Cyberpunk 2077 refunds barely dented CD Projekt Red’s bottom line
Hard to see Cyberpunk 2077 as anything but a massive driver of a record quarter in this chart... [credit: CD Projekt ]
Back in December, developer CD Projekt Red made waves by offering full refunds to Cyberpunk 2077 players who were dissatisfied with the game's poor performance, especially on older consoles. Days later, Sony delisted the game from the Playstation Store and made its own refund offer, which was followed by a similar refund offer from Microsoft.
Today, with the release of the CDPR's Consolidated Financial Statement for the 2020 fiscal year (which ended December 31), we know how much that refund program cost the company last year and how much CDPR expects those refunds and lost sales to cost in 2021. All told, it seems the impact will be very low to an otherwise record-setting financial year.
Buried in the "Other Provisions" section of the 90-page financial report, CDPR acknowledges about $51.2 million (194.5 million PLN) that the company says it "has recognized [as] provisions for returns and expected adjustments of licensing reports related to sales of Cyberpunk 2077 in its release window, in Q4 2020." Translated into plain English, that number seems to include all digital and retail refunds for the game in 2020, as well as expectations for continued refunds and lost sales projected through 2021 (thanks to F-Squared's Mike Futter for helping me parse the tortured language in the report).
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