Cyberpunk 2077 – CD Projekt RED Founders Lose Over $1 Billion Due to Buggy Launch
CD Projekt RED has been taking a beating since the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 with stock falling by 29 percent following various issues. According to Bloomberg, the company's founders have lost over $1 billion from their own wealth. As of Tuesday, their joint 34 percent stake is valued at roughly $3 billion with stock rising by 2.5 percent.
Based on different analyst estimates collected by Bloomberg, the title's 12-month sales forecast has fallen from the previously predicted 30 million or so to 25.6 million. The consensus seems to be that fixing the game's many issues will be "crucial for revenue" even as the PC version's outlook seems to be faring better. BOS Bank SA analyst Tomasz Rodak stated in an email that, "There is now huge scar on the reputation of both the studio and its management."
"In only a couple of days, CD Projekt fell from the most adored studio to the most hated one. Restoring trust is not impossible, but would need much time and effort." While the developer has committed to bug fixes and updates on the previous-gen versions, its approach to refunds has also seen criticism. Despite telling disgruntled players that they can apply for refunds, board member Michał Nowakowski clarified during a recent conference call that, "It's going to be up to Sony and Microsoft and their current policies."
Cyberpunk 2077 is currently available for Xbox One, PS4, PC and Google Stadia. Check out our review for the PS4 version on PS5 here and the PC version here.
Wasteland Patch 1.2.0 Offers Massive Number of Fixes, Balance Changes and More
InXile Entertainment's Wasteland 3 has a new patch available which introduces a host of balance changes, bug fixes and overall improvements. Patch 1.2.0 resolves issues like the starting Rangers' attributes going into the negative, progression blockers in the Yuma County Speedway and Little Hell and much more. It's worth reading the full patch notes here.
One of the more notable changes made is regarding the XP needed to level up. Requirements for levels 8 to 20 have been "slightly" increased but from 20 to 30, you'll need significantly more XP. This change was made to players over-leveling content and to keep things challenging as one heads into the end-game.
Critical hit chance has also been adjusted with enemies having 62.5 percent of their original value. Players will also see the critical hit chance conferred by Intelligence reduced from 25 to 20 percent; gear, mods and even Major Tomcat's bonuses to the same have also been reduced. Though bonus crit chance has been removed from light armor helmets, they now have bonuses to evasion or status effect resistance instead.
Check out some of the patch notes below. Wasteland 3 is currently available for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. More features are coming next year, like permadeath and details on DLC so stay tuned.
Gameplay
- The intro cinematic and live-action short are now viewable from the main menu under a Special Features option.
- When switching away from and back to the original two Rangers, their attributes will no longer change to negative values.
- Resolved an issue where characters would play the cover animation repeatedly when moving into cover from a crouch.
- Sawblade ammo has been added into merchants and enemy drop tables.
- You were right. More sniper ammo has been added into the intro Ambush scene.
- Vendors have smartened up and will no longer trigger Antique Appraiser on junk that you've repurchased.
- Fixed an issue where Yuma County Speedway Doors were not interactable under certain conditions.
- Fixed two conversation issues with Liberty that could fail to advance and require restarting the game.
- Fixed an issue where the Rebel Scout would not appear in Hoon Homestead after being sent there to meet [redacted].
Conan Chop Chop Delayed to Early 2021
With 2020 coming to a close, Funcom and Mighty Kingdom have finally confirmed that Conan Chop Chop will not be releasing this year. It's been delayed to early 2021 with Funcom chief creative officer Joel Bylos stating that, "If we had launched this year, there'd be half the number of cute pigs in the game. And you can't launch a Conan game without that."
Bylos is also seemingly looking to avoid crunching staff to try and push the game out too quickly (as if referencing another title that seemingly suffered that fate). "And besides, the only crunch we want in our Conan game is the crunch of bones beneath our sandaled feet." This is the fourth delay for the action adventure hack and slash title though, so it remains to be seen if it can stick to its new deadline.
Conan Chop Chop is a hack and slash title where one to four players team up to take down the evil wizard Thoth-Amon. Chopping through hordes of foes, they'll explore various locations like Koth, Vanaheim, Hyperboria and more. Of course, there's also loot to earn, from weapons and trinkets to legendary items. Maps are completely randomized and there are different weapons and abilities to try with new ones unlocking for subsequent playthroughs. It's currently slated to release for Xbox One, PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch.
Risk of Rain 2 Roadmap Revealed – Anniversary Update and First Expansion Coming in 2021
Following its launch out of early access, Hopoo Games talked about eventually transitioning into paid expansions for Risk of Rain 2. It recently revealed its 2021 forecast/roadmap with the Anniversary Update coming in March 2021 and the first paid expansion set for Q4 2021. The former will be free and focus on polishing the overall game.
However, there will be some new content like a new Survivor, new Boss, new Skill Variant for five of the current Survivors, new items and more. Logbook Lore Entries will also be completed and some changes will be made to help modders. The first expansion is where the real meat is, featuring enough content for two to three content updates.
It will feature new Survivors and bosses (yes, more than one), new enemies, new items, new stages and new interactables. You should also expect new random events, a new item tier, new game mode, a new alternate final stage and boss, and new Elite types. And yes, there will be new music as well.
Check out the roadmap in full detail below. Risk of Rain 2 is currently available for Xbox One, PS4, PC, Stadia and Nintendo Switch.
Spelunky 2 Online Multiplayer Now in Open Beta on PC
Though it launched with a fair amount of critical acclaim, Spelunky 2 has had its fair share of problems this year. Its online multiplayer faced issues on PS4 and was subsequently delayed for the PC launch. Mossmouth has now confirmed that online play is in open beta on PC.
Unfortunately, while matchmaking is working, inviting friends has been problematic. According to the developer, "This did not come up at all during the closed beta, and we suspected that the addition of multiple servers in preparation for the (much larger, more global) public beta might be related to the issue." A recent patch has helped sort the issue for a number of players but Mossmouth is still working on fixing any other issues that crop up for the time being.
In the first half of 2021, it will enable cross-platform play between the PS4 and PC versions. The Arena mode will also be tweaked while the invite system also receives some changes (though that will be for later next year). Mossmouth is also working to bring Spelunky and Spelunky 2 to Nintendo Switch in Summer 2021 so it should be interesting to see if online multiplayer is sorted by then.
Cyberpunk 2077 – 10 Things You Shouldn't Pass Over
As you'd expect from a large, open world RPG, there's a lot going on in Cyberpunk 2077, and given the breadth of activities available, there's every chance that you will, either consciously or otherwise, end up not engaging with parts of the game nearly as much as you should. In this feature, we'll be talking about ten such things that you might be tempted to ignore, but will be better served dabbling in. Without further ado, let's get started.
DELAMAIN
You'll encounter the AI named Delamain in the first act of Cyberpunk 2077, at which point he'll have a semi-major role to play in the story, but following that, he will come back as a side character with an optional questline. The second leg of this questline will see him tasking you with hunting down seven cars scattered throughout Night City, and while you might groan at that objective, given how it seems on paper like a generic open world collectathon quest, we'd recommend going through with it. A little while after you complete all seven of these, you will unlock Delamain's third and final quest, which is one of the better side quests in the game with a great ending, so it's definitely worth the wait.
WEAPON VARIETY
Like with any shooter (and Cyberpunk 2077 definitely plays the part of a shooter very well, in spite of its core RPG innards), Cyberpunk has a lot of different weapons and weapon types for players to choose from. Once you get the feel for a weapon you like, you might want to stick with it, or at least with weapons that are similar to it- but you'd be better off experimenting pretty much every chance you get. There's a vast variety of weapons in the game, many of which are excellent in combat, and limiting yourself to only a chosen few will turn out pretty poorly for you in the long run. There's SMGs, LMGs, sniper rifles, assault rifles, precision rifles, shotguns, handguns, a plethora of melee weapons- try your hand at any and all that you chance upon and see which ones are the best.
VEHICLES ON SALE
Cyberpunk 2077 bombards players with in-game text messages almost constantly. From updates from characters to gigs to notifications about vehicles currently on sale, you'll be receiving messages with a frequency that might turn many players off. Naturally, your response might be to ignore the messages, especially when it comes to vehicles that goes on sale (given how frequently those messages pop up), but those notifications can actually be pretty handy. Early on in the game, the vehicles that go up for sale are nothing to write home about, and you're actually better off ignoring those and saving your money, but once you're a couple dozen hours into your playthrough, fixers will start telling you about some really cool rides that you can buy. So keep an eye out for those.
MESSAGES
It's not just the messages telling you about vehicles on sale you shouldn't be ignoring. You'll often get messages from characters before, during, or after missions where you will have the option to respond to them. Some of these conversations are necessary to proceed forward in the mission, while others count towards building your relationship with the character in question. Both, of course, are quite important. So our suggestion is to keep checking in on your phone every now and then to ensure that there aren't any texts you may have missed.
GIGS
Gigs are sort of like Witcher contracts from The Witcher 3, in that though they are an important aspect of the game's side content and optional missions, they don't contribute to the story in any real way. Given that, you may at one point decide to let all your Gigs rot away in your quest log, but we'd recommend doing any and all that you can. For starters, these are bite-sized missions, so finishing them never really takes too long. Doing gigs is also one of the best ways to improve your street cred and earn decent amounts of cash (which is surprisingly hard to come by, especially early on in the game).
BOUNTIES
Similar to gigs, bounties are side activities that feel more procedural than the story-focused side missions, and again, owing to their very nature, it's entirely possible that you'd think they don't have much value. But they do, and in a lot of the same ways as gigs. They're not too long and they offer up a decent amount of cash upon completion. They do get a little repetitive, sure, so maybe pace yourself and don't do too many of them at the same time- but don't ignore them entirely either.
JUNK
Pretty much every location and environment you visit in Cyberpunk 2077 is teeming with loot to pick up and parse through- a lot of this loot, though, is junk (quite literally). Given its sheer volume and its seemingly useless nature, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's best left ignored (especially since it eats away at your carry capacity), but picking up all the junk you can find is actually something you should be doing, as tedious as that sounds. If you're into crafting, disassembling junk is a great way to ensure you never run short on components, while if it's cash you're more worried about, you can also just sell all your junk for decent amounts of eddies.
ACCESS POINTS
As you'd expect, hacking is big in Cyberpunk 2077. Throughout its world, you'll find access points scattered everywhere, and if your playstyle doesn't veer towards the hacking side of things too much, you might not be bothered to do anything with those access points. But you should be hacking every single one of those you see. Why? Well, because hacking them (and doing so successfully) can net you with respectable quantities of eddies, components, and quickhacks. Hack enough of those access points, and soon you'll have a solid stockpile of all of those things.
MELEE COMBAT
Where gunplay in Cyberpunk 2077 is tight and frantic, melee combat is far from amazing. Especially when you're using nothing but your fists, things can feel too sluggish and wonky (and the spotty hit detection surely doesn't help). Once you've progressed enough in the game though, the melee combat does get better, and we'd recommend keeping an eye on what melee weapons you have in your inventory. Cyberware like mantis blades and monowire, for instance, are a lot of fun to use, and not only are they rather powerful, they also improve the melee combat considerably. Of course, your playstyle might vary, and you might never feel the need to get up close to anyone- but if you do, remember that better weapons usually lead to better melee combat.
RIPPERDOCS
This one should really go without sayin, but we feel like it needs to be brought up anyway. There's several ripperdocs scattered throughout Night City, each offering various cyberware upgrades that you can deck out your bodies with. Initially, they don't have a lot of interesting stuff on sale, but later on in the game, they get some really cool upgrades, from the ability to double jump and do boost jumps to getting mantis blades embedded into your arm. While early on in the game you might not have much incentive to engage with the ripperdocs so much, we'd recommend that you keep going back to them to see what kinds of new upgrades they have in stock, and whether you can afford to purchase any of them.
Super Smash Bros Ultimate – Sephiroth DLC Presentation Will be About 35 Minutes Long
At this year's The Game Awards, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's third fighter in the second Fighters Pass (and the eighth DLC fighter overall) recently revealed as being the Final Fantasy 7 villain, One-Winged Angel Sephiroth himself. It would have been an exciting announcement regardless, but the fact that Cloud is already in the game (and the incredibly reveal trailer), meant that it was even more so.
Nintendo recently confirmed that as with all new DLC fighters, game director Masahiro Sakurai will be hosting a livestream tomorrow, on December 17, to share new details on Sephiroth and how he will work in the game, as well as new details on the stage and music that's being added to the game along with him. Via the official Smash Bros Japanese Twitter account, it's also been confirmed that the presentation will be about 35 minutes long- so you can expect a meaty livestream with plenty of details revealed.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is available exclusively on Nintendo Switch. Stay tuned for all the details on Sephiroth tomorrow.
「セフィロスのつかいかた」の放送は明後日午前7:00から！
『ファイナルファンタジーVII』の伝説のソルジャー「セフィロス」の魅力に迫ります。
放送は約35分を予定しています。ぜひご覧ください。#スマブラSP— 大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ【スマブラ公式】 (@SmashBrosJP) December 16, 2020
The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki Announced, Releases in 2021 for Japan
Falcom's The Legend of Heroes: Hajimari no Kiseki launched this past August in Japan and has yet to be localized for the West. Nevertheless, the developer has already announced its next game in the series – The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki. President Toshihiro Kondo shared new details in the latest Weekly Famitsu (translations via Gematsu), confirming that it would be set in the Republic of Calvard in the Year S.1208.
Unlike previous arcs, the story is more about the "gray zone of society" with a detective, bounty hunter and negotiator said to be involved. Calvard itself is described as a mix of Europe and Asia with the map being equivalent to the Cold Steel series (though it's "somewhat smaller" than Erebonia). In terms of content, you can expect it to be equivalent to a single Trails of Cold Steel title.
Along with improved character modeling thanks to the new game engine, about 90 percent of the characters are all news. Though the remaining 10 percent will be "highly anticipated", you shouldn't expect 50 playable characters this time around. Thus far, three have been revealed – a redheaded male who uses dual blades, a man with a long blue coat and a woman that resembles Alisa Reinford from Cold Steel. The protagonist has yet to be confirmed.
As for combat, movement and battles are seamless with some action elements added to battles. You'll now input commands in real-time, though it's still possible to go back to a more command-style approach. Combat Links and Brave Orders won't be featured but there is a new system in place. Interestingly enough, there's the new "Alignment Flame" which will change the character's alignment to "Lawful", "Gray" and "Chaotic" depending on one's playstyle, though it won't lock out any key story events.
The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki is currently planned to release for PS4 along with "other platforms where there is demand." Kondo said, "Since there are the usual technical challenges, we will consider starting where there's the most demand." The studio in general is making plans to develop for PS5 so it should be interesting to see if it releases there.
Kojima Production Says There Are No Game Announcements Planned for Today
Kojima Productions are celebrating their fifth anniversary since the establishment of the studio, which followed Hideo Kojima breaking off from Konami and going independent. Yesterday, the developer said on Twitter that it would be sharing "exciting updates" to celebrate the occasion, and as you might expect, that caught many people's attention.
If you were expecting the announcement of a new game, however – or even something like a PS5 update for Death Stranding – prepare for disappointment. The developer took to Twitter, and responding to a question from a fan, confirmed that there will be no game announcement today. The exciting updates that the studio mentioned yesterday have largely entailed reveals for new merch.
Kojima Productions confirmed not too long ago that the developer was indeed at work on a new project. Hideo Kojima has previously stated that he wants to make a horror game (but not one like P.T.), though it's unknown if that's what this new project is.
There are no game announcements today. The updates that we have planned today are purely to celebrate our anniversary and to thank you all for the support that you have given us these past 5 years.
A few more updates to come!— KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS (Eng) (@KojiPro2015_EN) December 16, 2020
Cyberpunk 2077 Devs "Don't Know Yet" How Launch Issues Will Impact DLC, Multiplayer Reveal Plans
Even though Cyberpunk 2077 is finally out, it's painfully clear that the game still needs a lot of work, especially on consoles. Anyone who is playing the game on any platform other than PC or Stadia has been met with a litany of technical issues, and CD Projekt RED have stated that they plan to bring the game up to an acceptable level of quality, for which the bulk of fixes will be arriving in January and February patches.
Given that they have more post-launch polishing work ahead of them than they had imagined, however, how exactly does that affect their other post-launch plans for the game? For instance, Cyberpunk 2077's paid expansions and its multiplayer project were both due to be revealed in early 2021. With the base game's launch having been so problematic, have those plans now been pushed back once again?
As it turns out, even CD Projekt RED doesn't know yet. Speaking in a recent conference call, CD Projekt president Adam Kiciński said that the company finds itself in a situation that it had not anticipated, and as such, doesn't yet know how said situation will impact plans for revealing post-launch content.
"First and foremost, we haven't confirmed any dates yet, and as I've said
before, it's hard to judge now," Kiciński said. "We're in an unanticipated situation and we'll have to reassess. This is planned for January. We're now focusing on managing the single-player release, working on patches, communication and – as I said at the very beginning of this call – our focus remains on gamers. We'll see about further plans; the direction is obviously to proceed as planned, but we have to sit and discuss."
Cyberpunk 2077's PS5 and Xbox Series X/S ports are also planned for launch in 2021, but again, it remains to be seen whether those plans will be pushed back as the developer prioritizes fixing the game on the platforms it's currently available on. Stay tuned, and we'll keep you updated on any new details that come our way.