The vast majority of the truly negative rhetoric comes from #2 on your list, along with the fact that CDPR clearly knew about the performance issues and hid the

The vast majority of the truly negative rhetoric comes from #2 on your list, along with the fact that CDPR clearly knew about the performance issues and hid them. They only gave out advance copies of the PC version to reviewers, and forbade reviewers from using their own captured footage (and I assume that the provided footage from CDPR came from an expensive computer). This wasn't a coincidence. The issues with performance on base spec PS4 and XBones could not be discovered until after launch, and was clearly motivated by the fact that not all of the console customers would pursue a refund because of the inconvenience. Similarly, reviewers might have mentioned that PC required a fairly modern/powerful system but couldn't show their own footage to illustrate it, and they always had the excuse of "we'll assume that performance will improve with a patch and some more driver optimization." It appears that some bonuses were tied to getting a good review score, which also led to the dishonest behavior. Otherwise they might have released console versions to reviewers and taken the hit on the review score, but at least buyers could have known about the performance issues in advance. Then buyers wouldn't be complaining as much. CDPR had even hinted at the problem before when they delayed the launch, citing difficulty with getting a game that performed well on two generations of consoles and PC. But then they never mentioned it again. They never said in any further updates that they had managed to make the game run well on every system. They just went silent about the issue and rushed the game out before Christmas. The other issues (gameplay different than expectations and the bugs) are frustrating, but were never really the problem. The bugs can be fixed in patches and most people are willing to swallow the fact that a game is different than what they expected as long as it's still a good game. Fixing the engine so that the game runs well on consoles will take more time than normal bug fixes, and the reputation hit that CDPR has taken will take more than just fixing the game. They've shown that they are willing to sacrifice community goodwill in search of short term profit, which means that it is now a company ran by business types and not people that care about putting out a good product. I don't blame a company for caring about profit, but I can blame them for all the shortsighted bullshit that they pulled. I wish more business schools taught people to care about the core product and let the profit take care of itself, rather than the current approach of caring about management incentives, ignoring the product, and running companies into the ground.