Elon Musk's Cyberpunk 2077-Approving Tweets Help Boost Developer CD Projekt

Video games fan Elon Musk gave shares in Polish games producer CD Projekt a further boost on Thursday after the company's update of its flagship game prompted short sellers to close positions earlier in the week.

Shares in CD Projekt which is valued at almost PLN 37 billion (roughly Rs. 71,960 crores), jumped as much as 19 percent on Thursday, bringing the total gain so far this week to more than 50 percent.

CD Projekt's shares were hit at the end of 2020 following gamers' disappointment with the company's Cyberpunk 2077. Since then the firm has been working on improvements.

Musk tweeted: "The esthetics of Cyberpunk are incredible btw...," to his 43 million followers on Thursday.

The Tesla CEO posted another tweet, commenting on the buggy nature of the game and its subsequent hotfixes.

Earlier this week Melvin Capital was said to be driving the gains in CD Projekt by closing out its short positions following losses betting against GameStop and others.

"This is about squeezing out funds from their short positions. Musk's tweet has added to that," said Kacper Kopron, analyst at Trigon DM.

Some analysts and sources said the rising share price had also led to rumours that the company could be a takeover target.

CD Projekt declined to comment.

Separately, US-listed shares of Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify rose as much as 3.5 percent in after-hours trading on Thursday shortly after Musk tweeted that the company "is great".

© Thomson Reuters 2021

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