Hey everyone.
I couldn’t find a thread for this Polish gaming company, so I decided to open one for it.
You can buy the stock either from Poland or Germany.
The company’s games (Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077) are apparently quite good, or at least have gained attention online.
Any experiences with the company? At least the stock price has fallen like a rock. I’m a bit tempted by the idea of a small slice of this company.
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Historically, game companies go bankrupt with a fairly high probability, even the larger ones.
The stock price has dropped sharply because the console versions of Cyberpunk 2077 have had major problems and the company has been sued for defrauding both investors and consumers, and will very likely lose the case, when, for example, game reviewers have not been allowed to use their own footage of the game, but only videos made by CDPR itself. Before release, they repeatedly said that there were no problems on consoles (especially PS4). Well, then there were major problems when the game was released. Only the PC version has mostly worked okay, although it also lacks a large number of promised missions and features.
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Forcing promotional materials into previews and reviews was a classic example of pissing your pants in the cold to warm up. Rarely does it bring in millions, but hopefully it serves as a lesson about fraud. If they stooped so low that one could buy and wait to see if they’d salvage the company by bringing in a new Witcher-esque creation.
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However, this is more the rule than the exception in this (very big AAA game) business: old-school game journalism is mostly advertising on terms set by publishers. It would be comparable if you weren’t allowed to review a movie by talking about, for example, how it was filmed. Even more ridiculous was how CDPR publicly praised the functionality of last-gen consoles for CP2077, but 0 review copies were distributed globally for them. That’s pure lying.
In CDPR’s case, repeated and egregious workplace well-being violations (hundred-hour workweeks during the late stages of development, etc.), which were also consistently lied about to the press, have been brushed under the carpet because the company has otherwise been considered consumer-friendly. I generally avoid big game companies as investments for personal ethical reasons, but otherwise, it’s a pretty strong move to shake off the label of a quality company at such a rapid pace. I can’t think of another similar case in the game business, even though there have been rotten ones since the 386.
Of course, completely ruined “Jesus game” releases like this have been saved before; No Man’s Sky comes to mind with its recent image recovery. This probably won’t be the company’s downfall, but I no longer regret not buying it.
It’s delicious irony that the entire phenomenon of a game set in a cyberpunk world, which tells of a future dystopia ruled by thoroughly corrupt and cynical megacorporations, exemplifies what cyberpunk exists to criticize 
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Everything is relative. The previous big game release was in 2015, and after that, the stock tenbaggered. Cyberpunk2077 was definitely the most hyped game in recent years, and the release went badly. Now it’s come down a bit, but there’s still a lot of air left.
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{“content”:“Sometimes a few months ago, a CDPR developer explained in an interview that they didn’t bother optimizing games for dying consoles, and that it was just due to laziness. 
No Man’s Sky was patched up to meet its promises, so why couldn’t this game be fixed too? For me, the hype for their previous games reminds me of Fallout 76. Didn’t Microsoft eventually buy Bethesda back then?”,“target_locale”:“en”}
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My understanding of Cyberpunk (without having played it) is that even bug-free, it’s hard to consider it a masterpiece, rather a good, albeit very incomplete game. The high-level difference from NMS here is at least that it’s more of a narrative experience than a pure sandbox-style open-world game, which is easier to pick up and come back to with new content updates, etc. In that sense, it’s harder to see a path for CP2077 to become such a late-blooming classic. And this is an infinitely higher drop than the twenty-person hot dog stand of NMS. But on the other hand, no one predicted NMS’s comeback either, and CDPR certainly has very high-caliber talent in its ranks, that cannot be forgotten. The business side messed up here, not the so-called “real” employees.
(OT, but: I would say Bethesda has been the target of varying degrees of criticism among core gamers since at least Oblivion (2006). (Todd Howard memes, clumsy NPC dialogues and their live acting, etc.) Technically, every TES/Fallout 3+ has been more or less garbage. It has never been a quality company, although FO76 was probably the first time that the released turd had no gold nuggets left in it 
)
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Despite all the more or less strange negativity, the game is, as expected, a huge hit with 13 million copies sold. Polish games are known for their longevity, so the game will surely rank high on the list of all-time bestsellers. Sales are the most essential thing an investor should be interested in. Not the questionable practices of the gaming or entertainment industry, which everyone engages in.
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8 million of those are pre-orders, and one must also remember the wisdom of shitting one’s pants in the cold 
The next game will be bought with a much finer comb after this demo. That is, exactly what interests the investor - the future of the company.
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That’s like saying Remedy’s next game won’t sell as much because Control’s PS4 version was so bad. Unity’s poor quality didn’t affect the sales of future AC games at all. I doubt a huge number of people even bought Cyberpunk to play it on old consoles. As a player, I already assumed that the basic PS4 versions wouldn’t be very good. The hardware is so weak.
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There have also been problems with the PS5 version, according to reports. Sony, by the way, pulled the game from sale in their store.
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Sony’s withdrawal from sale feels mostly like revenge. A strange move to prohibit buying a game from the store. PS5 runs the game smoothly. Of course, it has the same bugs as other versions.
I’ve been playing Cyberpunk on PC for about 10 hours now, and I think it’s much better than what you’d gather from social media. In places, it’s even excellent. The biggest problem is the really poorly performing last-gen console versions. Even these are probably almost playable after the latest patch.
Cyberpunk has sold over 13 million copies so far, and returns have been deducted from that number. I’m cautiously optimistic that the worst problems will soon be overcome. However, this release left a pretty bad taste. CDPR was supposed to be “above” this kind of messing up.
I forgot to write about the studio’s other games. An expansion for Gwent was recently released and the Witcher mobile game Monster Slayer will be released soon (?). That mobile game has great potential if it takes off.
Anyone who heard CDPR’s comment that performance on older consoles is “of course, a bit lower than on pros, but surprisingly good, I would say for such a huge world. So, bit lower, but very good. That’s the answer”, might have gotten a slightly different picture. That is, before the game was pulled from sale on the PS Store.
I doubt anyone questions that CP2077 will make a nice sum of money. In a business focused on pre-orders and 0-day sales with advertising journalism, sales records could be broken with almost any game. Marketing costs in AAA releases tend to be higher than the game’s development costs themselves (!).
But for me, it also matters for the company’s investor story what kind of games it releases. In this case, it’s hard not to see that the company’s management messed up the release and investors’ expectations compared to releasing a more polished product. Such products sell better, who knows, I might have even bought one myself.
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Investors aren’t too happy with the company’s actions regarding Cyberpunk. Two lawsuits have been filed against the company in the US:
The stock will likely continue to fall for a bit longer, but it will hit rock bottom eventually. And the next / subsequent games will have to succeed for the game company to continue on a positive path.
You shouldn’t worry too much about these; it doesn’t really mean anything other than that lawyers want money from disappointed people. Here’s the latest news from one of those firms: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
In December alone, the targets of lawsuits included Semiconductor, Alibaba, Walmart, Splunk, Citigroup, … From November, you can find Raytheon, HP, and dozens of other smaller ones.
In general, in the US, those “we’re suing you because you gave overly positive information” cases can almost be dismissed with a shrug, unless the SEC is involved in the investigation.
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I think it’s a good article about the company’s history and current situation.
“The company’s board members argued among themselves, some of the management resigned in the middle of the project.” If that’s true, it doesn’t sound good at all.
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Does anyone have a clue about recent news? The stock has been bleeding quite a bit for a few days.
I reckon the rapid drop in player numbers and the related news coverage are a major reason for the stock price falling, as is, of course, the heavily damaged reputation. Since it’s a single-player game, a drop in player numbers was expected, but it happened faster than anticipated. When the February/March updates and expansions arrive, some players will likely return to the game. On my own list, the game ranks among the top 5, and the story is very well written with interesting characters. The AI is a bit anemic, and the difficulty level becomes too easy as the character develops.
Although CDPR’s reputation has taken a big hit, I still believe the game will have a long tail in sales, especially once PS5s and better graphics cards (RTX 3070-3090) are more widely available. I might consider investing if the price continues to drop. I feel sorry for the game developers, as the game’s potential would have been huge if they had had 6-12 months more time for polishing. It was an ambitious project, and despite the problems, I think the game is really good.
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