CD Projekt mentioned final week that proceedings within the class action lawsuit filed against it in December 2020 over the sorry state of Cyberpunk 2077’s launch had been suspended as a result of an out-of-court settlement was being hammered out. As we speak, it introduced that an agreement has been reached, and assuming the court docket agrees, the entire thing will go away for $1.85 million.
Underneath the phrases of the settlement, all members of the category “relinquish all claims towards the Firm and members of its Administration Board.” There’s additionally no admission of wrongdoing on CD Projekt’s half: As an alternative, it mentioned the settlement is being made as a result of combating the lawsuit may find yourself costing much more irrespective of the way it works out, together with “the overall observe within the US of concluding such litigation by means of an out-of-court settlement,” which strikes me as a quite unhappy state of affairs.
Much more putting is the comparatively paltry quantity of the settlement. Whereas $1.85 million is not nothing—I may positive make good use of it—it is a drop within the bucket for CD Projekt. There is a persistent notion of the corporate as a scrappy little man, pushed by GOG’s “no DRM” posturing and that it is actually solely made one recreation collection of be aware—The Witcher. However in 2020 it grew to become probably the most priceless videogame firm in all of Europe, with a market valuation of greater than $8.1 billion, an quantity that surpasses even that of main multiplatform writer Ubisoft.
Cyberpunk 2077 was an enormous moneymaker, too, regardless of the efficiency points and bugs that led to the lawsuit. After eight years of growth time and advertising and marketing, it earned again all bills and turned a profit on preorders alone, promoting practically 14 million copies in 2020 and serving to to drive a revenue of $303 million that 12 months. I might say $1.85 million to make the authorized aggravations go away is an absolute steal. (It is also lower than the $2.2 million CD Projekt paid out via its Cyberpunk 2077 refund program.)
The deal is not executed fairly but. A proper settlement doc needs to be drawn up and submitted to the court docket by January 13, 2022, after which the court docket has to make a preliminary ruling on the deal, members of the category must be notified, after which—lastly—it goes again to the court docket for ultimate approval. The entire course of is predicted to take a number of months to conclude.
