After Cyberpunk 2077's troubled launch, CD Projekt Red has announced that they are changing how they'll give out bonuses to the game's developers. Under this change, the developers are guaranteed to get the full bonuses, no matter how the game's Metacritic score turns out.
It's no secret that Cyberpunk 2077 has had a pretty rough, if profitable, launch. Between the bugs, the epilepsy concerns, and the DMCA-safe mode that could still get streamers hit with DMCAs, there have been quite a few struggles with the first week. Not to mention that some versions of the game, most notably those on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, are running noticeably less smoothly. In light of all this, Bloomberg reports, CD Projekt Red has decided that the game's devs will be getting their full bonuses, no matter the game's Metacritic score.
At the time of writing, Cyberpunk 2077 has a 90 out of 100 score on Metacritic, just on the edge of the bonus threshold under CD Projekt Red's original bonus plan. Adam Badowski, the studio head and creative director behind Cyberpunk 2077, said in an email to the staff released yesterday that the original bonus plan was "simply not fair given the circumstances" and that "We underestimated the lengths and complexity involved to make this a reality, and still you did everything you could to deliver an ambitious, special game." The original plan, which gates bonuses behind high review scores, has been used by other companies before, such as Bethesda did to Obsidian with Fallout: New Vegas.
Bloomberg also goes into how exactly CD Projekt Red's bonus structure worked. Every month, team leaders would give out tokens with the studio's logo to employees they felt deserved honors. These tokens, if Cyberpunk 2077 met certain criteria such as critical acclaim and a timely release, would have been transferred into bonuses. This new system will give out bonuses to the employees no matter how the game scores, honoring the hard work the team has put into the project.
