Cyberpunk 2077 Has Gone Gold

Cyberpunk 2077 has reached a production milestone, as CD Projekt Red announced that the game has "gone gold." The studio took to Twitter to mark the occasion, with a promo image showing Keanu Reeves' character Johnny Silverhand holding a gold Cyberpunk disc. (Update: Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed yet again, with a new December release date confirmed. You can now check out our Cyberpunk 2077 review.)

Going "gold" is an industry term to describe finalizing and certifying the game code that is pressed to retail discs. It usually comes shortly before a game's release date, to allow for production time, but it signifies that official work on the base game is completed. The work doesn't end there, though, as many modern games also come with day-one patches that may squash some remaining bugs or add quality-of-life fixes and tweaks. Going gold also makes the possibility of another delay pretty low, given that it's already been delayed several times.

For CD Projekt Red, that last stretch has come under scrutiny recently, following reports that the studio had instituted mandatory extra work. CDPR studio head Adam Badowski referenced the game nearing completion in his statement confirming the crunch period.

"These last 6 weeks are our final sprint on a project we've all spent much of our lives on," Badowski wrote. "Something we care for deeply. The majority of the team understands that push, especially in light of the fact that we've just sent the game to cert and every day brings us visibly closer to shipping a game we want to be proud of."

CDPR hasn't outlined what to expect in a day-one patch, but those details will likely come closer to launch. Cyberpunk 2077 is coming on November 19 to PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Though it will be playable on Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5, it won't be native to those consoles. CDPR has promised free upgrades coming to the next generation, but has not set a release target for those versions. For more details, check out our Cyberpunk 2077 preorder guide.