Cyberpunk 2077 refunds cost CD Projekt Red over $50 million

Earlier this week as part of CD Projekt Red's 2020 financial report, the company revealed that it sold 13.7 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077 in December, and fulfilled 30,000 pre-order requests through its Help Me Refund program. As it turns out, the documentation was a little misleading, as the real cost of Cyberpunk 2077's refunds was in the $50 million USD range. 

As part of the Help Me Refund campaign, which ran for a limited time and ended before Christmas, CD Projekt Red facilitated 30,000 refunds, costing a total of $2.23 million. However, this campaign was a small percentage of the overall cost of Cyberpunk 2077 refunds. As pointed out by Ars Technica, if you dig through the documents, CD Projekt Red does reveal that refunds overall cost $51.2 million in 2020.

This figure covers all Cyberpunk 2077 refunds, whether they were digital or physical and accounts for refunds granted outside of the limited-time Help Me Refund campaign. A chunk of these expenses were also “provisions for returns and expected adjustments of licensing reports related to sales of Cyberpunk 2077 in its release window!.

While CD Projekt Red did lose over $50 million to refunds, the company still had a record financial year in 2020, with Cyberpunk 2077's launch propelling the company to a $300+ million profit.

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KitGuru Says: Refunds certainly made a dent, albeit a small one. The real challenge now is getting Cyberpunk 2077 to a point where it can pick up a good number of post-launch sales and the only way to do that is by fixing the game and introducing new content. 

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