Once again I am bending my rules of "no rumors" and this special case is due Cyberpunk 2077 and that I am a fan of the game. Perhaps this will clear the reputation of CD Projekt Red regarding the failed launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in December 2020 and if a report is accurate, not all the blame is for the studio itself.

A quick recap, after more than half-a-decade marketing (Keanu Reeves's breathtaking announcement that he was playin Johnny Silverhand at E3 2018) and promotion and two known delays, CD Projekt Red FINALLY launched Cyberpunk 2077 on December 2020, but something happened almost immediately.

A recurring topic on social media was that the game had some strange bugs, even after day one patch and practically PC and Stadia version were the most platforms with little problem to play the game with.

In a TLDR, the thing went from bad to worse, that Sony needed to retire Cyberpunk 2077 from the PS Store and Microsoft added a warning about the game's performance before buying it.

Of course all eyes went on CD Projekt Red, who later acknowledged that the game's final product deferred heavily from the Gold version and that the errors were not present.

A little fast forward, there was a report that CD Projekt Red was aware that the game development was rushed and while the marketing and initial announcement began 7 years prior launch, it was circa 2017 that development HAS RESTARTED AND TAKEN SERIOUSLY as many of early prototypes were low quality and done with internal jokes showcasing known issues.

Is true that the game is currently doing a lot better than the launch date, but appears that there is one more piece to the puzzle of how modern gaming can fail so hard in the 2020's.

The answer, Upper Echelon Gamers believes, falls in Quantic Lab.

Quantic Lab is a known company to run Q&A (Quality Assurance) for many companies, including gaming industrie members and known customers are  Ubisoft, Techland, Paradox and Deep Silver and currently, part of Embracer Group.

Upper Echelon Gamers claims to have evidence that has the QA as the company behind Cyberpunk 2077's failed launch, misleading CD Projekt Red that the game development was correctly verified which was not the case.

Details including a unprepared staff of QA assigned to the project, most of them junior developers (and the most experienced had the equivalent of a year old), while Quantic Lab told CDPR that the team assigned to CP77 were senior and experimented developers that including lng upper management, were about 75 people involved.

Also, the 10 bugs per member as the gameplay from Quantic Lab, led CDPR to believe that the graphics-related errors were more minimal than in reality were and this scheme was noticed by CD Projekt Red unfortunately late as the launch day was closing in.

Additionally and a sense that this is a Quantic Lab in a apparently known unethical behavior, got the Cyberpunk 2077 testing team at Quantic Lab was expanded from 30 to 60 people to land more working contracts and the new hires were given training in a matter of weeks while distracting predecessors on not only continuing a race-against-the-clock work, but showing the then new hires who to proceed.

The report also states that Quantic Lab banned employees from using their Cyberpunk 2077 experience as part of their personal portfolio to use it on future roles, probably with the assumption that they will be given more work from CD Projekt Red or having themselves presented to other gaming studios.

As of the writing of this, CD Projekt Red have stated that they will not answer on rumors, but Quantic Lab has yet to deny or acknowledge this report (probably will go death silent if this documents are indeed legal and maybe attack and threat to the leaker that there will be consequences if ever identified).

Via VGC