Despite its disastrous launch in 2020, CD Projekt’s shooter RPG Cyberpunk 2077 has grown to become the studio’s darling, as it has now sold over 35 million copies, even reaching this milestone faster than The Witcher 3 did.
Announced via the studio’s latest earnings report, CD Projekt CFO Piotr Nielubowicz described that Cyberpunk 2077’s achievement was “a better result than The Witcher 3 was able to achieve in the same post-release time frame,” and that this makes the title its “main source of income” as it looks towards the future of the franchise and gears up for a sequel, with development split between two teams in Warsaw and Boston.
While not much is known about the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, IP creator Mike Pondsmith previously shared some information on its possible setting during the Digital Dragons 2025 conference, where he explained that even though he wasn’t involved this time around, he had reviewed the scripts from CD Projekt, revealing that the sequel features a new city in addition to Night City, a place he described as “Chicago gone wrong”.
“I spent a lot of time talking to one of the environment guys, and he was explaining how the new place in Orion (the codename for the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel), because there’s another city we visit — I’m not telling you any more than that but there’s another city we visit.” he teased, “And Night City is still there. But I remember looking at it and going, yeah I understand the feel you’re going for this, and this really does work. And it doesn’t feel like Blade Runner, it feels more like Chicago gone wrong. I said, ‘Yeah, I can see this working.’”
With the current success of Cyberpunk 2077 and the studio scaling up on staff across their Boston, Warsaw, and Vancouver teams as they lay the foundations for a sequel, it makes it easier to forget just how poorly the game was received when it first launched in December 2020. Plagued with technical and performance issues, it was obvious that it shipped way before it was ready, leading to a wave of refunds early on.
It was only three years later when the game received its free “2.0” patch that things started to turn around, as it overhauled many systems fans thought were lacking, and essentially made it feel like a completely new title, making for one of the best comeback stories for such a high-profile game. Let’s just hope CD Projekt takes their time for the sequel to avoid this happening all over again.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
Sherwin Loh
