CD Projekt Red
Enthusiasm for game distribution ebbed, and CD Projekt's founders wondered if the company should continue as a distributor or a game developer after Dark Alliance's cancellation. With the game cancelled and its code owned by CD Projekt, the company planned to use them to develop their first original game.[10][11] They intended to develop a game series based on Andrzej Sapkowski's Wiedźmin books (which were popular in Poland) and the author accepted the company's development proposal. The franchise rights had been sold to Metropolis Software in 1997 and a playable version of the first chapter was made, but then left abandoned.[17] CD Projekt acquired the rights to the Wiedźmin franchise in 2002. According to Iwiński, he and Kiciński had no idea how to develop a video game at that time.[11]
To develop the game, the company formed a video game development studio, CD Projekt Red sp. z o.o. (stylised as CD PROJEKT RED), which was headed by Sebastian Zieliński in Łódź in 2002. The studio made a demonstration game, which Adam Badowski called "a piece of crap" in retrospect. The demo was a role-playing game with a top-down perspective, similar to Dark Alliance and Diablo, and used the game engine which powered Mortyr.[18] Iwiński and Kiciński pitched the demo to a number of publishers, without success. The Łódź office closed and the staff, except for Zieliński, moved to the Warsaw headquarters.[11]
Zieliński left the company, and Kiciński headed the project. Although the game's development continued, the demo was abandoned. According to CD Projekt, the development team had different ideas for the game and lacked overall direction; as a result, it was returned to the drawing board in 2003.[19][20] The team, unfamiliar with video-game development, spent nearly two years organising production.[12] They received assistance from BioWare, who helped promote the game at the 2004 Electronic Entertainment Expo by offering CD Projekt space in their booth next to Jade Empire. BioWare also licensed their Aurora game engine to the company.[21]
The game's budget exceeded expectations. The original 15-person development team expanded to about 100, at a cost of 20 million złoty. According to Iwiński, content was removed from the game for budgetary reasons but the characters' personalities were retained; however, there was difficulty in translating the game's Polish text into English.[22] Atari agreed to publish the game.[23] After five years of development,[12] the game brought Wiedźmin to an international audience, and so the company adopted the English name, The Witcher, coined by Adrian Chmielarz.[17] The Witcher was released in 2007 to generally positive reviews.[24]
Sales were satisfactory, and the development of sequels began almost immediately after The Witcher release. The team began the design work for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and experimented with consoles to develop a new engine for The Witcher 3. Their development was halted when the team began work on The Witcher: White Wolf, a console version of The Witcher.[11] Although they collaborated with French studio Widescreen Games for the console port, it entered development limbo. Widescreen demanded more manpower, money and time to develop the title, complaining that they were not being paid;[25] according to Iwiński, CD Projekt paid them more than their own staff members. The team cancelled the project, suspending its development.[26] Unhappy with the decision, Atari demanded that CD Projekt repay it for funding the console port development and Iwiński agreed that Atari would be the North American publisher of the sequel of The Witcher 2.[11] CD Projekt acquired Metropolis Software in 2008.[27]
The dispute over White Wolf was costly; the company faced bankruptcy,[28] with the 2008 financial crisis as a contributing factor.[11] To stay afloat, the team decided to focus on The Witcher 2 with the Witcher 3 engine. When the engine (known as Red Engine) was finished, the game could be ported to other consoles.[29] To develop The Witcher 2, the company suspended development of Metropolis' first-person shooter, titled They.[30] After three-and-a-half years of development, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings was released in 2011 to critical praise[11] and sales of more than 1.7 million copies.[31]
After The Witcher 2, CD Projekt wanted to develop an open-world game of a quality similar to its other games, and the company wanted to add features to avoid criticism that it was Witcher 2.5. They wanted to push the game's graphics boundaries, releasing it only for the PC and eighth-generation consoles. This triggered debate on the team, some of whom wanted to release the game for older consoles to maximise profit.[11] The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt took three-and-a-half years to develop[12] and cost over $81 million.[11][32] A report alleged that the team had to crunch extensively for a year in order to meet release date deadlines.[33] After multiple delays, it was released in May 2015 to critical praise.[34] Wild Hunt was commercially successful, selling six million copies in its first six weeks and giving the studio a profit of 236 million złoty ($62.5 million) in the first half of 2015.[35]
The success of The Witcher 3 enabled CD Projekt to expand. In March 2016, the company announced that it had another role-playing game in development, and that the title is scheduled to be released in the period of 2017 to 2021. They also announced plans for expansion, where the Red division will expand two-fold.[40] It also listed itself at Warsaw Stock Exchange, riding on the success of The Witcher 3.
As of 2017, the witcher series had sold over 33 million copies.[41] A spin-off of the series, Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, based on the popular card game in The Witcher 3, was released in 2018.[42]
In March 2018, the opening of a new studio in Wrocław was announced. Acquired from a studio called Strange New Things, it is headed by former Techland COO Paweł Zawodny and composed of other ex-Techland, IO Interactive, and CD Projekt Red employees.[43] In August 2018, CD Projekt established Spokko, a development studio focused on mobile gaming.[44] The Witcher 3's success as well as CD Projekt RED's customer-friendly policies during that period enabled the studio to earn a lot of goodwill within the gaming community. However, the studio's working conditions were questioned after disgruntled employees flooded the company's profile at Glassdoor with negative reviews. Iwinski later responded by saying that the studio's approach to making games "is not for everyone".[45]
Following the successful release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cyberpunk 2077, the studio's next title, became one of the most anticipated video games of all time.[46] It is an open-world role-playing game based on the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop system created by Mike Pondsmith. The game was initially introduced in May 2012.[47] The hype for the title, alongside the release of The Witcher TV series on Netflix, enabled CD Projekt to become the most valuable video game company in Europe in May 2020, surpassing Ubisoft.[48] The game suffered multiple delays, with the team stressing that it would not release the game until it was ready.[49] While management introduced a "non-obligatory crunch" model for the team to lessen the effects of game development on their personal lives,[50] management broke their promise and forced all developers to
In early February 2021, CD Projekt Red was hit by a ransomware attack, with the attackers able to acquire the source code to several of the studio's games, including Gwent, The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 as well as administrative files.[55] The attackers demanded CD Projekt Red pay them a large sum of money within a few days under threat of leaking or selling the stolen code and files. CD Projekt refused to negotiate with the attackers, stating to the press that "We will not give in to the demands or negotiate with the actor", affirming no personal information was obtained in the attack and that it was working with law enforcement to track down the attackers.[56][57] Security analysts saw the code being auctioned on the dark web for a minimum price of US$1 million, and subsequently closed later with the attackers stating they had received an offer that satisfied them.[58] Within a week of these auctions, the code was being shared online via social media, and CD Projekt began using DMCA takedown notices to remove postings of its code.[59]
In March 2021, CD Projekt Red acquired Vancouver, Canada-based Digital Scapes Studios and rebranded the studio as CD Projekt Red Vancouver.[60] In May, it was reported that Tomaszkiewicz had resigned from studio following an internal investigation into workplace bullying allegations that found him not guilty.[61][62] He founded his own studio and began developing The Blood of Dawnwalker.
In October 2021, CD Projekt Red acquired Boston-based independent studio The Molasses Flood, the developer of The Flame in the Flood.[63]
On 6 October 2022, CD Projekt announced a slew of new projects that were in the works. These included a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, codenamed Orion, and several new titles in The Witcher series. These included a new trilogy of games, the first of which is codenamed Polaris; a standalone game known as Canis Majoris (later confirmed to be a remake of the first Witcher game[64]); and a single-player/multiplayer hybrid game from The Molasses Flood.[65]
In December 2022, it was announced that active development on Gwent would end after 2023. Instead of shutting down completely, the game would be controlled by the community, allowing players to determine matters like balance decisions.[66] Thirty members of the Gwent development team were laid off in June 2023.[67] The game's final update was released in October 2023.[68]
On 20 March 2023, CD Projekt announced its intentions to write off funds allocated to the development of Project Sirius, and that work would need to be restarted from scratch.[69][70] That May, 29 employees of The Molasses Flood were laid off once changes were made to Project Sirius.[71] In July 2023, CD Projekt CEO Adam Kiciński announced that it would be laying off around 100 workers—9% of its total workforce—from CD Projekt RED.[72][73]
