There are two things we can say for sure about the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, a) it was a mess, with rampant glitches and terribly optimized current-gen console versions compelling most retailers to offer refunds, and b) it was also a major success. Cyberpunk 2077 amassed over 8 million pre-orders, enough to immediately pay off the game’s development costs, but of course, that doesn’t tell the whole story as not everyone who bought the game pre-ordered. According to a new press release issued by CD Projekt Red, Cyberpunk 2077 has already sold a whopping 13 million copies, and that’s taking returns into account…
Based on reports obtained from digital distribution platforms and data collected from physical distributors, it estimates that by 20 December inclusive gamers have purchased over 13 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077. This figure represents the estimated volume of retail sales across all hardware platforms (factoring in returns submitted by retail clients in brick-and-mortar as well as digital storefronts), aka the “sell-through” figure, less all refund requests e-mailed directly to the Company by the publication date of this report in the framework of the “Help Me Refund” campaign.
As mentioned, a number of companies, including Sony, Microsoft, and CD Projekt Red themselves, have offered no-questions-asked refunds for Cyberpunk 2077. It would certainly be interesting to know exactly how many refunds have been requested, but given Cyberpunk 2077’s sales figures, it doesn’t seem like returns are seriously hurting the game’s momentum. Of course, time will tell the real story – if the Cyberpunk sales numbers are still hovering around 13 million months from now, we’ll know the bad press has legitimately damaged the game.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available now on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 (although new digital sales have been suspended), and can be played via backward compatibility on Xbox Series X/S and PS5.
