The Launch of Cyberpunk 2077 Felt Like a “Personal Failure,” Says Associate Director

Needless to say, the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 was rough. The game had a ton of issues including bugs, missing features, broken AI, and horrible performance on last-gen consoles. Post-launch Cyberpunk 2077 started its successful redemption arc that was completed with Phantom Liberty.

But the journey wasn’t easy. Reminiscing about the launch days of Cyberpunk 2077, Associate Game Director Pawel Sasko revealed how he felt when the game was in the middle of a rocky launch.

So many things were so different

from The Witcher and I felt like there’s so much growth happening even though it was tough as hell to make this game. And then the release was really heartbreaking, you know. And in a way I felt that it was in a way my own personal failure. That I failed to grow in a way I wanted. Pawel Sasko

The feedback on social media “hurt like hell,” said Sasko. And while many would have thought about leaving and doing something else, Sasko says they decided to stick around to accept the challenge.

It really hurts like hell, you know everything. Going to social media, you know, seeing like everything I said or did you know before the release memed to the death, getting death threats. all of that stuff. It really really did hurt, you know, but I felt that that growth is happening and put all that work into the patches and Phantom Liberty.

The launch of Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty was a huge success. And the overall experience and takeaways from Cyberpunk will now be used to make Project Orion, the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, even better, said Sasko.

So now with Orion, it’s like, I want to keep doing that and really have all that experience, and we sometimes with Dan, we talk about like really deep scars that were left and I think those are not wounds anymore, I think those are scars, but in a way I’m one of those people that when they are scarred they kind of like tattoo, you know things around those scars and cherish those scars. They tell a story. I kind of am like this, you know.

Project Orion was announced on October 4, 2022. The core team working on Cyberpunk sequel has moved to Boston to work on the game full time.