Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher developer CD Projekt hacked, but the company said it won’t be paying the ransom

Things have gone from bad to worse for the company whose hotly anticipated game embarrassingly flopped, but they’re refusing to pay hackers who have taken their code.

The game developer behind Cyberpunk 2077 and the hit Witcher series has confirmed it has been hit by a major cyberattack.

In a statement on Tuesday, Polish outfit CD Projekt Red said hackers had infiltrated its internal network, stolen data and left a ransom note.

The attackers claim to have stolen code for some of the firm‘s biggest games as well as other internal files and have threatened to leak them unless a payment is made.

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The hackers claimed they’ve stolen the source code for Cyberpunk 2077. Picture: Kazuhiro Nogi / AFP

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CD Projekt Red (CDPR) has said it will not negotiate with the hackers.

Alongside a statement on the incident, which the developer posted to Twitter, CDR also posted a copy of the ransom note left by the attackers.

In it, they claimed to have made copies of source code for games Cyberpunk 2077, Gwent and The Witcher 3, as well as an unreleased version of the latter.

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Important Update pic.twitter.com/PCEuhAJosR

— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) February 9, 2021

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The note gave the gaming firm 48 hours to respond.

“Yesterday we discovered that we have become a victim of a targeted cyberattack, due to which some of our internal systems have been compromised,” CD Projekt Red said in its statement.

“An unidentified actor gained unauthorised access to our internal network, collected certain data belonging to CD Projekt capital group, and left a random note the content of which we release to the public.

“Although some devices in our network have been encrypted, our backups remain intact. We have already secured our IT infrastructure and begun restoring the data.”

The developer said it would “not give in to the demands nor negotiate with the actor”.

The hackers also claim to have accessed an unreleased version of The Witcher 3.

According to the company, while it was still investigating the incident, it could confirm that “to the best of our knowledge – the compromised systems did not contain any personal data of our players or users of our services”.

CDPR also confirmed that it was in touch with law enforcement and data protection officials.

It‘s the latest in a long line of disasters that have befallen the Warsaw-based outfit since the release of Cyberpunk 2077 on December 10, 2020.

Despite the game‘s lengthy development and sky-high budget, engineers are scrambling to iron out a handful of early issues stumbled upon by players.

CDPR co-founder Marcin Iwinski. Picture: Wojtek Radwanski / AFP

Gamers have largely reported crashes on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, with the game bugged down by poor frame rates and screen tearing.

Following a tidal wave of complaints, Sony pulled the game from the PlayStation store within days of release.

CDPR has pledged to refund customers who were unhappy with their experience.

In January, co-founder Marcin Iwiński promised that the team was working hard to fix the game‘s issues.

He pledged to release a string of “major” software updates throughout 2021 to end the glitches and crashes that have plagued players since launch.

“Our ultimate goal is to fix the bugs and crashes gamers are experiencing across platforms,” he said.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and has been reproduced with permission.

Originally published as Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher developer CD Projekt hacked, but the company said it won’t be paying the ransom