Well… this is a little heavy handed to say the least.

As reported on Windows Central and a number of other outlets, Sony has removed Cyberpunk 2077 from its PlayStation store citing the often discussed quality issues that have plagued the game at launch. The concerning part about their approach is it’s a complete take down: even though the game works better on the new hardware (PS4 Pro and PS5) those are also losing out on the game. This is either a knee jerk reaction to opinion and the refund situation or their store is entirely incapable of having the game only visible to select console models… chances are a bit of everything. They also have no real investment in the game apart from what money they skim from the top of sales so the refunds would not be encouraging them to stick with it at all. Now people are trying to push Microsoft to do the same.

Will they take the bait? Don’t know but we’ll find out soon enough. If they did anything similar I could imagine they’d limit it to Xbox One simply for the reasons I stated for PlayStation in that the newer consoles are handling the game better and Microsoft’s infrastructure (eg. Marketplace, Smart Delivery, etc) could probably handle it. To cut the Series X/S off from the game would be bad too not only because it runs well enough (even with bugs) but it’s one big game to lose from a new platform that’s still waiting for more major titles to arrive. There’s also the fact that they’ve got some marketing deals with CD Projekt Red which could influence their decisions. But with that comes an opportunity to try and make it right for their users by helping the developers to get as many issues knocked out quickly. Yes, this really should fall to CDPR to deal with as it’s their game but keeping it available (and working better) on Xbox could be of benefit to both and Microsoft likely has more capability to help them than any other software company in the world. It’d strengthen their working relationship in the wake of it souring greatly on the Sony side.

All of this could change in a day or two but it’s a crazy old time for gaming and probably confusing as hell too for those people happily playing the game and wondering what’s going on…