10 Recent Video Games That Were Too Big To Fail (That Did Anyway)

Why It Was "Too Big"

CD Projekt Red is one of the few marquee video game developers whose name alone will shift millions of copies of whatever they're making. After the success of The Witcher, players have a lot of faith in their ability to deliver quality AAA experiences.

And Cyberpunk 2077 certainly looked like a sure-fire smash hit, what with its gorgeous art style and expansive, appealing open world. How could the people who made The Witcher 3 possibly screw this up?

Why It Failed Anyway

Cyberpunk's launch was one of the most dispiritingly bungled of recent years. Performance issues were rife across platforms, with console versions in a compromised enough state as to be considered borderline unplayable.

Given that CD Projekt Red clearly attempted to conceal the non-quality of the console versions, millions of players were irate, while even those who were able to play it questioned whether the end result justified all those years of hype and development.

The Damage

Now, in commercial terms Cyberpunk is undeniably a success - it's sold more than 18 million copies to date, but the ding CD Projekt Red's reputation took over its release is massively costly.

The studio ended up paying a $1.85 million settlement to pissed off investors, which while a drop in the ocean given the game's huge sales, was really just the tip of the PR iceberg.

The PS4 version of the game was enough of a mess that Sony voluntarily delisted it from PSN for more than six months, and refunds were offered by both Sony and Microsoft.

The ultimate failure of Cyberpunk, though, is that very few people are still talking about its story or gameplay, but they are still talking about how horribly botched its launch was.

Needless to say, CD Projekt Red's reputation has been permanently dirtied as a result, and their next release is sure to be met with a healthy side order of pre-release scepticism.