A lot of praise is being sung for Cyberpunk 2077 right now, but years ago, the game was in the very center of one of the most disastrous launches of all time. The open-world is still rife with possibilities though, but you know what won’t be coming? Multiplayer.
Talking to Eurogamer, Cyberpunk senior quest designer Philipp Weber confirmed that multiplayer plans were scrapped to prioritize fixing the game from all of its bugs at launch. Weber explains:
“We really needed to look at what were the priorities for Cyberpunk [after it launched]… The priority was that the main experience will run for the people in a really good state… And essentially, the switch of priorities meant that other R&D projects had to go away. With Cyberpunk, we wanted to do many things at the same time, and we just needed to really focus and say, ‘Okay, what’s the important part? Yeah, we will make that part really good.'”
With Cyberpunk’s open-world and promise for hours of content, a multiplayer version of Night City would have been a no-brainer, but the studio did have a lot of work to do to get everything working in the game. Who even knew that the game would get its second chance with players after Edgerunners launched on Netflix?
If anything, we could be looking at multiplayer for the upcoming sequel. With 2077 providing a cautionary tale for the studio, it would be great if they managed to pull off a sequel with flying colors.
My one request though: Allow a third-person perspective please.
For now, Cyberpunk 2077 is available for PC, PlayStation 4|5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
