Late Tuesday night, CD Projekt Red announced their enterprise servers had been breached and the hackers had left a ransom note. “Your have been EPICALLY pwned,” the text file read, threatening to release the source code for The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 and an unreleased version of The Witcher 3 if the studio didn’t comply.
So, naturally, the internet immediately responded with memes.
The first thing that caught the eye of fans: a Cyberpunk 2077 announcement without the game’s classic bright yellow background. Like the Victorian Premier in a suit after 12pm, it was a true sign that shit was about to go down.
You know sh1t just got real when you don’t see a wall of text with a YELLOW background.
Oh man, they have been Cyberattacked, can’t get more ironic than this.
— Another LED ???? (@JustAnLED) February 9, 2021
Of course, some people helpfully restored the yellow background themselves:
now its official pic.twitter.com/yNhgcDm5vd
— Cameron (@Cam_Grants) February 9, 2021
But beyond that, you can imagine what the instantaneous joke from CD Projekt Red being hacked would be.
Cdprojektred’s security server… pic.twitter.com/IHtdzCNYQn
— Josh (@o0_Joshy_0o) February 9, 2021
I wonder if they got in this way
55 E9 BD 1C BD BD
E9 55 1C E9 55 55
E9 BD BD 1C E9 1C
BD E9 1C 55 E9 BD
7A E9 BD E9 7A 1C— ROK????✊???? (@blessROKk) February 9, 2021
Perhaps the most brutal spin on the “hacking game” flex, though? This shot of a Kapersky anti-virus product that was marketed as a Cyberpunk 2077 tie-in. The timing doesn’t help either, at least not in Australia, with today apparently being the “Safer Internet Day” according to the eSafety Commissioner.
— DOOMscroller extraordinaire ❤️✊✌️ (@calibrono) February 9, 2021
Once people were done making the easiest joke, the next port of call was the obvious text message. Who writes pwned these days? And what exactly was the whole point of the exercise? There was an extra level of disgust targeted at replies condoning the hack, with others (rightfully) noting that this doesn’t help make Cyberpunk 2077 a better game, not to mention the misery it causes for the hundreds of individual artists, coders, designers etc. in the middle.
“Epically pwned”.
The hacker: pic.twitter.com/Vr2OIOlaUs— Maya Pixelskaya (@Pixelskaya) February 9, 2021
Wait really?! What’s the point in attacking CDR? To make it longer for Cyberpunk become a better game? To try to ruin a company that has a countless number of people depending on it?
Why make thing harder for people? The world is already broken enough as is.
— Akuma Crow (@akuma1317) February 9, 2021
Wow imagine not liking a video game and doing this. And I see people in the replies condoning this? Sad world we live in.
— John J (@SuperPositiveGs) February 9, 2021
If anything, it’s the individual devs in the middle at the most risk. The hacker note mentioned that files from HR and administration had been acquired, and users wondered how much difficulty that could cause CD Projekt (particularly with their ongoing lawsuits).
Others, rightfully so, noted that as the owners of the GOG platform, people should probably change their passwords before any data gets dumped online.
It’s not the first time CD Projekt has been hacked, of course. Back in 2017 the company warned that early design documents for Cyberpunk 2077 were host to ransom, along with other internal CD Projekt files. The company pledged not to cave into hackers then, saying the files were “unrepresentative” of Cyberpunk 2077‘s current vision.
— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) June 8, 2017
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