The only way they could not have known how bad it was on older consoles was if they didn't bother to watch any gameplay, which is crazy because they made the decision to not release gameplay footage to the public prior to the game being released.

So yes, they lied.

I am sorry, that is just wrong. Just look at some of the reviews on metacritic stating in no uncertain terms 100%, best game ever, better than life itself. If what you say is true, then these are also lies…
Oh wait, yeah they brought all that. Just like they lied to everyone involved, crashed their workforce, voided their own belief in drm free. Nice throne that right at the seat of EA!

What they are being blamed for here is not them not focusing on old/er consoles. Its what they said about it. Those lawsuits(*) are not about "You CDP/R guys messed up and it doesnt work properly on old/er consoles." Its (*) about "You CDP/R guys said it works properly on old/er consoles but it doesnt.". Its their communication with investors which is the issue here and not CP2077 not working properly on old/er consoles.

(*) the part which I have outlined here, there may be other parts, I dont have inside knowledge about those lawsuits and my information is based on publicly available material

That you could play the game on day one isn't the problem. The problem was that the game they advertised was not the game they sold. The problem was that they cut content to release a generic shooter looter that performed well as a shooter looter but not as the deep cyberpunk RPG people were being told was coming.

Such a change is similar to buying a car that advertises it is a full electric vehicle but is actually an ICE vehicle. You can't say "but it is still a car, and a good car" it isn't what you paid for.

The only reason that games launch with a load of bugs is because people like you accept that games will launch with a load of bugs. In the early dial-up days, while you could download a patch that would fix edge cases, no one was expected to have internet access so games released with much fewer bugs, and were excessively playtested before release.

Now, instead of doing in house alpha testing, games release as alphas and MIGHT become more stable over time, some games never get officially fixed so anyone can use it. Some games are abandoned by their publishers almost immediately after release.

A game should release as a complete product, not as a product that could potentially become a good product, but as a complete product ready to go. Holding back progress by letting games release as trash and forgiving them for doing so is part of the reason games are released as trash.

"growth ambitions" ~= "greedy for more power"? The way I understand 'greed' it is not limited to personal wealth. And in general my impression is that powerful people often have greater desire for more power/control than for more personal wealth. (Although I think usually they want both...)

Edit: If that wasnt clear: Whether the money is personally theirs or theirs to play with - they can be greedy for both variants.

No. Growth ambitions can intersect with and be part of greed, but they are different.

Was it greed when my friend's wife decided to quit her day job to expand her evenings and weekends side gig of baking cookies into a full-time thing? Or when she decided to take on a loan to scale up production a little bit? It's a smaller scale, but exactly when the decision of "loan? get investors?" would come up. They have an awesome family business now, are able to retire in the future (when they previously had no chances of it), have more time with their family, and are super happy with what they're doing.

Is it greed when a community food bank decides, "let's grow and support the whole city or county" and seeks to find donors to expand operations, maybe even selling some naming rights? No, certainly not. But that's exactly the same kind of decision when a company would make a decision "get investors? or not?".

Is it greed when a video game company thinks they have an awesome product they believe in and are excited to make and get out there to players, but they don't quite currently have the resources to actualize it in the way they feel would be be best for their end product? Maybe they decide to bring in investors to fund the ambitious, creative dream.

Is it greed to get outside investment to try to build a store that's doing well-enough on its own, but currently is growing at a much slower rate than its greed-fueled competitors in a way that harms its long-term viability because of the network effect? Especially if that store is better for the consumers than the competition, but doesn't have as much clout because of back-room dealings and irresponsible and consumer-disrespectful behavior?

The above are all examples of ambitious business growth, none of which have greed as its element.

The context here is CDP/CDPR. 'Growth ambitions' means desire for more power for the ones in charge. Aka "I want more money/power". While this isnt exactly identical to greed my '~=' was meant to imply that.

Also I found this: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/116720/CD_Projekt_To_Go_Public_In_Deal_With_Tech_Company_Optimus.php
Not sure how much value the intent statements from company/management have but the facts should be more reliable.

Personal freedom at stake. So quite different.

Greed is a person thing. If you want to make a proper example you need to get a greedy or not-greedy person into it.

Again, companies dont think. People think.

Same - you are excluding the relevant part - the person/s which are greedy or not - and talking about abstracta.

Excluding your first example: There is no recognizable greed because there arent any persons in your examples. In CDP/R case the managemant/owners are very notable persons who cant be easily (if at all) replaced. This is quite different from many other publicly traded companies. And in the above link they also say "We have gained all this while retaining control of the business, which was essential to us." - admitting the importance of that personal power.


Edit grm fix

Someone did, I guess. Maybe management really thought the console version were ok. It was a weird situation, everybody working from home. I'm a dev myself, worked mostly home office in the past year. If I had told my boss "everything's fine" while my project was stalling and not coming along, it would have created a similar situation.

I guess it's a difficult situation. People under pressure can act irrationally, even lie (also to themselves). Management was probably looking at the successful "SWitcher" port and thinking "they can do it".

But of course someone on the team should have come forward and say "the console version is shit and not at all ready" at some point prior to release.

It's simply hard to tell who knew what and who is directly responsible. How much misjudgement played a role, or dishonesty at the various levels.

In the end it's on the CEO's shoulders anyway. It's their job to keep a tab on things, and steer accordingly. That's what their paid for - and graciously.

Again, the only way the chief execs could not have known the true state of the console version was if they didn't want to know. Plausible deniability doesn't cut it when you're being paid to run a company, and anyone who tries to have it both ways -- perks and bonuses without responsibility -- fully deserves to be run out of town, and this goes for the entire industry, and every other industry.

That's a specious distinction because corporations are nothing more than people who're prone to reckless behavior due to the limitation of liability.

Far as I read those quoted examples: They are not about corporations. IMO the exact kind of leadership (the actual people) is important for answering the greed question in those examples. So the people who make those decisions need to be brought into the example and described properly.

This. Being pro-capitalism has nothing to do with being pro corporations. The two are not mutually exclusive, and much like other alternatives, it has its pros and cons, and also much like other alternatives, can be subject to exploitation without some sort of supervision in regards to things like fair competition, abuse of loopholes and regulations.

Erm, no, hey stare blankly at mobile phones which tell them what to do. Skynet does the thinking.

What annoys me the most is that CP2077 truly is exceptional game (probably best game of in ps5/xbonx generation) and every game will copy some aspect of it.

Bugs and really bad way to communicate what this game is all about (best slowburner CRPG game I have ever played(but they just had to get those GTAO $$ crowd, as history didn't show time after time that strategy always end up badly), it took me some 10 hours to immerse me in but when it took me, it took me really deep, cant stop playing, contrary to IDK.. Skyrim or neoFallouts(3&4,76) that became really boring 10 hours in).

All they had to do is raise difficulty but somehow communicate to people that its really important to develop their character(force players to be great at 2 things and good in one).

They should have take a page from Todd Howard book, how he explained how Skyrim should be played long before game was released("See those mountains, you can go there :)"), bonus being that Todd always overpromise and underdeliver , while CP77 under promised yet overdelivered, truly is best game ever made, ruined by stuff that is not even connected to core game as such.

I know its easy to be General after the battle but they should have release game first on PC and later on on consoles(and they would push even bigger numbers, what were they thinking, that PS4 would be able to run C77 in multiplayer, what were they smoking, PS4/XBONE were undervolted laptops with APUs when they were released, only thing they had going for them was 8 gb gddr5 in 2014, shared.. )..
If anyone has to be kicked out, its probably marketing team and person who took Keanu(he is just not bad guy material(now Javier Bardem or Benicio del Toro if they really wanted someone Hollywood for optics), , he is fckn Neo and as potentially best villain in gaming history(surpassing Sephirot), such wasted opportunity for some crazy character design..
When they mess up bad game in its core i.e. Mass Effect Andromeda, you can somehow get pass that, but when they mess game that was entry to new gen on many levels(from gameplay options to graphics)with small stuff, well..that hurts just little extra .
This is why we cant have nice things!!

I defend this game pretty often but I wouldn't go that far. I think Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is much better and has similar gameplay, for example. I also don't think it's really doing anything new or unique, it's an open world checklist version of Deus Ex for the most part.


I found Andromeda disappointing because of its open world checklist design, but considering the most popular games out there share that design I don't think that's why people hated it. At the end of the day people are much more story and character focused than they usually admit, and Andromeda's story and characters mostly sucked. Cyberpunk having very little story outside of its "main quest" is one of the many reasons people were disappointed by it.