CD Projekt Red

CD Projekt Red suffered the most dramatic fall from grace in modern gaming, with Cyberpunk 2077's 2020 launch erasing nearly a decade of goodwill. The game sold 13 million copies in its first month, but only after a catastrophic launch that forced Sony to remove it from the PlayStation Store for six months. A whistleblower report revealed that 70% of the studio's developers worked mandatory six-day weeks during the final year, while management deliberately withheld console footage from reviewers—a deception that outperforms #7 Bethesda's Fallout 76 launch in broken promises. The studio's stock dropped 57% in two months, and the ensuing class-action lawsuits cost $1.85 million to settle, making it the costliest mismanagement case on this list.