Millions of people have bought Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty expansion, and even other devs are impressed
What's really punk is a respectable attachment ratio.
Phantom Liberty, the Cyberpunk 2077 DLC that adds Idris Elba and some kind of rocket ship (I think? I haven't actually gotten to it yet), has done quite well for itself. That's according to a recent CD Projekt Red earnings call as well as the company's Twitter account, which was out yesterday boasting about 4.3 million copies of the DLC sold since launch.
pic.twitter.com/8PywPUgcdKNovember 28, 2023
For reference, CDPR was bragging about Cyberpunk selling 25 million copies early last month, in the heat of its post-2.0, post-DLC, "we've fixed the game now" victory lap. 4.3 million expansion sales on top of that is nothing to sniff at, and equals an estimated 20% "attachment ratio," or the number of people who bought Cyberpunk's base game that also bought the DLC. I feel like there's probably a better term for that phenomenon, but maybe that's why I don't have an MBA.
If you're wondering whether an attachment ratio of 20% is good or not, apparently it is. Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer—of Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, and Pentiment fame—weighed in through the quote tweets to say that his own studio usually hopes for "a ~25% attachment rate for DLCs released within a few months of the base game," meaning "a 20% attachment rate on an expansion 2.5 years after launch is pretty impressive."
In previous stat-based brags, CDPR has given a platform-by-platform breakdown of where people are buying the Cyberpunk 2077 DLC. In October, those numbers were: 13% on Xbox, 20% on PS5, and 68% on PC, the most cyberpunk platform of all. I can't imagine those numbers have changed much in the 2-ish months it's been since CDPR last spoke sales figures.
Anyhow, I'm glad Phantom Liberty's doing well, as even though I haven't even reached it yet, my venerable colleagues tell me it's really quite good. PCG's Ted Litchfield scored it 87% in his Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty review, calling it a "splendid sendoff for the world CD Projekt's been working on for the better part of the last 10 years."
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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.
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