All the article is trying to say is Cyberpunk took development expenses to another level.

He may have been jesting with the interviewer, but it’s not far from being the truth. It was revealed that year that Cyberpunk 2077 was a drastically expensive game to both develop and fix. It cost CD Projekt a whopping $125 million to fix the game and pump it with new content after it was released – the firm spent $21 million alone in marketing for the Phantom Liberty expansion. That’s more than some developers spend on an entire game.

By the time CD Projekt was ready to move away from Cyberpunk 2077, almost half a billion dollars had been invested in the game. If budget alone is enough to make a game ‘AAAAA’, CDP came close to that designation with Cyberpunk 2077.