Rosen Law Firm have begun the second lawsuit against CD Projekt Red on behalf of investors, due to the state of Cyberpunk 2077 at launch.
As previously reported, CD Projekt Red apologized for not showing Cyberpunk 2077 running on last-gen consoles (though they did show the game running on PlayStation 4 Pro), and for the unstable launch of the game.
The game’s devastating launch and accusations of inaccurate advertising resulted in one investor in Poland starting a class action lawsuit. Now, GamesIndustry.biz report that the New York-based Rosen Law Firm have begun their own lawsuit.
As with the Poland lawsuit, the suit alleges that CD Projekt’s executives lied to investors about how development was progressing and the final state of the game on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The lawsuit describes the game as “virtually unplayable on the current-generation Xbox or Playstation systems due to an enormous amount of bugs.”
“Defendants’ statements about its business, operations, and prospects, were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times,” Rosen Law Firm reportedly stated. “When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.”
Rosen Law Firm are asking for CD Projekt shareholders to join the lawsuit, including one of them to become the lead plaintiff. Shareholders can find the online form here.
As previously reported, the game’s numerous delays and leaked footage were not the end of the woes for CD Projekt Red. One reviewer suffered a major epileptic seizure, and accused the developer on basing the Braindance headset off a medical device designed to intentionally induce seizures.
Despite high praise from initial reviews, the Metacritic user score was far less. Currently the Metascore for the PC version of the game is 86, with a user score of 7.1 (out of 10). Meanwhile, the game’s PlayStation 4 and Xbox One user scores are 3.4 and 4.6 respectively (with Metascores of 53 and 60 respectively).
It should be noted that those who have not played the game may also be submitting user reviews, as Metacritic does not verify if a user has completed or played a game. In February for example a user of Reset Era orchestrated the review bombing of AI: The Somnium Files.
Metacritic placed a 36 hour grace period on user reviews for video games in July of this year. Metacritic would later insist this decision was not motivated by reactions to any particular game. That year also say low user review scores for Warcraft III: Reforged, and The Last of Us Part II.
Users complained of Cyberpunk 2077‘s numerous glitches and bugs, along with poor optimization and the console version having inferior graphics. Even critic reviews that praised the game also discussed those issues. Since then a hotfix has been released, but CD Projekt Red stock value dropped by 29% in a week.
CD Projekt Red apologized for the game’s advertising and launch, and offered full refunds. A now patched issue with save file corruption had the developers recommend users complete the game quickly, and avoid crafting too many items.
A Q&A investor call reportedly had CD Projekt Red denying they had any special agreements for refunds for Cyberpunk 2077 on consoles, and that they were working on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game “until the very last minute.”
Both Sony and Microsoft stated they would offer full refunds for the game. Sony would remove the game from the PlayStation Store, but there were “no talks” of Microsoft removing it from theirs.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available on Windows PC (via Epic Games, GOG, and Steam), PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia. The game is also coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in 2021, and players on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One respectively will be able to upgrade to the next-gen for free.
In case you missed it, you can find our review here.
Image: Steam
