IT IS EASY to be optimistic about the future of Europe when running through a dystopian hellscape, machinegunning police and decapitating pedestrians with a samurai sword. Such opportunities come thanks to "Cyberpunk 2077", a Polish video game, launched before Christmas after a decade of development. It sold 13m copies at up to $60 each in its first ten days, with buyers tempted by its mix of hyper-violence, women wearing inexplicably few clothes and a one-armed terrorist played by Keanu Reeves. Pre-launch hype turned its Warsaw-based creator, cd Projekt, into the country's most valuable listed company and a rare example of European business succeeding at the frontier of a 21st-century industry, rather than coasting on a reputation built up in the century before. Even the in-game currency provides something for Euro-philes to cheer: in Cyberpunk lore, the main currency, "eddies", is based on the euro. Society may have collapsed into a living nightmare, but at least the EU's single currency lived on.
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