Was the CD Projekt Red Hack an Inside Job?

Last Updated on: 24th February 2021, 05:07 pm

After the massive supposed CD Projekt Red hack in early February, CD Projekt Red has been forced to delay the Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.2, but is there something more nefarious going on behind the scenes at the Polish game studio? Did they hack themselves to justify delaying the Cyberpunk 2077 patch?

It seems that CD Projekt Red has had some pretty large-scale issues surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 recently (surprisingly more than the game’s launch) that involved hackers, source code for The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, and a whole lot of cash.

A few weeks ago, hackers supposedly obtained the source code for several major CD Projekt Red projects including The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077, demanding ransom for the source code to be returned and if they failed to receive their payment, the code would be sold to the highest bidder.

READ MORE: New Cyberpunk 2077 Mod Tries to Improve the Game’s Performance

“Yesterday we discovered that we have become a victim of a targeted cyber attack, due to which some of our internal systems have been compromised. An unidentified actor gained unauthorized access to our internal network, collected certain data belonging to CD PROJEKT capital group, and left a ransom 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 out IT infrastructure and begun restoring the data. We will not give in to the demands nor negotiate with the actor, being aware that this may eventually lead to the release of the compromised data. We are taking necessary steps to mitigate the consequences of such a release, in particular by approaching any parties that may be affected due to the breach.”

Credit: CD Projekt Red

CD Projekt Red announced that they would not cooperate with said hackers and days later, something was sold to someone. Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what was sold or how much it was sold for.

Now, CD Projekt Red has announced that the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.2 release would unfortunately be delayed stating:

“While we dearly wanted to deliver Patch 1.2 for Cyberpunk 2077 in the timespan we detailed previously, the recent cyber attack on the studio’s IT infrastructure and extensive scope of the update mean this unfortunately will not happen — we’ll need some additional time.”

Credit: Twitter

Previously, many people have speculated that the supposed hack was an inside job – that someone at CD Projekt Red either faked the hack, or hacked it themselves.

This recent announcement about Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.2 being delayed due to this cyber attack has now led even more people to assume the worst in CD Projekt Red, claiming that this is evidence that the hack was an inside job in order to justify delaying the update.

READ MORE: The Cyberpunk 2077 Story: What Happened?

However, there is no real evidence that truly supports this conspiracy and it doesn’t make any sense as to why CD Projekt Red would construct this elaborate hoax just to justify delaying their update. With all of the other controversy surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 and CD Projekt Red themselves in recent months, I think that doing this themselves would immediately kill their company.

While the timing of the delay as well as the unfortunate cyber attack on CD Projekt Red is a tad coincidental, I don’t think that there’s anything more to it. It’s just that – a coincidence.

What do you think? Do you think that CD Projekt Red is responsible for the hack themselves, or do you think that this is just another conspiracy theory that people love to eat up and expand on themselves?