CD Projekt Red apologizes and offers to refund Cyberpunk 2077 players on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One; last-gen consoles will still have limitations despite new incoming patches

Cyberpunk 2077 looks great on the PC (with caveats) but those on consoles seem to be having a less-than-ideal experience, especially on the base PlayStation 4 and Xbox One prompting game developer CD Projekt Red (CDPR) to issue refunds for players on these consoles.

The initial instances of players being refunded came to light when user /u/NotBen_2 took to Reddit to share that Sony is accepting requests for refunds even after the two-hour play time. After having fully deleted the game and its save data it did apparently take about an hour after filing the refund claim to speak to someone, but the refund was quickly processed. However, not all players reported a similar experience and some were even denied a refund. Ultimately, it looks like it depends on how understanding the support rep is. Given the number of refund requests and issues with the game itself, Sony is apparently looking to issue a business complaint to CDPR.

That was a couple of days ago. Looks like the issue has gained wide-spread traction now prompting CDPR to entertain all refund requests from last-gen console players.

Taking to Twitter, CDPR apologized for not showing the performance of the game on last-gen consoles earlier. The company confirmed that all bugs and crashes would be fixed would be fixed in upcoming patches — the first one has already been released and another is slated to land in a week. Two large patches are being planned for January and February. However, CDPR clarified that these patches won't make the game on last-gen consoles look the same as on a high-end gaming PC or next-gen consoles but should improve the experience significantly. 

CDPR confirmed that those who aren't pleased with the experience on last-gen consoles and don't want to wait for patches can opt for a refund from the Xbox Store or PlayStation Network (PSN) if ordered a digital copy. Those who have purchased boxed versions of the game can contact the corresponding store or write to helpmerefund(at)cdprojektred.com for assistance up to December 21, 2020.

While it is good to see CDPR acknowledging the poor performance of the game on last-gen consoles and allowing for refunds, it does beget the question of why the shortcomings weren't demonstrated in the first place.

That is not to say all's well in PC land. In our preliminary look on launch day, even an RTX 3070 struggles to play the game without DLSS enabled. Though DLSS 2.1 does a great job, initial reviews showed several artefacts during the AI-based upscaling process. It was also found that the game wasn't fully utilizing the multi-core prowess of AMD Ryzen CPUs, which required hex-editing the game's executable. The PC side of things could, therefore, use a lot of fine-tuning as well and we hope CDPR delivers.

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