CD Projekt Red, the development studio behind Cyberpunk 2077, has already explained its schedule for revising the game over the next year and apologized for its unfinished feel. However, Bloomberg has published a new, detailed report based on interviews with more than 20 current and former staff members, which shows that the game is still in its early stages of development, and that the company is still working on it.

The game was initially announced in 2012, a year before the PS4 and Xbox One launch and three years before The Witcher 3 debuted, but the company did not begin working on the game properly until "late 2016." At that point, CD Projekt Red "essentially hit the reset button," changing the game from a third-person to a first-person perspective, among other things, according to sources in the report.

It also didn't help that, according to one team member, the company was trying to build the engine and the game at the same time, which was like "trying to drive a train at the same time while the tracks were laid out in front of you."

The E3 trailer that wowed the world in 2018 was "almost completely fake," the report added, which is why features like car ambush were in the demo but not in the final product.

The report is full of interesting details, but overall it paints a picture of an overambitious and overworked studio that worked in the belief that the success of The Witcher 3 would make things work. No doubt the problems were exacerbated by the pandemic and the need to work remotely (access to console development kits was limited, and the horrible performance problems on the last generation consoles were not otherwise evident), but this was only one piece of a larger puzzle that was dysfunctional It appears that it was not.

When the game's first release date of April 16, 2020 was announced, Bloomberg's sources claimed they knew it was only a matter of time before it would be delayed, and some even created memes and made bets on when the inevitable would happen.

After the announcement, game director Adam Budowsky took to Twitter to refute several elements of the report.

In particular, he disputed the idea that the E3 demo was "fake," arguing that it merely reflected a non-linear method of game development, while also suggesting that the sample of 20 employees (some former, most anonymous) did not necessarily reflect the sentiment of the entire team It also suggests that it does not necessarily reflect the sentiments of the team as a whole. To be clear, unnamed sources are rarely a problem. This is because speaking on the condition of anonymity is often the only way for a source to be candid, given the potential risk to their career otherwise.

In any case, the journey of Cyberpunk 2077 remains unfinished, with the team promising two more major patches, multiple smaller updates and improvements, free DLC, and free updates for next-generation consoles by the end of the year. Hopefully, as time goes on, the game everyone hopes will emerge from the controversy as a masterpiece that will stand the test of time.