Cyberpunk 2077 players can get a refund from Aussie retailers following the long-awaited game's controversial launch last week.
After numerous delays, Cyberpunk 2077 was finally released to a storm of disappointment and frustration as the game's many bugs, poor AI, and graphical glitches raised doubts as to whether it was ready for publication.
Gamers on previous generation consoles – PS4 and Xbox One – felt especially hard done by as Cyberpunk's poor performance and severely downgraded visuals
The game's developers, Polish firm CD Projekt Red, published an apology on Monday night saying it “should have paid more attention” to the performance on PS4 and Xbox One and said it would help customers get refunds.
“We would always like everyone who buys our games to be satisfied with their purchase,” the developers said.
“We would appreciate it if you would give us a chance, but if you are not pleased with the game on your console and don’t want to wait for updates, you can opt to refund your copy.”
Aussie retailers like EB Games and JB Hi-Fi have reportedly begun refunding boxed copies of the games, leaving Sony and Microsoft to manage refunding online purchases done through the Playstation and Xbox game stores – something that Sony has hopefully learned to do since copping a $3.5 million fine from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) for failing to adhere to Australian consumer law.
Still, people have taken to social media to complain about in-store refunds with one person saying EB Games initially refused to refund their copy of Cyberpunk 2077 for PS4 after buying it on AfterPay.
EB Games says it cannot refund purchases made through AfterPay over the counter and customers instead have to go through a phone support process.
A spokesperson for the ACCC said retailers make an implicit guarantee that the product on their shelves – digital or otherwise – is “of acceptable quality”.
“If a consumer has purchased a product that has a fault which amounts to a major failure, the Australian Consumer Law provides them with the right to ask for their choice of either a repair, replacement or refund,” the spokesperson said.
“Sellers cannot exclude or misrepresent these consumer guarantee rights in their refunds and returns policies, or in their product warranties.”
In an attempt to pay back some of the good will of its supporter base who turned out in droves to pre-order Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red setup a dedicated contact email (helpmerefund@cdprojektred.com) for helping solve refund disputes with retailers, but will only have it open until December 21.
Meanwhile, the developers said they will continue to roll-out patches into the new year to improve last-generation console performance.
“[The updates] won’t make the game on last-gen look like it’s running on a high-spec PC or next-gen console, but it will be closer to that experience than it is now.”
Although it’s received rather favourable reviews from gaming critics, Cyberpunk 2077’s disastrous release has rubbed salt wounds of gamers who have not been able to get their hands on new hardware.
Back-to-back releases of NVIDIA’s GeForce 30 series graphics cards and the next generation PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles were overwhelmed by demand that has left stores vastly understocked.
The game is extremely graphics-intensive, causing even high-end systems to struggle on ultra settings.
Somewhat surprisingly, the combination of necessary computing power and limited hardware access has led some to point to Cyberpunk 2077 as a solid value proposition for cloud gaming services like Google Stadia or NVIDIA Geforce Now.
As Gizmodo found, the game runs well on cloud services so long as you have the requisite bandwidth (50Mbps) and data cap (around 7GB per hour).
Neither Geforce Now nor Stadia is available yet in Australia.
