Eurogamer gave Cyberpunk 2077 'Recommended.' Sony pulled it from the PlayStation Store.

Let's establish the access protocol. CD Projekt Red distributed Cyberpunk 2077 review copies in two waves, segmented by platform: PC codes went out well before launch, enabling a full review cycle. Console codes — for the platforms where the majority of the game's eventual player base would actually experience it — arrived after the embargo lifted. Eurogamer received PC keys. Eurogamer reviewed the PC version. Eurogamer published on embargo day. Standard procedure, executed flawlessly, by design.

The result: a 'Recommended' rating for a game that Sony Interactive Entertainment would remove from the PlayStation Store fourteen days later. Not pause sales. Not issue a warning. Remove. PSN had never done this before in its history. CD Projekt Red issued refunds. The game stayed off Sony's digital storefront for six months. None of that is in the review, because the review was filed before any of it could happen, based on a build that almost none of their readers could replicate on the hardware they actually owned.

The Eurogamer review contains exactly one line about console performance: 'We'll bring you our thoughts on console versions in a separate piece.' That separate piece arrived nine days later and used words like 'unplayable' and 'catastrophic.' The Recommended rating was not updated. It remains live today, a perfectly preserved artifact of what happens when publishers control information sequencing and critics participate in the system without naming the system as a problem.

There is no evidence of corruption here. That's the entire point. Eurogamer didn't need to be bought. The review access model did the work automatically: one hand gives you a PC code, the other holds the console code back until the verdict is already public and the Metacritic snapshot is already locked. Chris Tapsell filed his form, hit publish, and called it a review. Sponsored by the truth.