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Gaming’s biggest controversies of 2020

By Elliott Gatica

LOS ANGELES, CA - JUNE 10: A Playstation 4 controller is displayed at the Sony Playstation E3 2013 press conference June 10, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. Thousands are expected to attend the annual three-day convention to see the latest games and announcements from the gaming industry.(Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CA - JUNE 10: A Playstation 4 controller is displayed at the Sony Playstation E3 2013 press conference June 10, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. Thousands are expected to attend the annual three-day convention to see the latest games and announcements from the gaming industry.(Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images) /
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Cyberpunk 2077 Key Art
CD Projekt RED (Xbox Press Site) /

Cyberpunk 2077

I lost count of how many yellow screen Twitter updates this game sent out notifying fans that the game would be delayed again. It’s become a meme and I am here for it, but coming closer to the actual day Cyberpunk 2077 launched, something felt off. The NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) felt a bit too restrictive, let alone, no one received review copies of the game for consoles.

This sort of felt like when Borderlands 3 was weeks away from launch in 2019. No one really got review copies until after launch, but only a handful of people received a code before launch for PC only. What eventually happened was that on the console side of things, the cracks were beginning to show for the now last-gen hardware.

This was the case for Cyberpunk 2077, but on a much worse scale. The game had been in development for eight years. To put this into perspective, this was announced when the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 weren’t even out yet. The hype for this game was beyond anything; it had more hype than other games like Final Fantasy XV, Last of Us Part II, or Kingdom Hearts III.

What players ended up getting was a beautifully buggy, and highly unoptimized mess, especially console players. At this point if you’re a gamer, you have definitely seen or if not heard of the many graphical, AI, and performance issues plaguing Cyberpunk 2077. It’s sad to see the company who made the Witcher games, with the Witcher 3 being a genre-defining title of the last generation, fall from grace. I mean, what the game has to offer is a really in-depth world to explore, customizations, three story paths, memorable characters, and just lots to do. Of course, many players’ experiences were met with bugs that broke immersion, and for console players, cue the memes, it was literally unplayable.

What happened following the disaster of a launch was Microsoft and Sony eventually offered refunds for the game. Sony eventually de-listed the game from its online storefronts. CD Projekt RED even came out with post-launch updates and promises that they’d honor returns for the game. Of course, they aren’t abandoning the project; the game will continue to get hefty patches to boost the performance as well as patch out many bugs that people face, hopefully and quickly as some people’s save data are being corrupted due to storing one too many items in their inventories.

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