Based on EGS store listings that shouldn’t be visible to players, accessed by Reddit user PricklyAssassin allegedly using an AES key, there has been some reshuffling of planned DLCs compared to the roadmap last discussed by CDPR publicly. As far as past plans were concerned, the Free DLC program which should have kicked off around January would have included 18 pieces of smaller, general content updates made available to all owners of Cyberpunk 2077 at no extra cost. Later on, these would have been bolstered by a pair of major, paid expansions - while Cyberpunk 2077 multiplayer will be launched separately around 2022, this is not considered “DLC” for the purposes of the content support roadmap.
We knew things will have to change when CDPR announced a new roadmap placing the emphasis on fixing the game’s many issues. First off, the entire DLC timeline has been delayed, as evidenced by the fact that the Free DLC program hasn’t launched yet and March is just about to end - this makes sense of course, it’s best to fix the broken content you have already before piling on more. However, based on the leaked listing image that shows pre-allocated DLCs on the EGS for Cyberpunk 2077 show more extensive changes than just a delay. If this leak turns out to be accurate, we’re likely looking at a reduced number of free DLCs at 10 gratis content packs, and 3 paid expansions up from 2. Unfortunately, there is also a lot which the leak doesn’t clarify, which means some fans might rush to conclusions that are far from the truth. First off, there’s the possibility of this being a fake entirely, as with any leak. If it is true, however, at face value the reduction of free DLC and the addition of a new paid expansion might make cynical fans think those 8 ‘missing’ bits of formerly free content could have been bundled together as a paid addon. To clarify, there is no evidence suggesting this - it’s just as likely that the three missing pieces of free DLC were consolidated and rolled into others due to being too small, so the Free DLC program technically still gets us the same amount of stuff but in fewer fragments, and the third expansion is totally new. The issue at hand is that CDPR burned all of their goodwill in December, and most fans are going to assume worst case scenarios. As for the DLCs themselves, we only have some titles. Some, like “Gangs of Night City” and “Fashion Forward” directly reference specific pieces of marketing material, or other gameplay features that lack some of the promised functionality. While it isn’t clear what exactly we’re getting, most of these give us a pretty good idea, like “Ripperdocs expansion”. Fans speculate that a lot of this free ‘DLC’ is actually cut content that the developers needed more time to implement properly. The reason these listings exist on the Epic Games Store at all is because these storefronts are always in close communication with the publishers for licensing and marketing purposes, and stores need to prepare for releasing products by setting up purchasing pages, allocating server space and so forth. Release dates are not among the leaked information unfortunately, but with the release of Patch 1.2 earlier today CDPR is on track with the new roadmap, so players can expect to see new content being released in the coming months, with more bugfixes on the way. It remains to be seen if the patches and DLCs will be able to repair the damage caused upon the game’s release.
