Cyberpunk 2077 ARG

The Cyberpunk 2077 ARG is an alternate reality game (ARG) that revolved around the contents of. The game had been devised by CD Projekt RED as a way to build hype about the game.

E3 2018
The ARG officially began during E3 2018, which took place June 12 through June 14, 2018. During the Microsoft press conference, a hacker took control of the presentation, as seen in the video below, ultimately revealing the E3 video game trailer.

Post-E3 2018
Searching through the official site led to several more discoveries, most interesting of which was a supposed secure subdomain, as well as ASCII art that contained the aforementioned IP address.

Gamescom 2018


The ARG continued during Gamescom 2018, which ran from August 21 through August 25 2018. During this time, the official CD Project Red twitter account posted concept art that contained a bitly link (upper right of image). The bitly link led to an image which, when opened in a text editor, led to a second image. This image led to the Trauma Team International website.

Though currently inactive, a user named "David" met players on the TTI site, requesting an ID, the source of which was located in the bitly-linked image (upper right). Once successfully entered, David then gave players a faux choice to choose a link, but only one option was ultimately available; players could select the insurance mentioned in the second image.

A player-unique 10-digit ID could then be used in the "My Orders" section. Similarly to the first part of the ARG, players could enter their emails, and similarly, once a certain "quota" of players was met, this portion of the ARG went offline. The email can be seen to the right, but the text reads:


 * Thank you for your time.
 * Please note that due to increased user activity the process may take up to seven days.

Given that the tweet with the original image was sent on August 22, 2018, it may indicate that further develops may happen on or around August 29, 2018 (seven days later).

Trauma Team site
Though this portion of the ARG seems to have concluded, this is what is offered on the site when clicking through:

Trauma Team International is the world's largest provider of medical services, ranging from healthcare products, to health insurance, to medical-grade implants and replacement surgery.
 * Main page

State of the art equipment, advanced medical facilities, and years of research & development all make TTI more than an industry leader - we are the gold standard for reliable medical solutions for the most demanding of customers.

Whether it's something as straightforward as a first aid kit, or a technologically-advanced recovery booster to help you get back on your feet, Trauma Team International offers an array of best-in-class medical products and solutions.
 * Products

To purchase a product or service, please use automated TTI assistant. To begin placing your order, please click the icon below.

With Trauma Team International on your side, losing sleep over your health is a thing of the past. Our comprehensive selection of insurance packages, as well as swift emergency and customer services, all guarantee that we'll be there for you each and every time, come hell of high water.
 * Services

To purchase a product or service, please use automated TTI assistant. To begin placing your order, please click the icon below.

Connection failed.
 * My Orders

Trauma Team email
Players who managed to input their email addresses into the site prior to the quota having been met were rewarded with this email:


 * Thank you very much for placing an order with Trauma Team International!
 * Reply to this email with your address, as well as any other additional information if needed, in order for us to send you the package. As soon as your order dispatches we will send you an email letting you know it is on the way to you.
 * Thank you for choosing Trauma Team International - your life is worth it!
 * Sincerely,
 * Trauma Team International representative

The email contained a PDF "invoice" and an image attachment. When combined with an earlier image, the overlapping elements appear to spell out "MONDAY". On Monday, August 27, 2018, a code began scrolling within CD Projekt Red's Twitch channel.

Twitch code
The Twitch code stream (a portion can be viewed to the right) began the morning of August 27, 2018. Once examined, users determined that the code was written in base64. Judging by the header, it was surmised that the code should produce a .png image. Only well after the below was revealed did the image become apparent: the opening pic in the video of the elevator.

The code stream abruptly ended at approximately 9:30am PST, and a new line - "Stating upload..." - displayed, with an increasing percentage.

At 10am PST the percentage reached 100% and the press-only gameplay trailer that was shown at E3 finally debuted to the public, seen below.



Quick-eyed viewers were able to deduce another hidden message within the final frame of the trailer, similar to the message stored in the trailer at E3. This message was an apology from the developers for having kept fans in the dark for so long:

Sorry to have kept you waiting for this for so long!

''Did you like what you saw? Because for us, the fact that we're finally showing you Cyberpunk 2077 is HUGE. Please go to our forums, twitter, facebook, discord, and do tell what you think. Is the game world how you imagined? Do you see what we meant by "immersion" when we talked about CP2077 being an FPP RPG? How does our vision of "cyberpunk by day" make you feel? We really want to know.''

Aside from that, we think we owe you a few words of explanation on why we're showing you this gameplay now, some time after industry professionals and media saw it at E3 and gamescom.

''Each time we discussed the idea of showing the game to you (and we discussed this idea a lot), we were ending up in this "we're not 100% sure" limbo. Why? Because (for most people), when a game dev shows gameplay footage from their game, it means that this is how the game is going to look or play like. It's not the case here. Cyberpunk 2077 is deep in development. We have a lot of design ideas, a lot of mechanics being playtested, but we don't know what we'll end up with at launch. This makes publishing videos like what you just saw risky -- we don't want gamers saying 'but in that previous video that gun was shooting differently', or 'why did you change the interface?'. Change is inherent to game development and there's a ton of things being modified each day. Our fear was (and kind of still is) that you'll think what you just saw is how Cyberpunk 2077 will look like 1:1.''

''What gave us that extra confidence to show you a work in progress game? Good initial feedback from people who are accustomed to see games at various stages of development. What they told us (and they told us they really liked what they saw) gave us the boost we needed to show the current version of Cyberpunk 2077 to the most passionate and insightful audience -- you.''

So... here's what Cyberpunk 2077'' looks like today (or rather looked like when we recorded the video). We sincerely hope you liked it.''

Again, thank you for your patience and all the thoughts you shared with us.

Yours,

CD PROJEKT RED