CDPR Down $51 Million Due to Cyberpunk 2077 Refunds

CD Projekt Red lost over $50 million on Cyberpunk 2077 refund costs, even though a recent financial report made it seem like that number was much smaller.

The studio published a report which detailed their earnings and revenue for 2020. On a surface level reading, it seems that CDPR only lost out on $2.2 million due to returns of Cyberpunk 2077 copies. Which would amount to little more than a drop in the ocean when compared to the reported $563 million in revenue last year.

However, a deeper dive into the report reveals that the company’s losses to Cyberpunk 2077 refunds were more than $2.2 million. Much, much more. See, the $2.2 million figure only accounts for the returns which were issued through “Help Me Refund”. This campaign allowed those who bought the game to get their money back after being refused by the platform they made their purchase on, the store they bought it from, or both.

The actual final figure for Cyberpunk 2077 refunds is actually $51.2 million. This amount includes all refunds issued in 2020, physical or digital, along with the projections for the first quarter of 2021. While it is still small compared to the revenue the studio made last year, it is still definitely much more than what CD Projekt Red would have hoped or planned for.

CDPR also recently announced that Cyberpunk 2077 sold over 13.7 million copies last year, across platforms, worldwide. Given that that’s the number of copies to be sold in the past year alone, this figure of $51.2 million doesn’t seem outlandishly large.

The figure also confirms the results of a community poll which was taken earlier during the year. The poll stated that around 2 million players had attempted to get refunds for their copy of Cyberpunk 2077. With over 13.7 million copies sold before the end of 2020, the money CDPR lost to refunds was just a little less than 10% of their 2020 revenue.

Cyberpunk 2077 is still undergoing constant patching, with the latest being Patch 1.2 which claims to have fixed over 500 bugs and glitches. A recent discovery on Epic Games Store also hints at a DLC coming soon. It seems a lot is planned for Cyberpunk 2077. Let’s hope we all get to access the new content in a playable state!

About Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is a 2020 action role-playing video game developed by CD Projekt Red and published by CD Projekt, based on video game designer Mike Pondsmith’s game series.

Set in a dystopian cyberpunk universe, the player assumes the role of “V,” a mercenary in the fictional Californian city known as “Night City,” where they deal with the fallout from a heist gone wrong that results in an experimental cybernetic “bio-chip” containing an engram of the legendary rock star and terrorist Johnny Silverhand (played by Keanu Reeves) threatening to slowly overwrite V’s mind; as the story progresses V and Johnny must work together to find a way to be separated and save V’s life.