Cyberpunk 2077 is officially finished: ‘Cyberpunk 2077 has gone gold!’

Wake the f*** up, samurai. We got some CDs to burn!

CD Projekt has announced that Cyberpunk 2077 is officially done. The company’s official Twitter account celebrated the news with a portrait of Johnny Silverhand, an important character in the game who is played by none other than Keanu Reeves.

“Cyberpunk 2077 has gone gold,” CD Projekt tweeted. “See you in Night City on November 19th!”

“Gone gold” is the industry term for when a video game has wrapped up production and has a completed “gold master” copy of the game. After a game has gone gold, it enters the final stage of the development cycle, which is mass replication of the gold master copy, shipping those copies to stores (which includes digital platforms) and the long-awaited release.

Cyberpunk 2077 is, without question, the most hotly anticipated game of 2020. How can we tell? Well, one sign is scheduling.

When other giant titles such as the Final Fantasy VII remake and The Last of Us 2 shy away from the coveted Q4 window (October through December, the holiday months when game sales are most profitable) to avoid competition with your product, you know you’ve got a heavy hitter on your hands. Almost all the major game studios have been giving Cyberpunk 2077 a wide berth with the exception of Activision, which is releasing Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War on Nov. 13.

Grounded, the survival-adventure title from Obsidian Entertainment, lampooned this hype in its own trailer when it told gamers to “wait for Cyberpunk” if they wanted to play the biggest game of the year.

When Keanu Reeves walked onto the Xbox event in 2019 and revealed that he’s playing Johnny Silverhand, a mysterious rockstar-mercenary-martyr who lives in the player’s head as a sort of guide and companion, that hype got dialed up to 11.

Not all responses have been good, however. CD Projekt recently came under fire for mandating excessive overtime for its employees (referred to colloquially in the game industry as “crunch”) for the days leading up to Cyberpunk’s release.

Although fans remain deeply divided over the crunch controversy, it hasn’t shown any signs of dampening the excitement around Cyberpunk’s formal release on Nov. 19.

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If you enjoyed this story, check out In The Know’s article on the CD Projekt mandating overtime for the Cyberpunk 2077 team, reneging on its promise last year.

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