Cyberpunk 2077 Hits 40 Million Copies Sold

Cyberpunk 2077 just crossed 40 million copies sold, and honestly, if you told anyone back in December 2020 that this is where Night City would end up, they'd have laughed you out of the room. CD Projekt Red confirmed the milestone on July 3, more than five and a half years after one of the messiest launches the industry has ever seen.

Quick refresher for anyone who blocked it out. The game shipped on December 10, 2020 in a state that got it pulled from the PlayStation Store, spawned a wave of refunds, and turned "CDPR" into a punchline for a while. Bugs everywhere. Last-gen consoles basically choking on it. It was rough.

And now? 40 million. The last public figure was 35 million, so that's another five million players jumping into Night City, and the game currently sits at a "Very Positive" rating on Steam. That is one of the wildest turnarounds gaming has ever seen.

So how did we get here

It wasn't one thing. The 2.0 update basically rebuilt the game's guts, tearing out the old skill trees and police system and dropping in the version people wanted from day one. Phantom Liberty, the Idris Elba spy thriller expansion, reminded everyone CDPR can still write a killer story. And then there's Edgerunners, the Netflix anime that sent a whole new crowd sprinting to buy the game in 2022. Studio-saving stuff, all of it.

Co-CEO Michal Nowakowski chalked the number up to the "lasting strength" of the game and the kind of dense, story-heavy RPGs the studio is known for. Hard to argue when the sales are still climbing this long after launch.

If you somehow still haven't taken the plunge, this is about as good as the game has ever been. It runs great, it looks incredible, and the story hits. The troubled launch is ancient history at this point.

Meanwhile the sequel, codenamed Project Orion, is in the works over at CDPR's North American studio, so Night City isn't done with us yet.

Were you there for the rocky launch, or did you come in later once it was fixed? Drop it in the comments and let us know when you took your first trip to Night City.