It's an understatement to say that it's been a rough road for CD Projekt Red and their release of the highly anticipated but woefully handled Cyberpunk 2077. Until now, that developing story has mostly been told from the point of view of the developers at the studio and the customers who were let down by the game's many problems. But today, a new bad actor enters the picture. An unidentified person or persons has hacked CDPR's systems and is currently holding source codes to games like Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Gwent and more ransom.

Firstly, to be clear, said actor (or actors, more likely) is not an actual actor from the game itself but another word for someone who's acting maliciously or unlawfully, just so we're on the same page. Secondly, there's the fact that this information could have gone unnoticed had it remained between the supposed hacker(s) and CDPR, but the latter chose to go public with the information and the statement that they would not be negotiating with said hackers. That's probably the appropriate response, but it certainly feels like a rather mundane sidequest pulled from Cyberpunk 2077 itself, one with major real-world consequences for both the studio's reputation and the bad actors in question.

Here's a look at the ransom doc and CDPR's response:

We'll be keeping an eye on this one as it develops. It seems that CDPR is more than happy to air this dirty laundry in the light of day. It's honestly probably not a bad bit of PR for the company after weathering months of harsh but deserved criticism of their Cyberpunk 2077 rollout. And no doubt the false-flag wavers are already theorizing over the whole ordeal. Stay tuned.