"It is easy to be optimistic about the future of Europe when running through a dystopian hellscape, machinegunning police and decapitating pedestrians with a samurai sword. Such opportunities come thanks to "Cyberpunk 2077", a Polish video game, launched before Christmas after a decade of development. It sold 13m copies at up to $60 each in its first ten days, with buyers tempted by its mix of hyper-violence, women wearing inexplicably few clothes and a one-armed terrorist played by Keanu Reeves. Pre-launch hype turned its Warsaw-based creator, cd Projekt, into the country's most valuable listed company and a rare example of European business succeeding at the frontier of a 21st-century industry, rather than coasting on a reputation built up in the century before. Even the in-game currency provides something for Europhiles to cheer: in Cyberpunk lore, the main currency, "eddies", is based on the euro. Society may have collapsed into a living nightmare, but at least the eu's single currency lived on..."
„ What should have been a rare technology victory for European business soon turned into a farce, however. The game was launched while still littered with bugs, much like the actual euro. Performance was so poor on older consoles that Sony, the world’s biggest console manufacturer, took the rare step of pulling the game from its stores. One scene gave an unfortunate reviewer an epileptic seizure. cd Projekt issued grovelling apologies. Its share price halved as complaints and refund demands poured in. The paper billionaires created among the Polish company’s management became paper millionaires once more.”
economist.com/europe/2021/01/16/the-botched-launch-of-cyberpunk-2077
