CDPR refunded 30,000 copies of Cyberpunk 2077 in $2.2m refund campaign

CD Projekt posted a record year thanks in no small part to its December launch of Cyberpunk 2077 but, as anyone familiar with Cyberpunk's launch will know, revenue and sales numbers don't paint a complete picture of the game's big debut.

That financial report, found here, offers a more substantial look at CD Projekt's own refund campaign for Cyberpunk 2077 and how much the company is expecting to put toward refunds facilitated by other retailers in the weeks and months following Cyberpunk 2077's catastrophic launch.

In that report and CD Projekt's earnings call, the company disclosed that it spent PLN 8.2 million, roughly $2.2 million, on refunds through just its own Help Me Refund campaign. The program was a show of goodwill from CD Projekt after Cyberpunk 2077 launched with bugs, crashes, and performance issues that, in some cases, rendered the much-hyped game unplayable.

Help Me Refund aimed to grant players refunds directly from CD Projekt Red in cases where they were unable to return their games through the retailer from which it was originally purchased. Elaborating on the program in its earnings call, CD Projekt leadership added that the $2.2 million figure means that it facilitated roughly 30,000 refunds on its own.

The bulk of those refunds, 95 percent according to CD Projekt, have already reached the wallets of Help Me Refund participants, and the remaining 5 percent represents the "most difficult" group where geographic location or banking complexities add friction to the process.

However, that $2.2 million figure includes refunds for players that reached out directly to the Cyberpunk maker for help within a limited window of the game's launch. Other retailers, particularly digital game stores like those found on PlayStation and Xbox consoles, kicked off refund campaigns of their own for those that purchased Cyberpunk 2077 and were unwilling to wait for the still-in-the-works series of fixes that will bring the game up to snuff.

Provisions for those external refunds are noted way later in CD Projekt's full financial report. Some digging and number crunching on that front from the folks at Ars Technica also shows that CD Projekt has an extra PLN 194.5 million, roughly $51.2 million, set aside as "provisions for returns" to cover refunds during Cyberpunk 2077's launch month back in 2020 and onward into this year. That includes the $2.2 million figure mentioned above, as well as $10.7 million for retailer-facilitated refunds in 2020, and $38.3 million to compensate for refunds and sales lost through other means during 2021.