*beep*

— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) January 10, 2018

The six-character message appeared on Cyberpunk Game’s Twitter account. The account had been dormant since 2013, and now it has gone *beep*. And that was enough. Twitter was in an uproar. Never-ending discussions on forums and portals. Gamers were ecstatic. So were investors. The share price surged 7%, increasing the company’s market capitalisation by PLN 500 million.

Commentators predicted that all the fuss would trigger legal discussions. A discussion entitled “*beep* v MAR” is already underway.

Everyone assumes that there is nothing behind the *beep*. The assumption is that nothing significant has happened in the company, specifically nothing significant regarding the game in the pipeline. Thus, there is no inside information. There is only the *beep*.

The general consensus is that the Issuer had no reporting obligation and did not need to publish a report. This view is based on the fact that the *beep* does not meet the precision criterion. Inside information must be precise. If some information is not precise, it is not inside information. As the *beep* is not precise, it cannot be considered inside information. Lack of precision is undeniable, but one may be tempted to make other arguments.

In my opinion, it can also be questioned whether *beep* is information. It is a signal given by the company and received by the market. However, does this signal carry information? If so, what kind of information is that? If anything that can be processed by a human brain or by a computer is considered data, then *beep* is data. It can be processed and it has been processed extremely effectively. Data becomes information if we know what it represents. Different data can provide the same information, but at the same time, the same data can also provide different information. By *beep*, the company may have wanted to say “hey, we’re alive“, while part of the audience understood it as “we’ll be launching the game soon!!!“. All information is data, but not all data is information. A classic example is “bare” numbers, which are always data, but they only become information when we attribute meaning to them in a specific area. “6” alone does not mean anything, but “6 feet under” does. In this context, *beep* alone is not information.

*beep* was given meaning. It appealed to emotions created by the context of the situation. Each user read the *beep* in the light of their own information, feelings and expectations, all of which were processed to create new emotions. It created an image of the world. It created information, understood as an individual or group interpretation of the received sequence of signals, describing the state of a specific area. The image of what was happening with the long-awaited game had been created in the minds of gamers and investors. The former are already feeling the endless hours spent in the dark city of the future. The latter were forced by “good old-fashioned greed” to place orders that have boosted the share price.

The *beep* is like a wiggle of the finger that makes you laugh until you cry. Objectively nothing happens, yet a lot changes. The condition is that there is a context behind the expectations. A signal hitting a certain context for each of the users created information. The content of each such piece of information could have been different.  More or less precise. Some of it was expressed on forums in the form of exclamations, questions and memes. These triggered even more reactions. A snowball effect was set in motion.

Before this tweet, could anyone claim that publishing a *beep* would likely have a significant impact on CD Projekt share prices? In other words, would a rational investor be likely to use such information or to rely on it to make their investment decisions? Is a rational investor emotional? This issue begs the question of the definition of investor rationality Can a rational investor at least anticipate the emotional reaction of others? Or was the reaction not emotional, but rational? Perhaps at least some investors anticipated that after the *beep* the price would surge, assuming that others would get so excited that they would place orders?

Or perhaps we should simplify everything and rationally ask: if the *beep* is inside information, should the current report read *beep*? I think the answer to that question is a good place to end this discussion. Now, with a clear conscience, we can safely indulge in the pleasure of watching the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer.

P.S. Respect to those who came up with the *beep*.