Cyberpunk 2077‘s creative director, Gabriel Amatangelo, is now the full game director; developing future expansions.
GamesIndustry.biz reports Gabriel Amatangelo, the game’s creative director, has now taken on full director duties. The former game director, Adam Badowski, will now reportedly be focused on leadership duties; including the transition to CD Projekt’s “Red 2.0” parallel AAA game development strategy.
Amatangelo had only joined the studio in January 2020 as the aforementioned creative director. Prior to this, he was the CCO and co-founder for QC Games, and a creative and design director for Bioware (where he reportedly worked on the DLC of Dragon Age: Inquisition and various expansions for Star Wars: The Old Republic).
Fitting for someone who had worked on DLC and expansions, Amatangelo will reportedly be leading development of Cyberpunk 2077′s future expansions. Even so, some may feel the promotion will be putting Amatangelo in an unenviable position.
CD Projekt has had months of negative press thank to the game; numerous delays and leaked footage were not the end of the woes. One reviewer suffered a major epileptic seizure, and accused the developer on basing the Braindance headset off a medical device designed to induce seizures for diagnosis.
Despite high praise from initial reviews, users complained of Cyberpunk 2077‘s numerous glitches and bugs; along with poor optimization, and the console version having inferior graphics and more bugs. Even critic reviews that praised the game also discussed those issues.
CD Projekt Red stock value dropped by 29% in a week after the game launched. CD Projekt Red apologized for the game’s advertising and launch, and offered full refunds. However, two lawsuits were launched by investors- one in Poland also being an attorney. Recently, four class action lawsuits against the game consolidated for potential common court proceedings.
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.
The company also shared their “Commitment to Quality” agenda, and FAQ trying to explain how the issues came about. The Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) is also monitoring CD Projekt.
In a “Strategy Update for investors,” Adam Kicinsk, President and Joint CEO of Projekt Red, explained the companies’ future plans for growth, and changes. This included announcing the cancellation of the game’s stand-alone multiplayer, and future marketing and PR campaigns being closer to the game’s launch.
In spite of all this and the founders of developer CD Projekt Red predicted to have lost $1 billion USD; Cyberpunk 2077 sold 13.7 million units in 2020. Further, only 1.6% of Cyberpunk 2077 copies were refunded, with current and predicted future refunds only affecting 9% of CD Projekt’s total game revenue in 2020.
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.
