The Polish developer of ‘The Witcher’ and ‘Cyberpunk’ video game franchises claims the axing of around 100 employees is due to overstaffing.
CD Projekt Red, the Polish developer of ‘The Witcher’ and ‘Cyberpunk’ video game franchises, has announced an ‘Organizational Update’ resulting in the axing of around 100 people, over 9% of their entire workforce.
“After reshaping our development process and incorporating Agile methodologies, we’re now focusing on refining the shape of our teams,” explained CEO Adam Kiciński in the statement.
“To meet our own high expectations and ambitions to create the best role-playing games, we not only want to have the best people but also the right teams,” Kiciński continued. “We’ve carefully assessed all teams in the company in terms of their expected contribution to the delivery of our strategy. There’s no easy way to say this, but today we are overstaffed. We have talented people on board who are finishing their tasks and — based on current and expected project needs — we already know we don’t have other opportunities for them in the next year. The outcome is the studio parting ways with around 100 people, which is roughly 9% of the entire team.”
The news comes as the developer is hard at work on multiple AAA projects, including Polaris (The Witcher franchise), Orion (Cyberpunk franchise), and Hadar (new franchise). Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, a highly anticipated expansion to the sci-fi RPG, releases September 26, while The Witcher 4 is deep in development.
With so many important titles at play, it is hard to believe the studio is overstaffed. But could external pressures on the public company to become more profitable be at play, similar to the those cited in the Embracer Group’s recent layoffs as part of its new, ambitious goal to become a ‘highly cash-flow generative’ company?
Cybersecurity specialist by day, investigative journalist by night.
