CD Projekt Red can’t seem to catch a break withCyberpunk 2077.Cyberpunk 2077released in a broken state on PS4 and Xbox One, leading to widespread backlash that saw the game pulled from the PlayStation Store and CD Projekt Red issue refunds. Since then, controversies about developer crunch, CD Projekt board members getting massive bonuses despiteCyberpunk 2077’s issues, and more have continued to hurt the game’s reputation. And now it seems CD Projekt Red could have yet another massiveCyberpunk 2077controversy on its hands.
Recently, the source code for CD Projekt Red gamesThe Witcher 3andCyberpunk 2077was leaked online by apparent hackers. TheCyberpunk 2077source code leakhas yielded plenty of interesting things so far, including an internal montage highlighting a bunch of the game’s glitches and bugs. But something that could prove to be hugely problematic for CD Projekt Red moving forward is the discovery thatCyberpunk 2077developers seemingly used a tag called “Winnie the Pooh” to flag content that needed censored for the game’s release in China.
RELATED:Cyberpunk 2077 Leak Shows Internal Bug Montage, Pre-Alpha Gameplay
People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping famously takes offense to being compared to Winnie the Pooh, to the point where the character has been heavily censored in the country.Kingdom Hearts 3blurs out Winnie the Poohin China, and various other video games censor the character’s name in game chat. So CD Projekt Red using “Winnie the Pooh” to label censored game files for a Chinese audience could potentially lead to it butting heads with China’s government down the road.
One might wonder why CD Projekt Red developers would take such a risk withCyberpunk 2077’s source code, but as Redditor traceitalian explains, “Yeah, the chances of this seeing the light of day were astronomically slim.” TheCyberpunk 2077source code leak is an incredibly rare situation, and so it’s safe to say that no one at CD Projekt Red that was aware of this Winnie the Pooh China censorship flag thought it would ever be discovered.
This isn’t the first time that CD Projekt Red has found itself in the middle of a controversy over Xi Jinping’s dislike of being compared to Winnie the Pooh. TheTaiwan-developed horror gameDevotionwas pulled from salefrom various digital storefronts after it was discovered that the game featured the text “Xi Jinping Winnie-the-Pooh moron.” The game was later updated to remove this text and was set to make its debut on the CD Projekt owned digital storefront GOG, only for the company to change its mind at the last second due to supposed “messages from gamers.” As one might imagine, this resulted in quite the uproar online.
CD Projekt Red has yet to comment on this latest development. It will be interesting to see if it fuels the efforts of aCD Projekt Red investor to oust the company’s current CEO, or if CDPR will retain its current leadership as it continues working to fixCyberpunk 2077.
Cyberpunk 2077is out now for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions also in development.
