UPDATE 8th December 2018: Following the publication of this article, Sean Halliday was revealed to have ties to a website called Exclusively Games, owned by someone with links to GamerGate. Halliday told Eurogamer he had been offered a job by Exclusively Games and had been flagged as a moderator while considering the position. But, he told Eurogamer today, he has since declined the offer of a job.
CD Projekt Red has announced a "long-term partnership" with a new Canadian studio called Digital Scapes, which I'd never heard of before now. But it's made up of developers from well-known studios: BioWare, Relic and Radical.
"Come on. Lighten up. Have a whiff."
Almost 10 years ago to the day, CD Projekt launched the online digital game store Good Old Games. The operation and scope was small - a handful of people salvaging iconic old PC games for modern operating systems - but the prices, customer service and DRM-free message were right, and slowly the service grew. And grew, and grew. And today things are different.
"How cyberpunk is Cyberpunk 2077?" is the question many of the game's detractors have been asking, often with reference to its handling of trans representation. The one I've been asking myself over the past few weeks is: how punk is Cyberpunk 2077? For that matter, how punk is cyberpunk full stop? The two share a moment in history but come from different places: punk is a distinctively angry and egalitarian music form, spawned in the 1970s and feeding into a much broader ethos of anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian protest; cyberpunk, an outgrowth of New Wave sci-fi which explores, and revels in, what networked computing technology might bode for society and humanity. The origins of the term "cyberpunk" are hardly rock and roll: as Sam Greer recalls in a recent RPS piece on Cyberpunk 2077's trans politics, the writer Bruce Bethke coined it by stirring together words for "socially misdirected youth" with bits of tech jargon, in a "purely selfish and market-driven" act of editor-pleasing that would make a diehard punk spit blood.
Everyone likes an argument. Don't try and tell me otherwise, I've read the comments. It's why we're organising two on-stage arguments, I mean debates, for UK game show EGX this month. We'd love you to be there for them.
Yesterday, seemingly out of nowhere, a mysterious page of code appeared on CD Projekt Red's Twitch channel. After a few hours of anxious waiting, fans were rewarded with gameplay footage from Cyberpunk 2077, giving us our first extended look at what we can expect from the open world action role-playing adventure.
The demo, which was originally shown to media at E3 and Gamescom, is now available for all to view on YouTube - and in 4K too, if you want to experience the full glory of that shiny cyberpunk rain. It's a whole 48 minutes of first-person shooter action and a truly gritty introduction to life in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe. (NSFW warning: there's nudity, swearing and of course violence in the demo.)
From what's been shown, Cyberpunk 2077 has some impressive world-building: Night City is a bustling, grim world that's the perfect backdrop for sinister storylines and brutal combat.
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Gamescom provided my second chance to see CD Projekt's startlingly impressive Cyberpunk 2077 demo, and even a second time through I found myself again taken aback by the depth, detail and design of its neon-lit Night City.
CD Projekt Red has released a few new screenshots from Cyberpunk 2077.
Cyberpunk 2077's showing at this year's E3 was extremely strong. The 50-minute gameplay demo I saw left me hungry for more, but it also left me wondering - just how much of CD Projekt Red's game was pulled from Mike Pondsmith's pen-and-paper role-playing game? In other words: just how much Cyberpunk 2020 is there in Cyberpunk 2077?
Did you know there was a Witcher Tabletop Roleplaying Game in development, one you will play with pen and paper? It has a release date and it's not far away! The game will debut at tabletop paradise Gen Con on 2nd August, then will be sold via developer R. Talsorian Games' website and DriveThruRPG soon after.
It's likely to go down in history as one of the greatest E3 demos, its iconic status only embellished by the fact that outside of behind-closed-doors visitors, nobody has actually seen it. But the trailer footage looks sensational and reports of Cyberpunk 2077's gameplay are stoking plenty of excitement. And now, we have confirmation of the PC hardware that was actually running it.
It's all very well Wesley painting an ever-so-exciting picture of Cyberpunk 2077 after seeing nearly an hour of the game at E3 2018, but we - everyone watching from afar - haven't seen it, have we? I mean we're not jealous but it's really unfair.
All we've seen is the Cyberpunk 2077 reveal trailer which, OK, yes, does do a rather magnificent job of selling us on the character and riches of the Night City playground we'll lose ourselves in - you could even argue it's the city which will be the main character in CD Projekt Red's new game.
But before there was a trailer - awaited with something approaching Grand Theft Auto-like anticipation - there was of course concept art, and now CD Projekt Red has shared a smattering of images of it.
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At E3, CD Projekt pulled the curtain back on Cyberpunk 2077, its upcoming sci-fi open world game. As it did, one major revelation emerged: Cyberpunk is a first-person role-playing game.
CD Projekt has finally pulled back the curtain on Cyberpunk 2077, revealing the game to press behind closed doors at E3 this week.
I saw a 50 minute live uncut gameplay demo and was blown away by the level of detail in Night City, the open world in which the game takes place. During the demo, a number of eye-catching features of the game were revealed. Here's everything I discovered during our Cyberpunk 2077 behind closed doors demo:
Cyberpunk is a first-person role-playing game. You play the game from a first-person perspective, shooting weapons in the traditional FPS style, with dialogue choices appearing on screen.
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You'd think if anyone had an interesting take on a game like Cyberpunk 2077 it would be William Gibson. And sure enough, @GreatDismal had a verdict on the trailer pretty early in proceedings yesterday: "The trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 strikes me as GTA skinned-over with a generic 80s retro-future," he wrote, "but hey, that's just me."
UPDATE: The Cyberpunk 2077 trailer contained a secret letter. We now have a legible copy (barring a few words) of the two halves and I've typed out what it says.
"It's been over 2077 days since we announced our plan to develop Cyberpunk 2077. We released a CGI trailer, gave some interviews and... went dark. Normal procedure for these kinds of things - you announce a game and then shut up, roll up your sleeves, and go to work. We wanted to give you The Witcher 3 and both expansions first, which is why this period of staying silent was longer than we planned. Sorry for that.
"As soon as we concluded work on Blood and Wine, we were able to go on full speed ahead with CP2077's pre-production. But we chose to remain silent. Why? At some point, we made a decision to resume talking about the game only when we have something to show. Something meaningful and substantial. This is because we do realise you've been (im)patiently waiting for a very long time, and we wouldn't like anyone to feel that we're taking this for granted. On the contrary - it gives us a lot of extra motivation. The hype is real, so the sweat and tears need to be real too :).
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CD Projekt Red is expanding. The main Warsaw office has ballooned and the company has opened two other studios in Poland, one in Wrocław and one in Kraków - which is where I am now.
There's been the suggestion of multiplayer in CD Projekt Red's new game Cyberpunk 2077 for a while. In 2013, studio head Adam Badowski even told me "we're going to add multiplayer features", although he also said "it will be a story-based RPG experience with amazing single-player playthroughs". Regardless, that was five years ago, and a lot has happened since then.
CD Projekt Red has been at pains to keep the conversation away from Cyberpunk 2077 in recent years. The Polish developer announced the game very early in order to attract talent to the studio, but then stopped discussing Cyberpunk 2077 entirely while The Witcher: Wild Hunt launched. This secrecy only intensified after the enormous success of The Witcher 3, as expectations rose dramatically about what the studio would be able to achieve next.
Witcher game maker CD Projekt Red has let off a zinger on Twitter while trying to calm fears Cyberpunk 2077 will be out to take more of our money.
Some recent team-leader level departures from Cyberpunk 2077 led to speculation there was trouble in paradise - and paradise began sounding worse and worse the more CD Projekt Red company reviews on employee feedback site Glassdoor I read.
"We had Communism and we had Cyberpunk."
UPDATE 9TH JUNE: CD Projekt Red has reported the theft as a crime in Poland, suggesting this is not, as some have claimed, a marketing ploy.
CD Projekt has moved to explain its Cyberpunk trademark after it had caused a bit of a fuss online this week.
There are whispers and speculation but I can tell you Cyberpunk 2077 will definitely not be at E3 this year. That comes from the horse's mouth: CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwinski himself.
CD Projekt Red has issued a formal statement to Eurogamer this morning in response to an unfounded rumour that spread yesterday.
The Witcher 3 comes out on Tuesday, 19th May, and so we've hauled an exciting Witcher-related article out of the Eurogamer archive for you to read again or enjoy for the first time if you missed it. Here, Robert Purchese reveals the story of Witcher developer CD Projekt in an article first published in November 2013.
Witcher developer CD Projekt Red will open a new studio in Poland in the historic city of Kraków next month, where it will make one of two new smaller games approximately 20-hours in length.
None of The Witcher games have yet had multiplayer, but CD Projekt Red's futuristic RPG Cyberpunk 2077 will.
CD Projekt Red wrote a secret message about an impending Witcher 3 announcement in a brand new and very sexy Cyberpunk 2077 CGI video.
What do we know about CD Projekt's new game Cyberpunk 2077?
Don't take the Multiplayer Programmer job at advert for CD Projekt Red to mean, unequivocally, that The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk will feature multiplayer.
CD Projekt is aiming for a "smoother learning curve" with Cyberpunk's story.
The Witcher developer CD Projekt has lifted the lid on its new AAA RPG - it's a videogame version of Mike Pondsmith's classic '80s pen and paper RPG series Cyberpunk.
Details are slim, but the Polish developer promises "a mature RPG for a mature audience". It'll have a non-linear story, "advanced RPG mechanics", different character classes and a "gigantic arsenal".
Pondsmith will be collaborating with CD Projekt on the title.
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