CDPR Boss Admits Cyberpunk 2077 'Lost Faith' Forever

"I'm not 100 percent convinced we went through the full redemption arc. I'm convinced that we lost the faith of some people indefinitely, and that's a fair thing."

That's CD Projekt Red co-CEO Michał Nowakowski, speaking to Edge's Knowledge newsletter about the studio's 2020 launch of Cyberpunk 2077. It's a remarkably blunt admission from the head of a company that, by most metrics, already turned the ship around. Cyberpunk 2077 became a commercial success. Phantom Liberty landed to widespread praise. The 2.0 update effectively rebuilt the game. And yet, the person running the studio doesn't believe the damage is fully undone.

I think he's right, and I think it matters that he's willing to say it out loud. Most executives in his position would point to the sales numbers, the Steam review turnaround, the cultural second wind the game got after the Edgerunners anime, and declare victory. Nowakowski isn't doing that. He's acknowledging something that a lot of studios refuse to: you can fix a product and still not fix a reputation.

What This Means for The Witcher 4

Nowakowski's comments carry extra weight because CDPR is deep into development on The Witcher 4, a game that doesn't yet have a release window. "I do hope we will be able to make it back," he said. "If not with The Witcher 4, then with whatever comes next." That phrasing is interesting. He's not guaranteeing The Witcher 4 will be the thing that earns back every lost player. He's framing it as an ongoing process, which is either refreshingly honest or a subtle way of managing expectations.

The Cyberpunk 2077 launch wasn't just a bad week of press. Sony pulled the PS4 version from the PlayStation Store entirely and offered refunds beyond the usual two-hour window. CDPR's own investors considered legal action over what they called "materially misleading information." Nowakowski called the period "heartbreaking" and said the studio's reputation had been its "biggest asset." When your biggest asset takes that kind of hit, a single great expansion doesn't automatically restore it.

CDPR has already made one concrete decision based on this experience: The Witcher 4 is being developed console-first, a direct response to the performance disaster that sank the PS4 version of Cyberpunk 2077. Nowakowski also noted elsewhere in the interview that CDPR is, to his knowledge, the only studio Epic allows to access the internal workings of Unreal Engine, which suggests they're investing heavily in the technical foundation this time around.

The studio's broader philosophy seems to have shifted too. Nowakowski said CDPR's goal isn't to "flood the games market" with releases or chase a yearly launch cadence. "We just want to make really cool games, and we don't want to have a ton of IPs, either," he said, describing a "rough ten-year rolling plan." Meanwhile, The Witcher 3 is getting a surprise expansion called Songs of the Past in 2027, which serves the dual purpose of bridging the narrative gap to The Witcher 4 and giving CDPR more runway to get the sequel right.

Push Square ran a reader poll on whether Cyberpunk 2077's launch damaged faith in CDPR. Out of nearly 500 votes, only 11 percent said their faith never wavered. The largest group, at 41 percent, said all was forgiven after the post-launch support, but a combined 48 percent said their trust was either still damaged or only partially repaired. That's roughly half the audience still carrying some degree of skepticism, which tracks with what Nowakowski is saying. CDPR earned a lot of goodwill back with Phantom Liberty and the 2.0 overhaul, but "a lot" isn't "all," and the co-CEO of the company knows it. Whether The Witcher 4 can close that gap depends entirely on what state it ships in, and CDPR won't get a third chance to make a first impression.