Embattled game developer CD Projekt Red has taken plenty of heat for its botched Cyberpunk 2077 launch, but the company is working to assuage its investors as it reported today that it had sold 13 million copies of the game since the launch a mere 10 days ago. Surprisingly, those stellar sales numbers come after the company removed refunds from its final sales numbers and easily exceed the eight million copies the company sold prior to launch.
Overall, that means that despite the controversy swirling around the new game, and the refunds being given for both digital and physical copies due to performance issues, the company has done well in terms of sales.
For instance, CD Projekt Red sold four million copies of The Witcher 3 in the first two weeks, making Cyberpunk 2077 a much more profitable endeavor, at least for now. The Witcher 3 has sold more than 28 million copies in total, with the notable caveat that it has been on the market since 2015. It remains to be seen if Cyberpunk 2077 can match those stellar sales figures in light of the as-yet unsolved bugs that continue to plague the new title.
CD Projekt Red posted its disclosure of estimated sales of Cyberpunk 2077 to its investor relations site, saying:
"[...] based on reports obtained from digital distribution platforms and data collected from physical distributors, it estimates that by 20 December inclusive gamers have purchased over 13 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077. This figure represents the estimated volume of retail sales across all hardware platforms (factoring in returns submitted by retail clients in brick-and-mortar as well as digital storefronts), i.e., the “sell-through” figure, less all refund requests e-mailed directly to the Company by the publication date of this report in the framework of the “Help Me Refund” campaign."
CD Projekt Red's disclosure comes as the company faces potential lawsuits from investors over misrepresentation of its game, and several retailers have scrambled to refund frustrated gamers due to the title's persistent bugs and performance issues. Sony even resorted to pulling the game from its online store due to severe performance issues on game consoles.
CD Projekt Red has struggled to respond to the issues but has released two post-launch patches to resolve some of them, including sub-par performance with AMD processors due to a misidentification error. In fact, the company issued its second patch a few days early as it tried to deal with the fallout of poor performance on gaming consoles. CD Projekt Red plans to release yet another patch early next month to resolve more issues with the game engine, but it is clear that it will be several months before the company has cleared its slate of outstanding bugs.
