The stock for CD Projekt Red has fallen 25% after a peak in August.
In a report from GamesIndustry.Biz, CD Projekt Red reached this peak after the announcement of its new title in the Witcher universe, The Witcher: Monster Slayer mobile AR game. Since August, the company’s market cap has dropped by $2.9 billion, falling from PLN 461 to PLN 331 a share in a little over two months.
This can mostly be attributed to the delays that its most anticipated title, Cyberpunk 2077, has been experiencing and a mandatory crunch. After announcing the game had gone gold on October 5, the developer made a post on Twitter stating it needed more time to address the problem of launching on nine different platforms. Addressing the “gone gold” tweet, CDPR said:
“‘Going gold’, means the game is ready, can be completed, and has all the content in it.” and wanted the time to develop a “Day 0 patch”.
In a report published by Bloomberg, it was revealed that an email was sent to the staff at CDPR from studio head Adam Badowski, reneging on his promise to avoid crunch in the days leading to Cyberpunk’s release.
“Starting today, the entire (development) studio is in overdrive,” Badowski wrote, defining this as “your typical amount of work and one day of the weekend.” He went on to say in the email: “I take it upon myself to receive the full backlash for the decision,” he wrote. “I know this is in direct opposition to what we’ve said about crunch. It’s also in direct opposition to what I personally grew to believe a while back — that crunch should never be the answer. But we’ve extended all other possible means of navigating the situation.”
The effects of these two events were mirrored in CDPR’s stock the following days, affirming GamesIndustry.biz supposition in May that CD Projekt’s stock was inflated by the hype for its upcoming title when compared to the established titan, Ubisoft.
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