Cyberpunk 2077 may have been the most anticipated video game in the history of video games. It seemingly promised the world and fans’ excitement reached a fever pitch leading up to its release. However, its launch was a complete disaster.
Cyberpunk 2077 was broken when it first came out. Bugs and glitches littered the game. And not just small graphical problems – we’re talking game-breaking issues. It resulted in Cyberpunk 2077 becoming infamous as the most catastrophic video game launch of all time.
To be clear, there were a huge combination of factors that made Cyberpunk 2077 the failure that it was. From simple over-promising to brutal developer crunch. Although, a single primary reason has never been identified. Regardless, the buck stops with CD Projekt Red who knowingly released a broken game. However, a whistleblower from inside Quantic Labs (CDPR’s outsourced quality assurance testing company) has now revealed new information that sheds light on what may be the key reason behind Cyberpunk 2077‘s epic failure.
Cyberpunk 2077 Quality Assurance
If someone is willing to risk their career and the threat of legal action to get information out to the public, they must have a good reason. Well, that’s just what one insider from Quantic Labs has done.
YouTuber Upper Echelon Gamers has reportedly received confidential documents and files from an inside source at the Romania-based QA firm. They claim that these documents show the true goings on at the company and how they contributed to Cyberpunk 2077 being so broken on release.
According to Upper Echelon Gamers, the whistleblower has revealed the following:
- “Quantic Lab had a team of junior testers working on Cyberpunk 2077 after being contracted for a quality assurance project.”
- “Quantic decided to implement a bug quota for specific sections of the game which lead to a massive influx of low priority issues as inexperienced testers tried to meet that requirement.”
- “For multiple other projects, Quantic Lab was allegedly making false representations about team size during and beyond 2019 and 2020.”
Upper Echelon Gamers reportedly received a 72-page QA testing file, human resources paperwork, and workflow charts from the source. This huge volume of evidence has led the YouTuber to believe that the whistleblower is legitimate.
Quantic Lab’s game industry clients include CD Projekt Red, Ubisoft, THQ Nordic, Techland, and Deep Silver. According to their website, they also performed QA testing for CDPR’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Of course, The Witcher 3 received the polar opposite reception to Cyberpunk 2077. It is hailed as one of the greatest games of all time.
Recipe for Failure
Let’s take out the factors on CD Projekt Red’s side that contributed to the failure of Cyberpunk 2077. At this point, they are well publicised. Looking solely at the information this whistleblower has revealed, it’s clear to see what went wrong with the game.
The first issue is misrepresentation. Quantic Lab reportedly promised a dedicated team of extensively experienced QA testers to tackle the mammoth task that was Cyberpunk 2077. However, their team was actually comprised of inexperienced junior testers. Many of these reportedly had to learn on the job, something that took time away from more experienced team members. What’s more, Upper Echelon Gamers states that: “in the summer of 2020, the testing team was expanded. Thirty testers became sixty testers.” This, however, turned out to be “an absolute disaster”. These additional thirty testers were inexperienced “brand-new hires” with little to no QA experience.
Most concerning was the bug quota that Quantic Lab reportedly introduced. This saw individual testers tasked with finding at least ten bugs per day. The idea here was to craft a polished game by eliminating as many bugs as possible. Unfortunately, this instead created a situation whereby Quantic Lab sent a deluge of “negligible” bugs to CDPR. They were unable to keep up with the volume and mandated that smaller bugs be deprioritised in favour of more serious game-breaking issues. It seems, however, that it was too late. The implementation of the quota caused a huge delay in fixing the game’s core systems.
The Fallout
Since release, Sony pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from their PlayStation Store, and Microsoft instituted a blanket returns policy. CDPR have released numerous updates in an effort to fix the game and it has improved since launch; although, many consumers still feel let-down by the developer. In light of these new revelations, it is apparent that severe QA issues played a huge part in the sad tale of Cyberpunk 2077.
Did you enjoy Cyberpunk 2077 despite all the issues? Let us know in the comment section below and don’t forget to check out our other gaming articles…
