Suspicious leak claims Cyberpunk 2077 could be delayed to 2021

The Cyberpunk 2077 release date was pushed back to December 10 despite developer CD Projekt Red's announcement that the open-world role-playing gaming had "gone gold" earlier in October. Now, as of Monday, a leaker with an established track record has called the delay-riddled game's new release date into question.

Could Cyberpunk 2077 be delayed again? The short answer is that it almost certainly will not face any further delays.

Unverified rumors claiming that Cyberpunk 2077 would once again be postponed until 2021 began to circulate online Monday. That would be the fourth delay the CDPR title has suffered. Pre-orders for the game had already been made available before the most recent delay, so the thought of another delay may be a disheartening prospect to hear.

CDPR, however, wasted no time in reassuring fans that December 10 will remain Cyberpunk 2077's official release date.

“As a rule, we don’t comment on rumors or speculation,” CDPR told IGN in an interview published Tuesday. “But I will confirm we were just taking time to update all of our assets to reflect the new launch date of December 10th.”

While the developer has outrightly denied the recent rumors, the leaker who started them has a history of outing industry announcements early.

December 10 is only a month away, however, and a fourth delay might be downright unacceptable for gamers and investors, which casts some doubt on the new delay rumors. But the leaker's track record and CDPR's recent statements about Cyberpunk 2077 have made it increasingly difficult to expect anything outright.

Where did the Cyberpunk 2077 delay rumors start?

A mysterious game industry insider, disguised as a racy Twitter account called "HotGirlVideos69," sent the Tweet that echoed across gaming forums on November 9.

"So, what if Cyberpunk 2077 gets delayed...again," they tweeted. "Like what if it doesn't launch this year. Like uh until 2021."

They followed up this statement on Tuesday with another tweet that this time specified that CDPR might push the release date back to January 2021.

"I guess CDPR updated their profile yesterday to double down on December 10 after the rumor we heard went kind of nuts on a couple sites," they wrote. "Still not convinced. Hearing bad stuff internally that there will likely be another delay till January 2021."

The leaker provided no other evidence to back up their claims. While they may be just stirring up controversy to sow discord in the community, HotGirlVideos69 has made a handful of accurate predictions in the past.

The account said E3 2020 would be canceled months before it was formally announced, which was admittedly an easy prediction to make given the global coronavirus pandemic.

They also predicted that Valve would announce the virtual reality prequel to the Half-Life series, Half-Life: Alyx, sometime between "August and October," which proved to be true. But other sources, like Valve News Network's Tyler McVicker had been covering the existence of the VR game for years, so HotGirlVideo69's prediction could have been a good guess based on past coverage.

In both cases, it doesn't seem like they have any kind of source; They're just making educated guesses that turn out to be true based on someone else's reports.

There's no way to verify this new batch of Cyberpunk 2077 rumors with the information we have available now, but CDPR hasn't exactly inspired confidence about the state of the game recently.

The Inverse Analysis — The company hosted a Q&A session with investors on October 28, following the announcement that Cyberpunk 2077 would be delayed until December 10. That's when CDPR's VP of Business Development Michał Nowakowski made gamers and shareholders question whether or not this latest release date would hold up.

After being asked if investors can be "comfortable" about Cyberpunk 2077 launching in December, Nowakowski responded, "That’s more or less what I’m saying, I guess – yes." That isn't exactly what you want to hear after nearly a year of pushbacks, but even if the game launches somewhat prematurely, that just means it might be buggier at first than it otherwise would be.

That lukewarm statement was released after Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported that this new release date announcement blindsided the development team. That suggests CDPR's internal teams aren't on the same page with Cyberpunk 2077's progress, which might result in miscommunication and, potentially, another delay.

After three delays, a shaky statement from CDPR's executives, and a dev team that wasn't informed that the game they're building was being postponed would make any gamer question: When will we be able to explore Night City? Will it really be in a month's time?

Cyberpunk 2077 is set to be released on December 10, 2020.