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Case Study #266 — 300 Software Failure Case Studies

Cyberpunk 2077 launch bugs and PlayStation Store removal

CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 launched with extensive bugs, especially on last-generation consoles, prompting Sony to pull it from the PlayStation Store, mass refunds, and a sharp drop in the developer's stock price.

2020-12
When it happened
Technology
Sector
#266 of 300
Ranked by documented impact
01 — What Happened

The damage was public. The root cause was preventable.

CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 launched with extensive bugs, especially on last-generation consoles, prompting Sony to pull it from the PlayStation Store, mass refunds, and a sharp drop in the developer's stock price.

Technology
Sector affected
2020-12
Date of the event
#266
Rank in the 300 Software Failure Case Studies
2
Distinct root-cause clauses identified below
02 — The Root Cause

What the software actually got wrong

The game had not been adequately optimized or quality-tested for the older PlayStation 4 and Xbox One hardware it was still being sold for, and the studio released it on a fixed date despite known, serious performance and stability problems on that hardware.

01Root Cause

The game had not been adequately optimized or quality-tested...

What Happened

The game had not been adequately optimized or quality-tested for the older PlayStation 4 and Xbox One hardware it was still being sold for

How Requs AI Catches This

Requs AI Edge Case flags this exact pattern at the requirements and architecture stage — before a single line of code implementing it exists — so the assumption behind it gets challenged while it is still cheap to fix.

02Root Cause

The studio released it on a fixed date despite...

What Happened

the studio released it on a fixed date despite known, serious performance and stability problems on that hardware

How Requs AI Catches This

Requs AI Software FMEA traces this failure mode back to the system-level hazard it feeds, tagging it against the Common Defect Enumeration so it surfaces in review instead of in the field.

03 — How This Gets Caught Before It Happens

Beyond code coverage and "shall" testing

Root causes like this one rarely show up in code coverage or requirements-compliance testing, because nobody wrote a requirement anticipating the specific edge case that broke. Requs AI Edge Case and Requs AI Software FMEA are built to surface exactly this class of overlooked failure mode — before the software is written.

Requs AI Edge Case

Surfaces this before code exists

Identifies edge cases like this one at requirements and architecture time, using the Common Defect Enumeration to catalog failure patterns seen across hundreds of real-world software failures — including this one.

Requs AI Software FMEA

Connects the failure mode to the hazard

Traces this class of root cause directly to the system-level hazard it can produce, so a defect pattern like this one gets flagged during design review instead of after it ships.

Find the overlooked root causes before they ship.

Schedule a demonstration, or explore how Requs AI Edge Case and Software FMEA use the Common Defect Enumeration.