The studio behind blockbusters like The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077 is going through another round of layoffs. Announced today in its corporate blog titled an "Organizational Update", the company revealed that roughly 9% of its staff is being affected.
"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," said CD Projekt CEO Adam Kiciński regarding the decision. "What we mean by that is having teams that are built around our projects’ needs; teams that are more agile and more effective.
Kiciński says that after the company assessed the current projects and their development teams, it had come to the conclusion that overstaffing is a problem. "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," he added.
Around 100 people affected will not be laid off in a single group, according to CD Projekt, with some members only being affected as far as Q1 2024. "In the spirit of transparency, we’ve chosen to share the information now," the blog clarifies.
This move arrives soon after 29 employees were laid off by the studio back in May. The developers affected in that round of layoffs were mostly from The Molasses Flood, a team that CD Projekt acquired in 2021, which is working on a Witcher spin-off codenamed Sirius.
The studio has a large number of projects in development. Aside from Sirius, a complete remake of the original The Witcher RPG, a brand-new Witcher trilogy, a new Cyberpunk entry, plus a mystery game based on an original IP are in development. Of course, Cyberpunk 2077"s first and final expansion, Phantom Liberty, is releasing this September too.