‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Gets Review Bombed After CDPR Takes Stance On Russia

Cyberpunk 2077 has suffered a barrage of negative reviews in the past, namely because of the state the game was in for close to a year after release, but now it’s being bombed for a new reason, CDPR’s recently announced stance on Russia.

While this has now become something of an industry trend, CDPR was the first major publisher to announce that they would not be selling any of their games like Cyberpunk 2077 or The Witcher 3 in Russia, and were no longer going to operate GOG in the region either.

The result? Thousands of negative reviews have flooded in for Cyberpunk 2077 over the last few days from angry Russian or pro-Russian players who are upset about being cut off, and the CDPR would take this public stand against the country. CDPR is based in Poland, and had this to say when they made the announcement:

“The entire CD PROJEKT Group stands firm with the people of Ukraine. While we are not a political entity capable of directly influencing state matters, and don’t aspire to be one, we do believe that commercial entities, when united, have the power to inspire global change in the hearts and minds of ordinary people. We know that players in Russia and Belarus, individuals who have nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine, will be impacted by this decision, but with this action we wish to further galvanize the global community to speak about what is going on in the heart of Europe.

To our brothers and sisters fighting for their home country – stay strong!”

CDPR is unique in that it’s a Polish company, much closer to the Ukraine/Russian conflict than others, and obviously has its own history with foreign invasion by a neighbor.

The barrage of negative reviews have not been enough to turn the game down from “Mostly Positive,” but they are substantial. I count close to 4,500 new negative reviews since March 3 on Steam. And if you thought this was just a “well Cyberpunk has problems so maybe this is justified” situation, take a look at The Witcher 3, which has also been hit with a nearly identical slate of negative reviews on Steam over the same time period as a much less controversial game. I think it has closer to 5,000, even more than Cyberpunk 2077. Steam has given the games an asterisk by their reviews, indicating they’ve been bombed for “off topic” activity, and you can filter those reviews out as a result.

Since CDPR went first, Microsoft, EA and Activision Blizzard have all announced they are not selling games in Russia anymore. Most EA and Activision games are on their own launchers, but Halo Infinite did have a big spike of negative reviews on Steam the day Microsoft announced the move, though Infinite reviews on Steam have trended toward “Mixed” from the start.

There is no end date to any of these sales restrictions from these companies because we don’t know where the war goes from here. Russia may be cut off from these games for a very long time, and I’d expect more publishers to add their names to this list as time goes on.

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