10 Video Games You Regretted Pre-Ordering

You all saw this one coming. While No Man’s Sky and Fallout 76 are up there for most widely regretted game purchases of the century so far, Cyberpunk 2077 truly takes the cake, the biscuits, and the entire confectionery drawer.

No one wanted Cyberpunk to fail, but the first signs of unease behind the scenes came with several stacked release delays, which irritated those with pre-orders no end, and put the studio’s employees under unprecedented crunch.

When it finally did drop in December 2020, the world was horrified with the state of the game. While some bugs were simply funny, like the heavily-memed instance where the player character’s customisable nether regions clip through their trousers, many found the game would barely even run on their system.

It quickly became clear that the game only performed as expected on top-end PCs, and was so unplayable on consoles that Playstation eventually pulled the game from their store entirely, only returning for purchase in June 2021.

CD Projekt Red ended up facing several class-action lawsuits over the perceived deception on technical performance, which were eventually settled at a cost of US$1.85 million. The developer has committed to not only fixing the game’s performance, which they largely addressed with a year-long plan of updates, but adding content in the future.

Despite this, the game remains not worth playing on 8th-generation consoles, and with new projects in The Witcher series announced for development, there is a feeling that just how bad Cyberpunk was is trying to be swept under the carpet.

Pour one out for Keanu Reeves. It was not, in fact, breathtaking, in anything except its downfall.