Cyberpunk 2077 is a buggy mess, and it will be for many who play it day one. This was all pretty much guaranteed given the obviously troubled development and multiple delays it suffered. Most reviews seem to be for the PC version of the game, and they’ve been pretty honest about the state of the title. And frankly, things are not good.
And that’s not even the worst part, the game is scarily effective at triggering seizures. When a major gaming outlet has to put out a guide for trigger warnings in your game, you’ve made a major misstep in accessibility.
“During my time with Cyberpunk 2077, I suffered one major seizure and felt several moments where I was close to another one,” wrote Liana Ruppert for Gameinformer. The reality of this kind of oversight is pretty glaringly bad. The game even features a scene that includes a device very much like the devices clinicians use to trigger seizures in real life. There’s a very obvious reason that these kinds of things don’t appear in games often.
This is the kind of thing that Gene Park was inadvertently referring to when he said “the game’s bugs run deep at every aspect of the experience, UI to cutscenes.” And while this kind of thing isn’t a bug and cannot be easily fixed, there’s a big problem here that keeps potentially thousands if not millions from playing your game. Because while not everyone can be triggered into a seizure, migraines and eye strain are a concern for many more. Guess what causes both of those, it’s flashing lights.
Despite all of this, the team behind it is clear that a major bug fixing patch is coming. Fabian Mario Döhla even went so far to say the console version is entirely reborn after the fixes. But that means nothing to PC players. There are even reports from some outlets that the game on that platform has DRM which is having a negative impact on the experience. CDPR even pointed this out to reviewers, so some outlets like Gamers Nexus have waited on posting their reviews as a result.
Cyberpunk 2077’s initial reviews paint a picture of a game half-finished, as is far too common with modern gaming. There are more and more voices in the industry that suggest it’s time to end mandatory crunch and other toxic culture, perhaps it’s time to start listening. Because it’s clearly not helped when more and more major releases come out looking like Early Access titles.
