It’s fair to say that Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t particularly stable when it launched in December 2020. While highly-anticipated as one of the most ambitious games of the prior decade, many players found the launch experience so buggy it was barely playable. The game would crash with some frequency, and players experienced progress-breaking glitches, poor graphics, clipping, and a cavalcade of other issues. On PlayStation, Sony pulled the PS4 version of the game from sale on its digital store for six months.
Three years on, the tide has turned – and developers at CD Projekt Red are celebrating the fact that Cyberpunk 2077 has finally managed to nab a coveted ‘Very Positive’ rating for all reviews on its Steam page.
After the last few years, CD Projekt Red has committed to making major changes, launching a variety of patches and updates to address performance concerns. Over the last two years, these improvements have made a clear difference, with public sentiment towards the game slowly shifting.
New reviews for the game started trending towards Very Positive several months ago, and now, their volume and praise has had an impact on the overall game rating.
With more than 540,000 reviews, there is still plenty of negativity about the game – some players still report bugs, crashes, and overall disappointment with the story and breadth of the game’s open world – but these criticisms have largely been overwhelmed by waves of positive reviews.
Read: Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners inspires major game revival
It’s not just the game’s overall improvements that have drawn more positive acclaim, however. In 2022, Netflix released the game’s tie-in anime adaptation, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and this quickly revived interest in the video game.
While tie-in game content promoted ties to the popular Edgerunners, it also invited players of all kinds back into the Cyberpunk ecosystem – returning players, and those coming in with fresh eyes and opinions, all of whom contributed to the rating shift.
The game’s upcoming Phantom Liberty expansion, due for release on 26 September 2023, is likely to have a similar effect, as PC and console players return to the game once more.
Where Cyberpunk 2077‘s future previously looked uncertain, the changing tide of fan sentiment may just inspire a turnaround. It’s not a moment too soon, either – as CD Projekt reportedly has big plans for the Cyberpunk universe. For developers who allegedly worked through crunch conditions for Cyberpunk 2077, only to see it derided on launch, there is hopefully some gratification in this achievement.
