Sony has announced it is pulling this year’s most-hyped video game, Cyberpunk 2077, from its online PlayStation store after complaints of bugs, compatibility issues and health risks. “SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment) strives to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction, therefore we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased Cyberpunk 2077 via PlayStation Store,” the firm said in a statement posted on international PlayStation sites in the US, Australia and elsewhere. “SIE will also be removing Cyberpunk 2077 from PlayStation Store until further notice.” It is exceptionally rare for a PlayStation game to be removed from sale after it has been approved for release, and such a high-profile game has never been withdrawn before. The dystopian-themed, Blade Runner-inspired game had racked up more than 8m pre-orders on PC and consoles before its release last week. But players on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have purchased a far inferior version, plagued by technical bugs and performance issues that interrupt play and have left some players feeling nauseous. The game’s Warsaw-based creators at CD Projekt RED issued an apology on Monday, vowing to “fix bugs and crashes” with patches in January and February, while also offering refunds to gamers unwilling to wait. The company was also forced to issue a health warning after one reviewer pointed out that a sequence in the game had caused an epileptic seizure. Last week, the company said it was looking into a “more permanent solution” to tackle the health risk “as soon as possible”. The game’s release had been delayed twice this year as the developers worked overtime to bring it up to standard – a practice commonly known as “crunch” in the games industry, and one that has been attracting increasing criticism due to its impact on workers’ welfare. Cyberpunk 2077 has garnered plenty of hugely positive reviews – on PC, the review-collating website Metacritic shows an aggregate score of 87 out of 100. Before its release, only the more stable PC version of the game was made available to critics, but it soon became clear that the PlayStation and Xbox versions of the game had much more significant problems. Metacritic lists aggregate scores of 54 and 55 out of 100 for the console versions. CD Projekt RED spent an estimated 1.2bn złoty ($330m) to make Cyberpunk 2077, according to analysts at Polish bank BOS, which would make it one of the most expensive games ever made. The company rose to global prominence five years ago thanks to its hugely successful The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, a sombre fantasy about a monster-slaying outcast in a world at war. But it has lost billions in value since the Cyberpunk 2077 launch last week, stock figures showed on Monday.