CD Project makes great games, but gaming industry is all-or-nothing. They already had colossal flop at their previous release. If another flop happens shutting down GOG is clearly would be on a table as a cost cutting measure.
You have to give kudos to CD PROJEKT for not just abandoning the game after a bad launch (which is what every other major studio would have done in its place) but patiently fixing problems and constantly adding content over 5 years to get to the state it is in today. And the game has no online requirement, no multiplayer, no microtransactions. Just one paid expansion which added a ton of new content. Rare to see this behavior in the industry today.
Afaik CDPR doesn't make many games. If one flops, that might be the end of them. I don't see abandoning a game as a valid option for them from a financial perspective. Makes much more sense to fix the issues and sell more.
Kinda how you trust paradox strategy titles to get several years of updates and expansions.
CDPR just was lucky enough to make enough money of failed release to fix it. Most companies get no chance to do it.
And the Switch 2 port likely cost considerable engineering effort and underperformed as well.
Maybe I'm not contributing meaningfully to the dialogue, but talking about total sales across a 5 year lifespan means you're necessarily including all those packrat users who picked it up on deep discount and haven't even booted it up once (or, like me, played two hours and in that initial window wasn't especially grabbed by the story, characters, or progression systems that the game was wanting me to engage with). It's different when something really pops off on release and sells all those copies in the first few months.
After tons of patches and DLCs its just became a very very good game. Just not what was promissed.
Most customers only hear about a game when it is released and reviewed and/or recommended by a friend and will never have heard about them.
Nolife hardcore fans will also be the the first to buy your game, review it and tell everyone if they did not liked it.
CDPR got huge amount of trust after Witcher 3 and they mostly had to start over after CP2077 release.
EA can survive if 4/10 of their games flops completely, but company like CDPR will likely just end there.
...which was a complete shitshow on release as well...
86% of all-time Steam reviews for Cyberpunk 2077 are positive, and if you only look at recent reviews, it's 94% positive.
I don't think the game has architectural problems that prevent it from being a massive success.
Cyberpunk was really successful from $$ standpoint and continues to generate huge revenue even today.