Cyberpunk 2077 was the biggest title of 2020 and it shows. The game may have some technical issues (a LOT actually) but it’s still selling like hot pancakes. The game had over one million-plus concurrent players on Steam alone.
In a recent note to investors, CD Projekt revealed that they already made a profit from digital pre-orders. It means that development and marketing costs have been recovered. It doesn’t count physical pre-orders and sales from Day One to now. Those will count as a direct profit of the company.
That’s only from three platforms: PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. While many users are playing the game on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S via backward compatibility, the official next-gen version is still not available. CD Projekt will release a free next-gen update for the new consoles in early 2021. It may not lead to huge sales but it will still bring some revenue.
The report said:
“The Management Board of CD PROJEKT S.A. with a registered office in Warsaw (hereinafter referred to as “the Company”) hereby announces that the estimated licensing royalties receivable by the Company in association with pre-order sales of Cyberpunk 2077 across all of its digital distribution channels have exceeded the sum of the following:
- total development expenditures related to the game, and
- the game’s marketing and promotional costs borne by the Company - either already incurred or anticipated for the remainder of 2020.
I think it’s safe to assume that Cyberpunk 2077 will become a big moneymaker for CD Projekt, just like Witcher 3. To boot, the developers still have two massive expansion packs. Both will release sometime next year.
Cyberpunk had a tough launch. Although it may not be as bad as Fallout 76 or Anthem, it’s still pretty ugly. Developers have promised that they are working on updates and fixes to improve the game in the coming months. They released hotfix 1.04 just a few days ago to fix some major issues. But there is still a long way to go.
