CD Projekt heads will receive large bonuses despite Cyberpunk 2077's troubled launch

It looks like the bosses and board members of CD Projekt will receive large bonuses for Cyberpunk 2077 despite the game's troubled launch.

According to a report on Bloomberg, and CD Projekt's annual report, CEOs, Marcin Iwinski and Adam Kicinski will each receive around $6.3 million each as an end of the year bonus.

Meanwhile, the game's director and board member Adam Badowski will receive $4.2 million.

The bonus figures are based on the company's 2020 net earnings, which are estimated to be around $562 million.

While much of that profit came from sales of Cyberpunk 2077, other titles from the company such as The Witcher 3 also contributed to the bottom line.

Of these earnings, 20% goes to profit-sharing bonuses, split down the middle between employees and board members.  These numbers can vary greatly with employees getting between $5,000 and $9,000 in bonuses while more senior staff can get in upwards of $20,000. Managers and directors get even higher bonuses.

In a statement to Blomberg, a CDP spokesperson said $29.8 million was dispersed between 865 employees, which averaged out to around $34,000 each. That said, five of the company's board members earned bonuses totaling $28 million.

Four of the board who own around 33% of company stock, did lose some money this year when stock in CDP fell 57%, but the bonuses should soften the blow a bit.

Co-CEO Adam Kicinski was asked on the investor's call about the large bonuses and said the monetary payouts were “always” tied to profits.

“We earned this money and the company earned this money, of course, but more net profits, more bonuses,” said Kicinski. "We have results, we get bonuses, and that’s the contract we have.”

Cyberpunk 2077 was plagued with glitches and almost unplayable on Xbox One and PS4 at launch, and at the time of writing, the PS4 version of Cyberpunk 2077 is still delisted from the PlayStation Store.

The developer has been releasing patches and hotfixes for the game, with the most recent fixing some of the most frequently reported issues since the last patch and it introduces further improvements to stability and performance, which was also touched upon with the previous hotfix.

CDP hopes to get the game to a state where it can continue to sell the game on various platforms “for years to come."