IGN gave Cyberpunk 2077 a 9. Sony gave it a refund.

I bought Cyberpunk 2077 on day one because IGN told me it was a 9 out of 10. Let me tell you what a 9 feels like on a base PS4: a PowerPoint presentation about a video game. Frames dropping like my expectations. T-posing NPCs. Cars materializing out of thin air like David Copperfield started coding for CD Projekt Red.

But sure, on your bespoke high-end PC with a publisher-provided review copy and pre-release optimization patches, it was 'one of the most absorbing RPGs of the generation.' You know what else is absorbing in a controlled lab environment? Everything. I could make a Fiat Punto hit 200mph in a wind tunnel if you took the wheels off.

Let's talk about what the review didn't mention. Console performance. The word 'console' might as well have been classified information. CD Projekt Red's embargo specifically restricted discussion of the console version, and IGN — the largest gaming publication on the planet — just went along with it. They published a definitive score for a multiplatform game based exclusively on the version 90% of buyers wouldn't be playing. That's not reviewing. That's writing a press release with personal pronouns.

Here's the part that still keeps me up at night: two weeks after this glowing 9/10 went live, Sony pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store entirely. The platform holder decided the game was too broken to sell. But IGN's 9 is still up there — unedited, unretracted, eternal — a monument to the gap between the press box and the living room.

You reviewed a private screening of what our game might theoretically become after $2,000 in hardware upgrades and two years of patches. You gave a 9 to a promise, not a product. Meanwhile, the rest of us were staring at a loading screen that crashed before it finished loading. Easy to say from the press box.