Huge numbers of 'Cyberpunk 2077' players have given up on the game

Less than a month after its release, the vast majority of Cyberpunk 2077’ players have abandoned the embarrassment of a game. Around a million people played the game on Steam when it first came out. Last weekend, only around 225,000 people were active on the game, according to data from GitHyp (h/t Neowin).

That’s a 79 percent decrease in active players — a staggering number for any game, but even more so for Cyberpunk 2077, a massive open-world game with years of hype behind it. Notice we said “staggering” rather than “surprising” or “shocking.” The game has been such a flop that just about every major retailer (not to mention the game’s developers, CD Projekt Red), are issuing full, no-questions-asked refunds.

To be fair, 225,000 active players is still nothing to sneer at, and that number only includes Steam players. That being said, the extreme decrease is bad news for the game’s future. And for that of its developer.

Mess after mess — Cyberpunk 2077’s first month of life has been anything but an easy ride. After seven years of hype-building and development, the game launched on December 10 to thunderous sighs. Bug after bug made the RPG downright unplayable for many, while still others mourned the brevity of the main storyline and the overall underwhelming nature of what was meant to be the greatest game since the advent of gaming (if its developers were to be believed).

We’ve seen plenty of anecdotes about players leaving the game behind, but watching its numbers demonstrably decline is far more concrete. That decline is likely to continue as time goes on — it’s going to take a great deal for CD Projekt Red to rehabilitate the game’s image at this point. Plus, most gamers have enough partially played (or untouched) games in their collection to turn to when they tire of their Cyberpunk 2077 car vanishing every time they try to get into it.

People are still playing, though — Yes, a 79 percent decrease in under a month is pretty disastrous. But there were still almost a quarter of a million people playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam this weekend alone. That’s a lot of people by any measure — even more impressive when you take into account the general cloud of disappointment surrounding the game.

It’s also possible that number will increase again in the near future. CD Projekt Red is planning to release two large patches in the next two months, both of which should “fix the most prominent problems gamers are facing on last-gen consoles," according to the company.

Furthermore, the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 versions of the game haven’t actually been released yet, either. Those upgrades could make the game much more appealing to those disillusioned by what it looked like at release. For a change, this might actually be a game that's worth waiting on.