The Polish studio behind The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 and its newly released expansion Phantom Liberty, has issued an apology after several players pointed out "anti-Russian content" in the Ukrainian localisation of Phantom Liberty.
This includes:
A gang of bandits is called "Rusnia", a derogatory term for Russians.
Graffiti in Night City alludes to the recapture of the Crimean peninsula by Ukraine.
The pose known in other versions as Slav Squat is called Like a Russian.
<li>A line of dialogue that roughly translates to "Go fuck yourself in the same direction as the ship did", a reference to border guard Roman Hrybov's famous statement after Ukraine sank a ship of the Russian Black Sea fleet.
This is what CDPR's global loacalisation representative Mariia Strilchuk had to say on the matter on Twitter:
"I'd like to clarify regarding the corrections to the Ukrainian localization [...] They refer to the lines where the translation lost its original meaning, including certain references to the Russian-Ukrainian war. Our support to Ukraine remains unchanged, but we prefer to show it through positive actions."
How this anti-Russian content could appear then? Outsourcing. The global head of public relations, Radek Grabowski, toldRockpapershotgun:
"The release version of Ukrainian localization of Cyberpunk 2077 features elements of dialogues that can be considered offensive by Russian gamers, [...] These lines have not been written by CD Projekt Red staff and do not represent our views. We are working to produce correct lines and substitute them in the next update. We apologise for the situation and have made steps to avoid situations like that in the future."