Cyberpunk 2077’s long, slow journey to redemption took a notable step forward today as its Steam user rating ticked over from “mostly positive” to “very positive,” meaning that 80% of its more than 553,000 user ratings are now a thumbs-up.
The big moment was noted by CD Projekt Red global community director Marcin Momot, who thanked fans “for acknowledging all the hard work the team has put in over the years since the release.”
You could argue that, as moments go, this one isn’t all that terribly big, and yeah, that’s fair. Despite its train wreck reputation, Cyberpunk 2077 was pretty okay on PC, especially if you had a fairly high-powered rig, and even when it first came out—which is to say, when it was in its worst condition—the Steam score never slipped below 70%, which counts as “mostly positive.” That’s not bad for most games, but Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t most games, and the fact that it wasn’t bringing in universal praise was seen as a shock—and of course, the situation was far worse on consoles.
But as Momot said, CD Projekt has stuck with it, and things slowly turned around. The first real evidence of improvement came in November 2021, when new user reviews climbed to “very positive,” helped along by a flood of input from people who picked it up for half price in the Steam Autumn Sale. The overall rating remained stuck at “mostly positive,” but the new reviews continued to roll in, and the needle very slowly moved. Last year’s Edgerunners update, timed alongside the release of the highly-praised Netflix show, earned goodwill too by correcting some of the worst annoyances that’d persisted since launch, like the lack of cosmetic armor slots.
You may see, if you go to check the Steam page yourself, that Cyberpunk 2077 is still listed as “mostly positive.” If that’s the case (and it was for me, which is why I bring it up), it’s because of your user review settings: Steam enables users to exclude “off-topic reviews” from game ratings as a way to combat review bombs, but you can opt to include all reviews if you want—and I had. That meant the several thousand negative reviews that dropped through February and March 2022—and which Valve determined were off-topic—were included in the overall rating, which was enough to drag it back below 80%. Take those out of the equation, and you’ve made it to the top.
My guess is that unless the Phantom Liberty expansion literally changes the world (the actual real world, I mean, not the game world), this is as good as it will get for Cyberpunk 2077: Steam’s top rating, Overwhelmingly Positive, requires 95% positive user reviews, and all due respect to CD Projekt but that’s just not going to happen. Still, it’s an impressive turnaround for what was—no matter what CD Projekt says about it now—one of the most infamously ugly game launches of all time.