Cyberpunk Game Developer Apologizes for Pro-Ukrainian Messages In-Game

You read that right… CD Projekt Red (CDPR), the Polish developer of the massively popular “Witcher” game series, as well as “Cyberpunk 2077”, recently apologized to Russia for pro-Ukrainian messages that were put in the game during their most recent 2.0 update.

But let’s back up.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a massive, open-world role-playing game for Playstation, Xbox, and PC, that suffered through a disastrous launch three years ago that was full of game-breaking bugs.

It was so bad, in fact, that CDPR settled a class-action lawsuit for $1.85 million over its launch.

Over the years, CDPR has been making incremental improvements to the game, most notably in its stability, which culminated with patch 2.0 released this week — it was to be CDPR’s redemption.

And by all accounts, the free 2.0 patch is a masterpiece, not only showcasing the true vision that CDPR intended when the game was released years ago, but also coinciding with the release of new downloadable content (DLC) complete with actor Idris Elba in a new role, and Keanu Reeves reprising his role as Johnny Silverhand.

As part of the video game development process, games (and movies for that matter) go through a process called localization. This process adapts the dialogue language used in the game, any text seen in the world, and the user interface for a particular local audience.