Cyberpunk 2077's Comeback Owes a Lot To Edgerunners

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In an unforeseen but welcome surprise for many, CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 has been experiencing a resurgence in popularity over the past couple of weeks. The developer recently reported that a staggering 20 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077 have been sold since launch, along with its player count up nearly 300% recently. Such impressive numbers come from a variety of reasons, but for the most part, the game owes its comeback to the Netflix series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was announced in 2020, and while it was viewed as an exciting prospect, no one could have predicted just how influential the anime would become. Similar to how Netflix's The Witcher found new fans to join Geralt on his in-game adventures, or how Arcane introduced many to League of Legends' characters, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has spurred the revival that Cyberpunk 2077 desperately needed.

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Unfortunately, after a long nine-year wait for the game's release, many Cyberpunk 2077 players had a difficult time roaming the streets of Night City on their first playthrough. It quickly became apparent that the game was home to a treasure trove of bugs and glitches. While some didn't mind the glitches in Cyberpunk 2077, they found that the storyline was lacking in heart. Others reported that the game was crashing their drivers and causing their GPU fans to work overtime.

By the end of 2020, most reviews had already written off the open-world RPG as one of the biggest gaming flops of the decade, with the disappointing games that followed being labeled as «the Cyberpunk 2077 of the year.» As expected, bad reviews deterred plenty from trying the game, and it seemed, despite a lot of patches, that