CD Projekt stock down 20% since Cyberpunk reviews hit the internet

CD Projekt’s (CDR) share price has fallen nearly 20% since the first reviews of its new video game Cyberpunk 2077 surfaced earlier this week.

The game, which came out on Thursday, is drawing widespread criticism due to a seemingly never-ending stream of awkward bugs and glitches.

The Warsaw-listed studio first announced the title eight years ago in 2012, and originally scheduled its release for last spring.

However, devs pushed Cyberpunk 2077’s release back three times in the past year, citing difficulties with building the game for release across nine separate platforms.

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[Read: Meanwhile, esports and gaming stocks are pumping to record highs]

The company reportedly spent $130 million on its development.

Cyberpunk tanked CD Projekt’s stock, but it’s still WAYYY up

Falling so sharply directly after dropping such an anticipated title might seem a little grim, but CDR stock is still an over-achiever.

In fact, its share price has risen nearly 1,400% since it released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2015, during which time its market value has grown to almost $10 billion.

That’s 250% more than Elon Musk’s electric vehicle firm Tesla, and leagues ahead of 2020 outliers like Zoom Video and Moderna, however the latter two have had much less time to build up steam.

But CDR does trail all three considerably in 2020, having now risen just 26% in the year-to-date.

Of the 8 million pre-orders for Cyberpunk 2077:

PC: 4.72m
Console: 3.28m

This will be the biggest day one launch ever for a PC version of a game. (Beats WoW: Shadowlands 3.7m) https://t.co/hbYzerxzFX

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) December 10, 2020

Stock performance aside, it might soothe investors to know the company is still bringing in loads of cash.

Despite missing analyst targets by around 20%, CD Projekt’s sales are up more than 320% in the past year, and its quarterly net profits rose 57% year-on-year.