Cyberpunk 2077's 40 Million Comeback and Its Soulless Night City

Correction and methodology note, July 29, 2026: an earlier version incorrectly said Phantom Liberty was the only substantial addition available to a 2020 buyer, overlooking Update 2.0 and free DLC. It also presented an unsourced 2030 sequel estimate as a statement from CD Projekt. Both claims have been corrected. Personal observations come from the author's PC preorder and later return visits, but the original notes did not record exact builds, hardware specifications, or total hours.

December 2020. I had sat through delay after delay, downloaded Cyberpunk 2077 the hour it unlocked, and inside of twenty minutes I was watching cars blink into existence like assets rendered on a PlayStation 1. Textures loaded late. NPCs froze mid stride on the sidewalk. Half the planet was on that hype train and so was I, preorder paid, expectations somewhere in orbit. What I actually got was a city that could barely keep itself standing.

Six years on, CD Projekt Red is throwing a party, and I keep getting invited by name. The company has now announced more than 40 million copies sold, five million above the 35 million figure in its November 2025 results. Lead quest designer Pawel Sasko thanked players for making the studio's work possible. I am one of those buyers. I am also one of the people who paid full retail to run what felt like a public beta test in 2020.

A comeback built on our patience

The turnaround is real, and I am not going to pretend it isn't. The 2020 launch was bad enough that Sony pulled the game from the PlayStation Store, and CD Projekt spent the run-up to release accused of misleading buyers with marketing that promised a console version the hardware never delivered. Then came years of patches, a reworked police system, the whole thing rebuilt out in the open. Phantom Liberty landed as one of the best expansions the studio has ever shipped. Even Nowakowski won't call it finished. He recently said he still doesn't believe CD Projekt has completed a "full redemption arc."

My problem with the confetti is narrower than the original version suggested. Returning buyers received substantial free work, including the systems overhaul in Update 2.0 and other DLC documented on the official Ultimate Edition overview. Phantom Liberty remains the major paid story expansion, and I still dislike asking launch buyers to pay again for the strongest reason to return. That is an argument about compensation and goodwill, not a claim that CD Projekt added nothing for free.

Eye candy with no soul

I have opened the game a handful of times since the big updates, and almost never to actually play it. Cyberpunk 2077 turned into a benchmark. When I upgraded my PC, I loaded it up to watch the ray tracing bounce off wet neon and puddles, admired it for an evening, and closed it again. As a tech demo, it is stunning. I mean... only as a tech demo. The lighting is doing work no other open world on my drive can match, and then the moment you stop staring at reflections and start living in the place, the illusion thins out.

Look at the traffic. A city the size of Night City should be choked with cars, and it is, except none of it survives a second glance. There are no parking lots. No street sets aside a lane for a car that isn't moving. When you stop your own vehicle to run a mission, V either mounts the curb or abandons it in the road, and the traffic behind you collapses into a knot, because the city was never built to handle a car that stops. The vehicles around you are zombies. They came from nowhere and they are headed nowhere, spawned to fill the frame and deleted the second you look away. What's missing is environmental storytelling, the small logic that would tell you people genuinely park, work, and live here.

It's telling that the best version of this world isn't the game at all. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 2 arrives this fall, and the anime gave Night City the soul the game keeps promising and never quite renders.

What 40 million buys next

CD Projekt is treating the milestone as a foundation for more work in the universe. Its Q1 2026 presentation lists 163 developers on Cyberpunk 2 as of April 30. Creator Mike Pondsmith has also discussed a second city with a different atmosphere from Night City, describing it publicly as closer to a version of Chicago gone wrong. These are signs of direction, not evidence that the sequel is near release.

Public discussion about returning characters and new locations remains far ahead of a release plan. CD Projekt has not announced a Cyberpunk 2 date, and the earlier attribution of a 2030 window to Nowakowski could not be substantiated. The safe conclusion is less exciting: a large team is now attached to the sequel, while The Witcher 4 remains another major production inside the same company.

So congratulations to CD Projekt on 40 million, sincerely. They engineered one of the great comebacks this industry has produced, and the ray tracing is worth the electricity bill. I am just not booking a return trip to Night City on the strength of a sales number. When Cyberpunk 2 lands, whenever that turns out to be, I'll be reading the patch notes before I hand over a cent. Some of us only fall for the preorder once.