It’s safe to say the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t happen as most anyone expected. While the PC version of the RPG earned stellar reviews for its immersive dystopian atmosphere, the poor state of the game’s console ports has decidedly sullied CD Projekt RED’s achievement with problematic bugs and performance issues, despite the studio continually assuring quality ahead of launch. In the past month, CDPR has faced immense fallout in the form of multiple lawsuits and an infamous delisting from the PlayStation Store. However, it appears such pitfalls haven’t swayed the likes of Valve’s Gabe Newell.

As per a recent interview with New Zealand’s 1 News, the Valve co-founder and president revealed his thoughts on the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, expressing he felt significant sympathy for developer CD Projekt RED. While Newell admitted his attention has mostly adhered to the PC community, he nonetheless noticed “a lot of very happy gamers” on the platform and believes CDPR has achieved something “pretty amazing,” based on his experiences with the game.

“I have a lot of sympathy with a situation that every game developer finds themselves in, like, how you make decisions about trade-offs between your console versions and your PC version,” Gabe Newell said. “All I know is that there are a lot of very happy gamers in the PC space, which are the ones that are most visible to us. There are aspects of the game that are just brilliant, and it shows a tremendous amount of work.”

It’s unfair to throw stones at any other developer, because just getting something as complex and ambitious as that out the door is pretty amazing.”

Having put out a number of highly-anticipated releases himself with Valve, Mr. Newell further professed his empathy with CDPR’s situation, going as far as saying he still receives abusive emails from “fans” of the company’s games. However, he admitted that he takes such responses in stride – choosing to see it as an “opportunity” to learn from the heated passion – and he believes the Cyberpunk 2077 studio intends to do the same through its planned rollout of quality-of-life patches and assured DLC support.

“People get mad because they care,” Gabe Newell declared. “When people have those kinds of reactions, my first thought is that this is an opportunity for us, and I assume that the Cyberpunk 2077 developers are similarly just using it to crank through and make improvements that are going to be beneficial to their customers. They have a long history of doing a great job, of continuing to invest in their products over time and I suspect that they’re going to be very good at making their customers happy over time.”

Everybody knows that if you’re in this business, expectations are high, and if you do it well people are going to let you know and if you failed to meet those expectations they’re are going to let you know — that’s part of why it’s a fun industry.”

What do you think? Do you feel that Gabe Newell is correct and CDPR will recover, or do you feel that CD Projekt is no longer the company it was when it made The Witcher 3? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow Don’t Feed the Gamers on Twitter and Facebook to be informed of the latest gaming and entertainment news 24 hours a day! For more headlines recently featured on DFTG, check out these next few news stories:

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