There have been a lot of strong feelings about the recent Cyberpunk 2077 and CD Project Red controversy that sparked a lot of discussions on ethical marketing in the video game industry. For those who may be out of the loop on the entire Cyberpunk 2077 development and refund debacle, the game was heavily flawed on last generation systems despite the development team claiming otherwise before release.
Now, one prolific game director took the time to call out these unethical practices in a lengthy, strongly-worded post. Thomas Mahler, the director of the two Ori games, has called out the Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man’s Sky development teams as “snake oil salesmen” for providing false promises to consumers before launch.
The post comes from Mahler himself via the Resetera forums. Mahler begins the post explaining that he’s been continuously frustrated by situations involving dishonest video game marketing for some time now, saying he believed it became a problem beginning with Peter Molyneux. Molyneux has been embroiled in multiple controversies in the past for misleading consumers via marketing, with Mahler saying he “gets consumers excited” by telling them what the product could be instead of telling them what it actually is. Mahler claims that both journalists and gamers liked listening to Molyneux’s empty promises until he released “some pretty damn shoddy games.”
Mahler then moves on, calling out Sean Murray of Hello Games by claiming Murray loved the spotlight afforded to him by No Man’s Sky too much. Most readers will remember No Man’s Sky‘s negative reception upon release after failing to live up to pre-release hype. During this portion of the post Mahler explains that claiming players will be able to do everything in certain games is “generally a common theme behind the gaming snake oil salesmen.” Mahler also calls out Geoff Keighley while discussing the No Man’s Sky situation, owing to his involvement in the Game Awards.
Mahler implies that rewarding this kind of behavior down the road is detrimental to the games industry, referring to Murray and No Man’s Sky winning a Game Award for the best ongoing game of 2020. Finally, Mahler discusses the recent Cyberpunk 2077 debacle, implying that many people assumed CD Projekt Red would deliver with Cyberpunk 2077 thanks to The Witcher 3‘s sterling reputation. Mahler claims every trailer and bit of pre-release material for Cyberpunk 2077 was carefully crafted to entice players with what the game could be, without showing the reality of the state Cyberpunk 2077. Which, to be fair, is the basic premise of what any given marketing trailer for a product is supposed to do regardless of the ethical implications.
Mahler’s post continues, going into detail about this situation from a developer’s point of view, calling out journalists and gamers again, and expressing confusion on why situations like this continue. Still, hindsight is 20/20 and it’s much easier to call out these practices after the fact, when many more people are left disappointed and are eager to express that disappoint after being misled. Mahler makes good points in his post and is clearly passionate about the situation, but the reality is that this Cyberpunk 2077 situation is not nearly as black and white as some may think. CD Projekt Red’s co-founder has since owned up to the game’s failings and promises the studio is working to fix Cyberpunk 2077, but it could be too little, too late.
Source: Resetera (via Thomas Mahler)
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