Cyberpunk 2077 QA testers reportedly misled devs over game quality

Cyberpunk 2077 is a disaster that will never die. It was one of the worst hype-to-release debacles in all of gaming – right up there with Fallout 76 and No Man’s Sky.

The biggest issue with Cyberpunk was the long list of bugs that shipped with the game – some platforms having far more than others.

It’s well documented how poorly the Cyberpunk 2077 experience was on release. Now, a new report from Upper Echelon Gamers alleges that the outsourced QA team that worked on Cyberpunk, Quantic Labs, drastically misled CD Projekt Red in multiple important areas.

Cyberpunk 2077 QA whistleblower report

According to the report, the first piece of deceit came with who would be testing the game.

CDPR, reportedly, thought that a team of veteran testers would be working on the game. Instead of the team that tested Witcher 3, they got a group of mostly new testers who could only do the best with what they had.

Another issue is the reported “bug quota” that the Quantic Labs QA testers had to meet. Finding as many bugs as possible sounds like a good idea, in theory. In practice, it led to testers “bombarding the development team with thousands of small visual and performance glitches.”

Obviously, with so many minor glitches to report, the QA team wasn’t able to focus on the game-breaking problems and the development team spent too much time on the “polishing” side.

The problems were only exacerbated from there. Quantic Labs increased their team size, but with similarly untrained eyes – leading to more of the same issues with QA testing.

What’s worse, Upper Echelon’s source claims, “Quantic Labs would make false claims about team size to secure or extend contracts” – exaggerating their numbers to help improve their pitches.

Quantic Labs is also said to have an oppressive non-disclosure agreement, which prevented any of their testers from even discussing that they worked on projects like Cyberpunk 2077.

This report, if true, doesn’t let CDPR off the hook for the underwhelming product, but it does explain a lot. Cyberpunk 2077 was a perfect storm, and it seems like we’re finally getting more details of what caused it in the first place.