I believe it was Cyberpunk 2077 that started the trend of "release now fix later" games.

Hardly. That's been a thing for a while now.

Cyberpunk 2077 was a really ambitious game, with a lot of new mechanics and incredible graphics. Beasts like that are really difficult to optimize for a large range of computers with different specs, so at first it ran poorly on some.

What about all the other "Ambitious games" that we've had over the years that come out just fine? A game being ambitious does not excuse a company releasing the game in what is blatantly an unfinished state. This isn't the case of a game having a few performance hiccups here and there but rather egregious bugs and severe performance issues across the board. This is stuff that is all over youtube, reddit, twitter and so on. It's pretty well documented how bad the game was.

The most notably buggy release was the PS4 one. And rightfully so. They were trying to run a truly next gen game on a console which was more than a decade old. They not only had to optimize the game, but they basically made a completely different game, with different assets and engines, which was really difficult to do. Still, it was too much for the console, especially old PS4s that were full of dust or had old fans and were overheating.

Again, this really isn't an excuse. They had the power the can the next gen versions of the game if it was so difficult to pull off. They also had the power to delay the game in order to make sure that it was ready for launch. They could have done so many things such that the last gen versions of the day would either never see the light of day or be ready for launch. CDPR are a big enough studio to pull something like this off. They're not a small indie studio.

Another important fact is that users were also pressuring CDPR into releasing Cyberpunk 2077. It was delayed at least once (maybe twice, I don’t remember), and people wanted to play the game. They probably had to choose between delaying it another time or releasing it without polishing it that much.

Yes, there may have been pressure. But no, the consumer base does not have anywhere near enough power over corporations like you're trying to imply. Games aren't just released early because "Oh no the consumers are getting angy". Though once again this was their fault due to them giving the consumer a completely unrealistic initial release date that they obviously could not hit, considering the absolute state of the game at launch.

The most likely explanation is that they were simply trying to get the game out as soon as possible to cash in and they absolutely did not want to miss a major sales period such as Christmas. They were simply trying to drop a minimal viable product with plans to fix it later. Turns out they dropped a less than minimally viable product in their rush to make some dosh. Knowingly too if you look into the allegations that I'll link later.

I believe it was Cyberpunk 2077 that started the trend of “release now fix later” games.

No. "Release broken fix later" has been a thing for maybe the last decade. Do people not remember shitshows like AC:Unity? Cyberpunk is most definitely not the first game to be "Release broken, fix later".

However, I don’t think they really did it on purpose.

I don't think it was dropped broken on purpose. But I do think it was an attempt to drop the usual bare minimum product. Just so happens that they miscalculated and dropped something less than minimal. It's still gross incompetence and shows the consumer they're more than willing to drop something bare minimum with the promise of fixing it later. Rather than dropping a complete game.

The game was too ambitious for its own good, and having to develop, optimize and test two basically different versions of it was too big of a task for a studio that in today’s terms wasn’t even that big.

Again, not an excuse. They're a massive studio, big enough to have people that know how to plan a project like this, people that understand their limitations and what is or isn't achievable. It's standard project planning practice.

But even then there are allegations that people in the company were aware that the game was not ready to launch.

https://www.gamesradar.com/new-report-suggests-cdpr-staff-knew-cyberpunk-2077-wasnt-ready-for-release/

And yet they still dropped the game.

There is no excuse for the launch of CP2077.

The rest of the AAA producers just realized that CDPR still won loads of money at launch, and decided to release incomplete games on purpose, after seeing that CDPR could make profits that way.

The industry learned this about a decade ago. We've been plagued by half baked launched for so long at this point that you don't have to go far to find out about it.

But must importantly, CDPR did an amazing job at fixing the game, unlike many other studios releasing broken AAAs.

In this case I think it's less fixing the game and more finishing the development of the game, all things considered. The thing they should have done before releasing the game as if it was a finished product when, in fact, it clearly wasn't.

There's fixing a game and there's what CDPR had to do to CP2077.

Yes, a lot of companies don't fix their games. But at the same time most of these companies don't release their games in such a state that they start getting into legal trouble over the launch of their game.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/01/investors-settle-cyberpunk-2077-lawsuit-with-developer-for-1-85-million/

https://www.nme.com/news/cyberpunk-2077-investigated-polish-consumer-protection-agency-2855205

Cyberpunk was such a massive disaster that they didn't really have much choice other than to finish working on their game. To repair the massive hit to their PR as well as other issues such as the class action and the whole debacle with Sony kicking the game of the PS Store.

Even though it took a while, they still delivered the game they promised to their buyers.

Yes, it's good that they stuck with the game and did more than the bare minimum to bring it to a better state. But it's not exactly something to praise them over. It took them ~2 years to bring the game to a state that it should have been in at launch. Instead of launching the game in a finished state, they knowingly dropped the game in an unfinished state. They also put out a review embargo preventing reviewers from informing the consumer about said issues, they actively worked to mislead the consumer about the state of their game.

What CDPR did is absolutely not excusable under any circumstances.

Their next projects should absolutely be scrutinised until they prove that they have learned from their mistakes.

I would argue No Man's Sky started the trend of "release now fix later" but I suppose they are not a big AAA studio. I suppose CDPR wasn't really considered as AAA until the release of Witcher 3.