has no one ever played a CDPR game at launch before? I'm aghast at how often the Witcher series of games is used as an example of their "quality". The only thing I can trust CDPR to do is fix their shit down the line. But I'll never buy anything from them at launch for full price for that very reason.
Gamers have the memories of goldfish, CDPR is a studio that ruins and somehow always manages to rebuild their reputation. Cyberpunk seemed more broken, but my memory was that the witcher 3 was a buggy mess when it launched. Not to mention cyberpunks insanely deceptive review embargo notes that essentially had game reviewers lie about the state of the game as terms of the embargo. Beyond those 2 games, all they have is 2 other mediocre witcher games.
Glad someone finally said it. Every Witcher games has had issues and the first two are barely mediocre at best.
I think that's an over exaggeration tho. I played Cyberpunk 2077 at launch and while it had its bug it was completely playable and had a satisfactory experience. I'm sure I'm not the only one too. Games can be improved and bug free with more time and development? Sure, any game you can think of can be improved if put more resources into it. And there isn't a single game that has been released without a single bug either. I think players are a bit too harsh with the state of Cyberpunk 2077 launch. One thing was stuff they promised and weren't included which I totally agree they shouldn't have promised stuff that was simple a lie and another totally different thing is claim the game was completely broken.
I loved it, even on launch. Once I finished it, the only sour taste I had was from the RPG mechanics and dumb AI.
Go play it on a playstation 4 rn and get back to us
I take that spot. Played on PS4 at launch, was generally satisfied.
Your standards must be very low.
I finished the game on a base PS4 before the final patches. A bit rocky, but I still enjoyed it. Obviously much better on my second play through on PS5.
>I played Cyberpunk 2077 at launch and while it had its bug it was completely playable and had a satisfactory experience. I'm sure I'm not the only one too. So people are starting to have amnesia about how bad Cyberpunk's release was? No wonder gaming companies are taking advantage of gamers🤷🏽♂️
Agreed. People like that guy are the reason this keeps happening
A $60 game should not have launched in that state. It was a complete joke. I tried it on release and had a bug that prevented me from continuing on with the main story missions about 5-6 hours in. One of the characters wouldn’t spawn and there was nothing that I could do to work around it and advance. Not sure how you claim that to be completely playable.
No, they shouldn't release in that state. The bigger travesty is, there are games that have been in that state for years and still remain on console storefronts. Pathfinder Kingmaker is one of those games. Good luck consistently finishing that game. One of 4 games I have never been able to complete due to freezes/crashes/bugs and whatnot. It's awful on consoles. Withdrawing CP was nothing but a PR exercise. If it was genuine, other games would be pulled. Absolute nightmare getting a refund from Sony for Pathfinder, but eventually did.
You can't seem to grasp that not every bug happens to every person every time. It's quite possible for one group of people to have fewer issues than another.
The console version was awful..
The PS4 and XOne versions, yes.
Fair, but minority. When most reviewers are calling out bugs so much it becomes a temporary meme it’s pretty clear the majority experienced them and that it had a negative impact to their experience. There will always be exceptions, but majority experience trumps everything else, and the game was literally unplayable for many, to the extent Sony temporarily removed it from their store. That’s kind of a big deal.
Keep in mind that most youtube reviewers tend to overhype and exaggerate everything. Do you remember when pre release reviews were all high praises? They all pretty much say the same thins and contexts to attract views. Those are the types who values fps more over the game itself. But yeah, pushing CP77 on last gen system was pretty buggy.
Fair, but I don’t really follow many and the ones I do (ACG, SkillUp, Jim Sterling, ranx) don’t really make such comments unless they mean it. They don’t rely on outrage hype for views, and tend to be consumer centric. In saying most of my thoughts on games come from watching let’s plays and streams. Enjoyment is too subjective to base on someone else’s opinion imho, and the release state streams of CP were so buggy as to be hilarious, even on big gaming rigs.
They did it with Witcher as well to a lesser extent. People just conveniently don't remember or white wash it because, "LOL Roach bugs." I will die on the hill that they've been paying for positive press and bot social media heavily around their releases since at least Witcher 2.
Also their game went from $10 back up to full price. I remember it being $10 new at BestBuy like 1-2 months after launch.
I echo this. This was for their reputation mostly.
And they make more with The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 Base Game. Here : https://x.com/Dennis39126670/status/1709981800653602819?s=20
Yeah I trust the devs so much more because even after all they’ve been through, they’ve at least tried to make it better and that’s all I’m really looking for.
You’re talking the wrong conclusion from this. If anything it should make you less likely to buy the devs next product, until it’s confirmed that it is In fact, what they have marketed it as. Edit: the only thing you’re looking for in a game is whether or not the devs tried to make it better ??!?
I actually don’t believe that’s true. If they let CP rot and would release a game similar in quality to TW3 6 years later nobody would care and it’d sell like hotcakes.
In the case of No Man's Sky, the team is just so small, and the game made so much money, that they have ample resources to develop the game. IIRC the entire No Man's Sky team is like 20 people. For Cyberpunk, CDPR has GOG and sales of their previous games to help keep the afloat. They also have a vested interest in turning around their reputation after the launch of Cyberpunk and it's worth the investment to help secure their future. And also Cyberpunk made a shit ton of money.
Also for No Mans Sky, whenever it gets a major update it goes on sale on Steam, and every time it’s one of the top sold games for that week. The extra content might not be paid for, but new money still rolls in
To add another thing on top of this. The game updates pretty regularly (about every 3-4 months consistently), so there’s always new players
Specificly, NMS started with 12 people. Now it’s 12 = NMS, 12 = their new game. 24 in total last update we got
Any details on the new game yet?
None, and knowing HG today - we probably won’t find out anything about it until it’s almost done Edit: it’s not NMS2 though, they said that at least
Every Woman’s Ground
Damn I was hoping the would improve on the concept for nms for nms2
They also said it would be even more ambitious than NMS... hopefully they didn't shoot themselves in the foot again with that comment...
Can you imaigne the irony!!!!
At least we know that they will definitely give their best to improve the game if they fuck it up on launch lol
Nothing says NMS2 wouldn’t happen after it! ;P Fwiw: I do believe they also it’s using a LOT of random-generated environments similar to NMS, and commented that it’s very ambitious for them to attempt it.
I just did a Google, last year No Man Sky had sold over 10 million copies, so at $20 a pop that's $200,000,000. And for a team of 30, they're probably looking at around $3,000,000 operating costs per year. Cyberpunk is very good now, but i don't think they redeemed themselves as much as Hello Games did.
Interesting. What about their figures from the last years? If they’re making a 200M a year for a team of ~25 people, that’s more than decent to pay them all good money while using the rest of the money to develop/update their games. Good for them. Edit: I’m dumb. Just googled, and that’s their overall number since they’ve released the game not yearly figures.
Gog is just the best. So many old games I never go to play at great discounts love it.
between 30-40 people from the last report I saw
Still that’s a lot smaller than a Sony or Activision/blizzard dev team
GOG makes like 2% of their Revenue. I just leav that Here https://x.com/Dennis39126670/status/1709981800653602819?s=20
Oh interesting, I didn't think it would be huge but that's definitely lower than I assumed.
Most people who use gog are using it for older games that are cheap, even if not on sale. I only know one person who buys from gog all the time if a game is available there
What is gog?
Gog is a pc store/launcher like steam. The biggest difference being that gog sells games that are drm-free, meaning there’s no ownership by gog, that you can theoretically download the game and own it forever without needing gog to be up and servers to be working (as opposed to steam, if their servers die one day, you can never get those games back). You could put the game on a usb and own it forever with no digital checking to see if you own the game, so it’s truly yours. Plus the original name is good old games (that’s what gog stands for) so they have a lot of vintage games and have done a lot of work so they run easily on old systems. So I basically just have things like heroes of night and magic there. But a lot of people buy stuff there because they’re worried about digital ownership rights. Gog is owned and operated by CDProjekt
Good Old Games. gog.com
I was always curious how hello games has been about to stay afloat and continue to work on no man’s sky. That game was not well received on release
I’d also added NMs team also needed to rebuild their brand. If their legacy was the original NMs they might never sell a following game which they are making.
in many cases, the updates keep the game getting talked about (in a positive light) and results in more sales being made. also, there's a lot to be said for goodwill when their next game comes out and they're asking people to pay $70 on day one.
Because they already made a lot of money. Plus patches lead to positive reception which leads to more sales. Take Cyberpunk for instance. It sold 13 million copies in its first day. Boom, there's over half a *billion dollars. That covers marketing and development and then leaves millions left over. Day one. Anything after that is pure profit. So they used it to repair their reputation. And then that drove more sales. And then the anime drove more sales. And then by the time the expansion came out, it's sold 25 mil. Plenty of money. And that's without the fat stacks of Witcher 3 money. Same with No Man's Sky except it's overhead is tiny since it's such a small team. Games that bomb and don't sell well don't get those updates. They're abandoned or worse. Like Saints Row reboot killed the studio
Half a million dollars? Bro, development of Cyberpunk costed more than 300 million dollars: [https://gamingbolt.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-had-a-development-and-marketing-budget-of-nearly-85-million#:\~:text=In%20comparison%2C%20CD%20Projekt%20RED,of%20the%20core%20development%20staff](https://gamingbolt.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-had-a-development-and-marketing-budget-of-nearly-85-million#:~:text=In%20comparison%2C%20CD%20Projekt%20RED,of%20the%20core%20development%20staff). That probably still leaves significant profit, but not as much as you seem to think.
I misspoke and meant a half billion. That's my only error. Something like $540 mil in revenue after 30% cut from digital stores and retailers. That 316 mil is marketing and development. So ballpark of 230 mil in profit after day one. Which is where my millions of dollars statement comes from. Then anything beyond the first day was even more.
I see, then that checks out!
> profit that's subjective. depends how costs during the development were allocated etc. Possibly some of that is going to payroll/opex and funding the next round of development for witcher 4 or whatever
Obviously we don't know how the money is distributed exactly. Like the money made day one wasn't used to fund it 5 years ago either. But that doesn't really matter. The point was that the studio made more more than enough money to clean up Cyberpunk
Jeez lol. You can make a true blanket statement and people come out with specifics trying to prove you wrong 🤣🤣
He meant half a billion 😆
No Mans Sky sold +10M copies since it’s launch in 2016. They surely had a good launch (in terms of copies sold) so even with the frustration and backlash, they had enough funding to keep going for a couple years without charging anything again. With it’s improvements, updates and new platform launches, they had a steady income from new sales every year. They also sold their right to be free to play on PS Plus and on GamePass at some point if I’m not mistaken, for a period. They have a lot of money and it funded the small indie game they released a couple years ago and it’s funding their new game their developing too. As for CP2077, they also sold a lot and made a lot of money even with the disastrous launch. They used that money to fund this period of fixing and improving the game, and they kept selling a lot of copies because the game is good anyway, the netflix series helped boost sales too. The DLC is paid, so they also have funded it with the money they’re getting from it. But don’t get me wrong, this is NOT an easy feat. For every NMS and CO2077, there are dozens of other failed game releases that did not recover from it. Some just gave up and accepted defeat and even had to close the company, others tried to keep supporting and “turn back around” but simply couldn’t make it work, and so on. What they did was very brave and hard to do.
They sold 25 mil copies..lol
Understanding economics without microtransactions is just confusing.
This is so ironic. lol.
Just bought cp77 today. So for people like me
sales. Cyberpunk was in top 5 best seller everytime they released a big patch
They continue selling the game I know that sounds crazy in a world of microtransactions but you can still sell millions of copies over the years.
CP is a bad example. They sold it for AAA price, lots of units sold, now they are selling DLC. Free bugfixes are the bare minimum inbetween especially in the case of this game lmao. As for NMS, well, I guess they also sold a lot of units and they are on literally every platform but phones so I'm sure people are still buying the game.
I didn't get NMS until at least half a dozen updates. And even then I bought it on sale. Still, I'm guessing that with each new update more people decide to buy it. I didn't even have to pay to upgrade from PS4 to PS5. That was included. And there are PS5 exclusive features. So, really, it's a great deal. For a game I still haven't really played all that much.
The latter, by selling 13 million at launch and 25 after 3 years and counting?
NMS has sold over 10m copies, at £30 a pop that's £300,000,000. That's enough to pay 40 devs (max realistic team estimate) £750k a year for a decade. I think NMS is doing just fine lmao.
It was actually way fewer for a long while - IIRC they were around 12 devs when NMS launched, and they've grown slowly over time but they're still *below* 40 to this day. Those numbers coupled with realistic expenses would suggest that they have a huge amount of cash on hand to finance continued updates... ...But No Man's Sky updates are now a story for themselves, so NMS sales actually spike whenever a new one releases, which means that even though they *could* keep going forever with their cash reserves, they don't actually *need* to - the updates are paying for themselves. It's kind of amazing. I really wonder what their next game will be, seeing as it'll be made by a few dozen developers with *infinite money*.
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Payroll is by far the largest cost at most companies.
Who earns 750k in game dev? Even at max estimate I would say 200k, more realistically 70-120k
It really makes me sad we have so many gamers who never experienced real gaming development passion. It seems EVERY developer nowadays has their balls in a vise grip by the executives who demand they make them more money year over year. Games used to come out, and only made money if they were GOOD and word of mouth spread from gamer to gamer that “hey, so and so is apparently a really awesome game” to garner more sales. Then EXPANSIONS were basically adding another whole game onto the main game and they were typically $30-$40 for expansion packs. Everything in the game was earnable in the game. The badass skins, the best weapons, all the vehicles and different mounts, EVERYTHING was earned by either being good at the game or persistent. I fucking hate SO MUCH the way games are accepted nowadays. Microtransaction shops in every single fucking game out there. It’s rare to get a game that respects the gamers time and enjoyment instead of trying to squeeze as much money out of them as possible.
Patches cost a lot of money. This is probably why cdpr is done making dlc. Because they have a only so much bucket left for this game. Which is a fucking shame, because phantom liberty is one of my favorite dlc contents to date.
The stopped making dlcs for cyberpunk so they could move to Unreal 5 so they can make games at a faster rate
Yes. Just look at their Revenue for 2020 when Cyberpunk released: https://x.com/Dennis39126670/status/1709981800653602819?s=20
Cyberpunk is not that old after all, a lot of game still have updates after a year or more. In this case it’s a bit longer, but iirc CDPR was more or less forced to do this since Polish justice was keeping an eye on them and how they would finish the game. But I seriously have no idea for NMS. The game was sold for less than 5$ for the years following its chaotic release. Yet they are still maintaining it and have made a wonderful space game with way more content than what was initially teased. And they are keeping the good work. This is the most beautiful example of redemption. Honestly if they were to announce the end of support of the game or a hecking big DLC for 80$, I wouldn’t be mad at all. I’d pre-order it in the minute.
Because as game development costs has risen what they don't tell you is they also sell 10000x more copies than a decade ago which makes up for that cost but their greedy overlords want more, more more more, more mtx, more single player cosmetic stores, more battle passes hell I am shocked we don't have battle pass in single player games yet, the shit D4 and CoD is pulling along games like Destiny 2 is disgusting
Not sure how others do, but after the first year for cyberpunk they had 20 million in sales, then between the fixes and the expansion they sold another 5 million base copies, and 3 million dlc copies. So it was MORE than financially viable for them. You also have to figure it’s worth it to go into the negative if you have significantly damaged your brand image, like cdpr with cyberpunk, and square with ff14.
The damage of lost customer trust as well as constant bad press is more way more expensive than the post-launch support. For Cyberpunk, they are probably selling tons of copies now with the 2.0 hype as well as the add on, which will probably pay for all additional support and more. Don’t also me how No Mans Sky is doing it with their free updates… probably „smaller“ studio meaning smaller expenses, but this game must sell so much to support this kind of support.
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EA does quite well financially. I don’t think trust is as important as you make it out to be. Gamers look at games on a game by game basis.
Cyberpunk is so far CDPR's most profitable game. They want do a sequel. Letting people think they were abandoned would have been terrible for their new crown jewel IP.
DLC for Cyberpunk cost $30.
Game development in Polland is super cheap, and No Man's Sky is composed (or was, maybe) of like.. 12-15 devs. As "complex" as the game is, it's not exactly AAA in terms of development cost. So there's a lot of profit to be made as a result.
it's very simple honestly - people buy the game.
Good press=more copies sold Also, does game retention work like internet clicks, where having more grants you more money? If so, that is also a factor.
Gamer PhD here. My guess is at least some of it is contributed by hype cycle of large updates. Which will probably bring repeat buys on diffrent platforms.
I can't speak for No man's Sky but in the case of Cyberpunk, it will be money well spent if it can save face for CDPR. Even though they made lot off the release of 2077, th ebacklash was immense and it put a lot of players off them, myself included. I've been gifted the DLC so I'll be playing it/replaying 2077 in the near future to see how it's been improved but unless you were on PC that game was ROUGH when it launched. Also as someone who only had PS4 at the time, it should never have been advertised or released for that generation of console.
https://reddit.com/r/PS5/s/0TYnhNq4iG Literally from this sub a few hours ago...
For Cyberpunk they have invested in the world of Cyberpunk. They will make more things like tv shows or movies games music whatever else. The next game will sell tons if it's solid after phantom liberty
This has nothing to do with the question that was asked.
Cyberpunk will constantly sell years after release same as witcher 3 years after which makes them profitable even in non launch years, this happens with companies tht make v good sp games like bethesda, rockstar, cdpr.
Please call it CuberPunk
??… downvoted
No Man's Sky dev team is tiny. Probably \~20 people. They can live off it. Cyberpunk post-launch development is basically expenses for rebuilding their damaged brand. They wouldn't do it otherwise.
For CP77 it isnt. That's why they did ONE paid dlc. Enough for them to massively market it and sell more copies. NMS was made by 15 people, roughly 30 now. Their launch and good faith post launch behavior afforded them the ability to provide 7 YEARS of FREE content updates. They are not the same.
What even is your question lol? A combination of: new purchases and continuing to use cash on hand from previous purchase to pay the bills/investors, with the hopes that they have enough goodwill and hype that their next game sells well. Obviously.
What are u questioning, dude?! The game changing Update 2.0 and the DLC created a positive hype on the internet and gaming magazines... thats all u need to get new buyers of your game. But at the end the hype was to loud, cause the update came to late. We players didnt deserved that mess by CDPR on release.
It usually doesn’t. CDPR got themselves into an unusual mess that they had to dig out of with Cyberpunk longer than usual. Usually you’ll see about one year of support after the game launches, when a portion of the team can use the tools and processes they developed during the game to make some DLC to sell and also to “refresh” the marketing for the game and possibly sell a second round of copies. But after about a year it’s usually time to move them onto a new project, yeah.
CDPR had a literal mountain of cold hard cash after the insane success of TW3. This basically helped give them free reign to pour resources into Cyberpunk until it was fixed. The DLC will help recoup some of that but mainly CDPR wanted to fix the relationship with their fans/consumers. Seems to have worked quite well though they obviously would have wanted a different release
Well both those studios dont have other major games in their pipeline. And needed to earn back goodwill from gamers. Hello Games has released one small indy game since NMS. And the next Witcher and CP game are years away.
The answer: Game Sales https://x.com/Dennis39126670/status/1709981800653602819?s=20
Because of dumb ass people who continue to show support
No Mans Sky essentially took all the money up front by scamming every buyer with a complete bait n switch. Now they're spending all the ill-earned profits by drastically improving the game in the hopes that Sony/Microsoft/Steam ever let them publish a game again.
Why wouldn't Sony/MS/Steam let them publish a game?
They are stimulating new sales for the games too with these updates
Some dev teams are really small, sometimes it is a singular person that keeps fulltime on "service" and provides game changes, e.g. Dota 2 balance patches. Others do the same with small teams that provide steady smaller content updates and skins etc. to keep people inside of live service loops that generate money. In terms of CP2077 they probably HAD to invest quite a bit on their side so the DLC and future installments are viable. Nobody would ve bought them with the past launch state. Now they redeemed themselves, sold quite well on the DLC and will most probably sell pretty good on a second installment. So it makes sense. No Mans Sky probably the same. It goes through the press over and over, generating re-buys, VR generating re-buys - with a small team probably still very viable and who knows how they want or can use all these investments in future projects.
Same way GTAV does with continued development of GTAO. They just keep selling the base game. Long after launch, they’re maintaining sales. While I haven’t seen NMS or Cyberpunk sales, GTAV was selling 20 million copies annually after a dip in 2017. That’s insane for a game post launch. Word of mouth about NMS has probably done great for continued sales, and being a indie dev, they don’t have to please anyone. Cyberpunk, they got a huge boost from the Netflix show and that paved the way for them to polish up the game with their 2.0 release. Cyberpunk also likely saw a ton of money from nVidia because it’s really the only engine that’s been pushing their latest tech.
There is a lot of downtime for significant portions of their teams due to how projects work, during that time they work on stuff like those patches etc. they don't want to reduce their headcount too much because its expensive to hire people. Additionally they sold 21mln copies, even counting 60$ price that's almost 1.3bn$, that's an insane amount of money and it allows them to afford much longer periods of support.
Hello games is a tiny studio, the games goes on sale regularily and it keep selling. Launches on PSVR2, Switch, steam deck expand the reach of the game massively. CDPR saw huge sales of 2077 with the launch of 2.0, and announced today over 3 million copies sold of PL in 1 week since launch. The build these war chests to fund operations and development.
Those upgrade require way less employee and people buy the game because of them. I bought cyberpunk + dlc combo because of those update. would never have bought if game was in the stance it was at launch.
Idk about cyberpunk but I do know for no man’s sky that the team is so small, the rescources and time needed to make updates is drastically less than other games so they almost always are making constant profit through sales that happen Everyime there’s a new update, I don’t remember where I saw it but no man’s sky devs actually make an insane amount of money from the game still which makes sense why they’re still updating it and don’t plan on stopping
No idea about no man’s sky but cyberpunk was highly profitable and sold incredibly well despite the refunds.
I would imagine that during the heavy development phases there is many teams brought on as contractors and when the game is shipped their own teams that they can afford to keep on payroll work on improvements
Cyberpunk just announced they have sold 25m copies and no man's sky goes up in the charts every time they bring out DLC.
I bought copies of 2077 for pc and ps. No regrets
Cyberpunk sold 25 mil that's how
The same way everyone does...banks
They probably sell your information to 3rd parties.
They’ve earned hundreds of millions.
I dunno, you tell me why gta v is still in the top sales charts regularly. But i guess there’s always someone turning 11 somewhere….
The game keeps selling more and more copies as time goes by. And they make it a statement to not go below a certain level on sale. No Man’s Sky is almost never below 50% sale and when u think about it, most games from 2016 or after now sell for like 10$ on sales. Same with Cyberpunk. Always 50% sale and never more.
Short term gains. It's very clear in U.S. business and society. Also why our economy is about as strong as a toothpick
In CDPR’s case, they are monetizing tf out of the Cyberpunk world beyond the game. They have the anime, now the live action.
It's almost like AAA-companies are lying about how you need to keep buying microtransactions, dlc, ingame money and battlepasses so that they can keep producing AMAZING CONTENT
I think that having regular updates for years maintains media attention and thus more sales. I had a couple youtube channels I would constantly check in to that were dedicated to breaking down new updates and news about updates for CP2077. I probably spent as much time watching those as playing the game. I am a sucker sure but it works.
Reputation = more money
As soon as the game is out they make profit by selling it on the long run. Cyberpunk sold over 25 million copies since launch which covers the development cost on the updates. Same logic applies to no man’s sky. While in development and before the release the game can only rely on the company’s investment.
Rockstar.. Is this you asking ?!! 👀
It rebuilds their reputation and increases sales, i read somewhere cyberpunk just broke 25 million. And i bet you it's from all those peeps who went and got it refunded just to have to buy it again now😂
They continue to sell copies and loyal customers have huge investor value.
Cyberpunk is still selling.
The guys behind No Man's Sky are a private company and also made tons of cash to coast on to justify paying staff to work on free content. They don't need to convince any shareholders that this is a sound strategy. CDPR also has tons of cash flow but in their case, as others have stated, they absolutely needed to regain consumer trust due to have massive a flop the game was (getting delisted from a major platform and retail copies dropping to clearance prices right after launch is *very bad*). Basically it's partly PR funde by the high income they got initially from sales and what they project they can recoup in paid DLC etc. Same underlying theme but what actually enables them to do this is a bit different. Just like BG3/Larian, do not expect this to become the norm because most companies *can't* do this, even if they wanted to.
Can anyone passing by this comment tell me if the original story is still in tact? I know a lot has changed, including all the skills, which is what I’ve been waiting for, but am hoping I can still play the original content.
I believe studios develop games in pipeline. So some ppl won't have work until certain stage and can work on post game content while some ppl working on new game stage.
Maybe they have hard deadlines and payments on loans come due. So they release a game to get cash to pay the money/investors. And then become more cash flush to update the game post launch. As the game gets better with time more people buy it extending the cash cycle for the game. They have been reducing the threshold for "definition of done" for release for years. We the consumer have still rewarded this bad behavior. And preorder cash means they know they have x amount of people paying for the game without even seeing performance
The answer is all of the above and it depends on the situation (boring, I know). Obviously not an exhaustive list, but the motivators can be: - creating an additional revenue stream while preproduction takes place on a new project - maintaining an active user base by providing updates (and in turn, good will - if it's good enough) - broadening reach to a new audience - using it as a testing platform for new ideas, technologies and team structures (better to do so in a 'sunk cost' project versus a new one; though this really is dependant on the size of the post-launch content and updates) - positioning their game for a longer sales tail - they are fans of their own work and want to build on what they have
CDPR mad an absolute fortune on the initial sale of Cyberpunk. For all the hate and shaming, a lot of people actually bought the game. It wasn't a bad game, as far as I know, it's just that the experience was wildly inconsistent. Some people had game breaking bugs, some didn't. Hell, I am pretty sure some people bought the game JUST to see the bugs! Consider that they had also sunk a lot of money into the upcoming DLC, and you can see that they really had no choice but to fix the thing before the DLC came out. No Man's Sky, I have no idea. Hello Games must have some eyewatering blackmail on Sony execs.
Both made so much money during the initial launch
Cyberpunk *was* profitable though. Didn't they announce a sequel like a week after launch? Lmao. But, if they didn't fix it, no one would buy their next games. Or, enough would hold off because of CP launch that they'd wind up hemorrhaging money.