Things seem to be going downhill for Cyberpunk 2077. After a disastrous launch that saw considerable backlash about the final state of the game, PC gamers seem to be abandoning the game en masse.
After a record-breaking debut with one million players simultaneously adventuring through Night City, the game has lost over 75% of its Steam player base. That significant decline occurred less than a month after the game's massive November 10 release.
According to Steam statistics, the game's concurrent player count peaked at 1,054,388 on December 12, just two days after its release. The game has been on a steady decline since then, peaking at only 147,788 concurrent players in the past 24 hours.
The peak over the past seven days was a bit higher, at 225,55 players on January 2. While this is a Saturday, and one would expect more people to have time to play the game, it is not a good number for Cyberpunk 2077; one can assume that this number will continue to drop until CD Projekt Red releases an important update.
Interestingly, Cyberpunk 2077 still sits at a 78.27% positive review score, with 276,476 positive reviews compared to only 76,742 negative reviews. This suggests that the decline in players is not solely due to the game's myriad problems.
Games always see a decline in players after release, but the longer it takes for people to move on to other games, the better: The Witcher 3, CDPR's last open-world game, lost the same number of players that Cyberpunk 2077 did in a third of the time it It took three months to lose them.
The game's current review scores suggest that most Steam players do not hate the game, even if they no longer play it. One criticism directed at Cyberpunk was the shortness of the main quest, along with the lack of side quests.
Or maybe they are waiting for CDPR to start rolling out major fixes and content updates, at which point they will return to Night City. This is because fresh content is always appealing, as is the ability to play the game without the bugs and glitches that have plagued gamers in the past.
The "Cyberpunk 2077" patch for the PS5 and Xbox Series X will be released in the coming months. This patch will not only improve the game's visuals on the new consoles, but also potentially challenge new players to play the game.
However, CDPR needs Cyberpunk 2077 to be rather bug-free by then in order to repair the somewhat damaged reputation that has been dragged down by the game's ragged release and other controversies surrounding its development.
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