Despite Industry Push For Live-Service, CD Projekt CEO Says Studio Is Focused On “Cutting-Edge Single-Player Games” Like ‘Witcher’ And ‘Cyberpunk’
While the overall video game industry continues to lose itself in pursuit of chasing the live-service genie, CD Projekt Group CEO Michał Nowakowski has assured players that The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 development house remains dedicated to “cutting-edge” single-player experiences.
Nowakowski, who serves in his current role alongside his fellow joint-CEO Adam Badowskim, provided this insight into the company’s forward looking plans while addressing investors as part of the overall CD Projekt Group’s 2024 annual management board report.
Beginning with a positive look back at how the past year had been filled with a number of “notable successes” for the company despite their lack of new releases (including Cyberpunk 2077 taking home the Best Evolving Game award at the BAFTA Game Awards and The Witcher 4 officially entering full production), and a brief recap of the current development plans for both The Witcher 4 and the greater Cyberpunk franchise, the CEO then took a brief beat to make it clear that regardless of industry trends, his team had no interest in abandoning single-player game development.
“We are aware that the video game market continues to evolve – however, we believe that cutting-edge single-player
games rooted in strong franchises and immersive narratives will continue to enjoy great popularity,” said Nowakowski. “Our experience, along with brands such as The Witcher and Cyberpunk, which it is our pleasure to further develop, help us build a strong position on the market and paint a positive outlook – while collaboration with global tech and innovation leaders enables us to keep abreast of technical developments in the industry and continue to deliver top-quality entertainment.”
To this end, Nowakowski also provided a list of just which projects they planned to direct their development attentions towards over the coming years, which include “A new Witcher trilogy, the first installment of which is The Witcher 4 (previously codenamed Polaris)”, “Project Orion – the second game set in the Cyberpunk universe”, “Project Sirius – a game with multiplayer features set in The Witcher universe”, “The Witcher Remake – a retelling of the first part of The Witcher, developed with the use of modern technologies, in collaboration with [dev studio] Fool’s Theory”, and “conceptual work on the third proprietary IP codenamed Hadar“.
Additionally, while CD Projekt Red will not be responsible for actually producing the project, the studio is also collaborating with Cyberpunker: Edgerunners animators Studio Trigger on another Netflix-hosted anime outing.
Unsurprisingly, it appears that this workload has necessitated an expansion of CD Projekt’s collective workforce.
As detailed in the report’s official presentation deck, the Polish developer added roughly 57 members to their team between October 31st, 2024 and February 28th, 2025, in doing so bumping the total number of developers currently working on their various video game projects from 650 to 707.
Notably, 20 of these employees went to work on Orion, 17 were added to the company’s Shared Services team (whose duties include tasks related to localization, quality assurance, and analytics), and 11 assigned to The Witcher 4, with the remaining nine being distributed across the Sirius, Hadar, and Other Projects divisions.
At current, CD Projekt Red’s next release is likely to be The Witcher 4.
However, as of writing, the upcoming sequel has yet to receive an official release date (or even window).
NEXT: ‘The Witcher 4’ Dev Team Says Ciri’s Story Will Not “Break Any Canon Or Even Offend Canon”
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