CD Projekt has announced a significant change to their plans for Cyberpunk 2077 Multiplayer, shifting the company’s multiplayer plans for all future games away from standalone releases and toward integrating multiplayer components into all of their future games. The Witcher 4 Online, anyone?
CD Projekt president Adam Kiciński described this as the company having changed its previously stated plans. “Previously we hinted that our next triple-A would be a multiplayer Cyberpunk game,” he said in a video conference call, “but we have decided to reconsider this now.”
Cyberpunk 2077 multiplayer was first mooted back in 2019, when CDPR revealed they were working on three separate Cyberpunk games. That, however, was then going to be a separate mode added to Cyberpunk 2077 after the game’s launch, then in early 2020 it was going to be a completely standalone release built in the Cyberpunk 2077 world. Now, it seems that CDPR are redirecting it to once again be seen as a free add-on to the main Cyberpunk 2077 game.
Kiciński continued to explain, “Actually, we started working on online components over two years ago and we just continue. The only change is that we continue to work on it not as a main production line but as a supportive production line together with our single player productions, but we believe that our ideas, once they will be revealed, will be very exciting for gamers as an extra experience in our world which fits our single player games.”
It might end up being a very subtle distinction in terms of the multiplayer mode’s production, the impact instead felt on the financial side, but is part of a shift within the company to have multiplayer as an additive alongside their traditional single player games, instead of being seen as a separate production. This could mean that their plans for multiplayer are more like Watch Dogs, where modes and content are added over time, as opposed to Red Dead Online, where it was full of multiplayer specific features from day one.
It’s interesting, but I’m sure many might think it’s premature to talk about future projects that still feel very far away. This was a video call intended for investors, and they did not respond particularly well – the market value fell 15% after the call. Cyberpunk 2077’s reputation is far from recovered, with the 1.2 update released yesterday to try and fix many of the game’s woes, and by early accounts making significant progress in getting more playable performance from base hardware. However, the development roadmap was delayed after the company was hacked, and next-gen updates are still a long way off.
