Who is CD Projekt Red? From The Witcher to Cyberpunk and its biggest expansion yet
CD Projekt Red grew from a Polish game developer building its first RPG in Warsaw into a global studio responsible for The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077.
The company now employs more than 1,200 people across teams in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław, Boston and Vancouver. At the same time, it is attempting something substantially more ambitious than the development model behind its earlier games: multiple major projects are now moving forward simultaneously.
That pipeline includes The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2, Project Sirius, The Witcher Remake and a completely new intellectual property codenamed Hadar.
Cyberpunk 2077 has also crossed 40 million sales, while The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has passed 65 million. The wider Witcher series has now sold more than 90 million copies.
The studio that once had to prove it could make a single RPG is therefore facing a very different problem in 2026.
Can CD Projekt Red become a company capable of building several enormous RPGs without losing the identity that made people care about its games in the first place?
CD Projekt existed before CD Projekt Red
The CD Projekt story begins before the development studio existed.
Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński established the original CD Projekt business in Poland in 1994.
At the time, the company focused primarily on importing and distributing PC software and games.
Its beginnings were modest.
The founders sold imported games while Poland’s legitimate PC software market was still developing. CD Projekt later expanded into localisation and distribution agreements with major international publishers.
One particularly important development was localisation.
Instead of simply selling foreign games, CD Projekt invested in Polish-language versions.
That helped demonstrate that local players were willing to buy legitimate releases when publishers made a meaningful effort to serve the market.
The company eventually distributed titles from publishers including Microsoft, Konami, Sega and Ubisoft in Poland.
However, distribution was not the founders’ final ambition.
They wanted to make games themselves.
CD Projekt Red was founded in 2002
CD Projekt Red was officially established in 2002 as the game-development arm of the business.
Its first major project would determine whether that ambition had any future.
The studio chose The Witcher.
Work began in 2003 on an RPG based on the fantasy world created by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.
It was an enormous undertaking for a new developer.
According to CD Projekt’s corporate history, development lasted roughly four years and involved almost 100 people. The project cost close to PLN20 million, making it an exceptionally ambitious Polish game production for its time.
The first Witcher game finally launched in 2007.
That release gave CD Projekt Red something more valuable than one successful title.
It gave the studio an identity.
The Witcher established CD Projekt Red
The first Witcher game introduced international players to CD Projekt Red’s approach to role-playing games.
The studio placed significant emphasis on story.
Choices mattered.
Characters operated in morally complicated situations.
Decisions did not always lead to obvious good and bad outcomes.
That tone suited Sapkowski’s world.
The Witcher universe frequently deals with prejudice, politics, war, exploitation and people making uncomfortable choices.
Geralt of Rivia may hunt monsters, but some of the most dangerous characters are ordinary humans.
CD Projekt Red leaned heavily into that ambiguity.
The result created a foundation the studio would continue developing.
The Witcher 2 showed how quickly the studio was improving
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings arrived in 2011.
It represented a major technical and production improvement.
CD Projekt Red also created its own REDengine technology for the project.
The sequel presented a more cinematic experience, stronger combat and an unusually ambitious branching story.
One decision could dramatically alter large portions of the game.
That mattered because it demonstrated the studio’s increasing willingness to create content some players might never see.
Rather than making every choice eventually return to the same path, CD Projekt Red was willing to let stories diverge.
That philosophy would become even more important in its next project.
The Witcher 3 changed CD Projekt Red completely
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launched in 2015.
It transformed CD Projekt Red from a respected RPG studio into one of the most recognisable developers in gaming.
The game expanded Geralt’s world dramatically.
Players could travel through large open environments while following the main storyline or becoming distracted by contracts, side quests and apparently minor characters.
The important difference was how those smaller stories were written.
A monster contract was not always simply about killing something.
A missing person could lead to a morally uncomfortable discovery.
A character who initially appeared innocent might have their own secrets.
CD Projekt Red applied its narrative approach across an open world rather than reserving meaningful storytelling for the main quest.
That helped make The Witcher 3 feel different from games where optional content existed primarily to fill the map.
The Witcher 3 became an extraordinary long-term success
The Witcher 3 did not disappear after launch.
The game received two major expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine.
It later reached additional platforms and received current-generation improvements.
More than a decade after release, it is still commercially important.
CD Projekt confirmed in September 2026 that The Witcher 3 has now sold more than 65 million copies, while total Witcher-series sales have passed 90 million.
Those numbers explain why the franchise remains central to the company’s future.
However, by the time The Witcher 3 became a global phenomenon, CD Projekt Red was already working on something very different.
Cyberpunk 2077 was announced years before release
CD Projekt Red publicly announced Cyberpunk 2077 in 2012.
The game was based on Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk tabletop universe.
It represented a major departure from The Witcher.
Fantasy became science fiction.
Swords existed alongside firearms.
Medieval villages became Night City.
Magic gave way to cyberware, artificial intelligence and corporate technology.
However, the underlying ambition remained familiar.
CD Projekt Red wanted another large story-driven RPG built around characters, player choice and an immersive world.
The problem was that expectations became enormous.
Cyberpunk 2077 became one of gaming’s most infamous launches
Cyberpunk 2077 launched in December 2020.
The reaction was chaotic.
Technical problems dominated discussion, particularly on older consoles.
Bugs, crashes and performance issues damaged confidence in the game and in CD Projekt Red itself.
The launch became a warning about unrealistic expectations and releasing ambitious software before it was ready.
For CD Projekt Red, this was more serious than ordinary negative reviews.
The studio’s reputation had been built around quality and player trust.
Cyberpunk 2077 damaged both.
The question became whether the company could recover.
CD Projekt Red spent years rebuilding Cyberpunk
It did not happen quickly.
CD Projekt Red released repeated patches and technical improvements.
Then it moved beyond repairing individual bugs.
Update 2.0 substantially redesigned parts of the game.
Cyberware changed.
Character progression changed.
Perks were rebuilt.
Police systems improved.
Vehicle combat expanded.
Then Phantom Liberty added Dogtown and a major new storyline.
The result is substantially different from the version released in December 2020.
TechnologyBlog has already examined this transformation in our Cyberpunk 2077 in 2026 feature.
INTERNAL LINK: Link Cyberpunk 2077 in 2026 above to the TechnologyBlog article we just published.
That article looks specifically at the game’s recovery, continued Steam activity and long-term player sentiment.
The developer story is broader.
Cyberpunk 2077 forced CD Projekt Red to reconsider how it builds games.
Cyberpunk 2077 has now sold 40 million copies
The commercial turnaround has become difficult to ignore.
On 2 September 2026, CD Projekt Red confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 had crossed 40 million copies sold.
Phantom Liberty had reached 15 million sales.
That makes Cyberpunk one of CD Projekt Red’s core franchises rather than an experiment the company would prefer to forget.
This matters strategically.
The company now has two established universes capable of supporting enormous games.
The Witcher.
Cyberpunk.
And it wants a third.
CD Projekt Red now has more than 1,200 employees
The scale of the studio has changed just as dramatically as its games.
CD Projekt Red says it now consists of more than 1,200 professionals working across five cities.
Its offices are located in:
Warsaw.
Kraków.
Wrocław.
Boston.
Vancouver.
Warsaw remains the headquarters.
Boston and Vancouver form an important part of CD Projekt Red’s North American expansion.
This is particularly relevant to Cyberpunk.
The next Cyberpunk game is being developed with a significant North American team.
Michał Nowakowski and Adam Badowski jointly lead CD Projekt Red
CD Projekt Red currently operates under a joint CEO structure.
Michał Nowakowski and Adam Badowski serve as Joint Chief Executive Officers.
Their responsibilities are not identical.
Nowakowski has a strong business and commercial focus, including long-term strategy, business development, publishing relationships and franchise development.
Badowski comes from a deeply development-oriented background and has been closely involved with CD Projekt Red’s games for many years.
The company’s Management Board also includes CFO Piotr Nielubowicz, joint COOs Piotr Karwowski and Paweł Zawodny, CMO Jeremiah Cohn and Chief People Officer Karolina Radziszewska.
That structure reflects how much larger CD Projekt Red has become.
One person cannot practically oversee everything happening across several international teams and major projects.
The founders remain important even though management has changed
Marcin Iwiński remains one of the company’s most significant shareholders and now serves as Co-Chair of the Supervisory Board.
Adam Kiciński also serves as Co-Chair.
CD Projekt Red is a publicly traded Polish company rather than a subsidiary of a major international publisher.
Its current shareholder information lists Marcin Iwiński with approximately 12.66%, Michał Kiciński with 10%, Piotr Nielubowicz with 6.86%, Adam Kiciński with roughly 4.05%, and other investors holding the remainder.
That means CD Projekt Red is not owned by Microsoft, Sony, Tencent or another gaming conglomerate.
It operates as an independent publicly listed company with outside shareholders.
That distinction matters when discussing its development decisions.
GOG is no longer part of the group
Another major structural change took place at the end of 2025.
GOG had been closely connected with CD Projekt for more than 17 years.
However, CD Projekt sold 100% of GOG to co-founder Michał Kiciński, completing the transaction on 31 December 2025.
CD Projekt said the reason was focus.
The company wants to concentrate its resources on game development while continuing to work with GOG as a commercial partner.
That decision fits the broader direction of the business.
CD Projekt Red wants to build more games simultaneously.
CD Projekt Red is trying to become a multi-project studio
This may be the most important part of the company’s current transformation.
Historically, CD Projekt Red largely moved from one huge project towards another.
That creates problems.
Development cycles for modern RPGs can last many years.
If one project is delayed, the entire release schedule can become dependent on it.
The company is now trying to operate differently.
Multiple development teams are working on different projects at the same time.
That is a significant organisational change.
By February 2026, CD Projekt reported 933 developers allocated across active game projects and shared development services.
Nearly 500 of those developers were assigned to one game.
The Witcher 4.
The Witcher 4 is currently the largest project
The Witcher 4 is the beginning of a new Witcher trilogy.
It is also CD Projekt Red’s largest current development project.
By February 2026, approximately 499 developers were working directly on The Witcher 4, with additional shared-services staff supporting projects across the studio.
The game marks another important transition.
Geralt is no longer the primary protagonist.
Ciri takes that role.
CD Projekt has now publicly set a 2028 release window for The Witcher 4.
That date is important because the company is building a much broader Witcher publishing schedule around it.
The Witcher is becoming an annual part of CD Projekt Red’s roadmap
CD Projekt Red’s current Witcher plans are more extensive than simply waiting for The Witcher 4.
A remastered version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is scheduled for 29 September 2026.
A further Witcher 3 expansion called Songs of the Past is planned for 2027.
Then The Witcher 4 is currently planned for 2028.
CD Projekt describes this as a sequence of major Witcher releases across successive years.
That shows how differently the company now thinks about franchises.
Instead of only releasing one enormous game and disappearing for years, CD Projekt wants each universe to support a broader ecosystem.
The Witcher 4 also marks the move to Unreal Engine 5
The Witcher 4 represents another technical shift.
CD Projekt Red has moved away from the proprietary REDengine used for earlier projects.
Future major games are being developed with Unreal Engine 5.
The studio has been working with Epic Games on adapting the technology for its open-world RPG requirements.
The Witcher 4 Engineering Director Arkadiusz Antonik has described his role as helping guide CD Projekt Red’s Unreal Engine 5 adoption and building the technical strategy around the project.
That is a major change.
Building proprietary technology gives developers enormous control.
It also creates a significant maintenance burden.
Moving to Unreal allows CD Projekt Red to concentrate more resources on game-specific development while collaborating with a much wider engine ecosystem.
Cyberpunk 2 is growing in North America
CD Projekt Red’s second major future franchise is already moving forward.
The Cyberpunk 2077 sequel was originally known as Project Orion.
The studio now refers to it publicly as Cyberpunk 2.
The project is in pre-production.
In January 2026, CD Projekt Red’s Engineering Director for gameplay on Cyberpunk 2 described the Boston team as actively hiring and structuring development groups around the needs of the project.
CD Projekt reported 149 developers on Cyberpunk 2 by February 2026, up significantly from 84 one year earlier.
That growth reflects the next stage of the franchise.
Night City is not finished.
Cyberpunk has become bigger than one game
Cyberpunk 2077 is now part of a broader franchise strategy.
The original Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime helped bring new players into the game after launch.
CD Projekt has continued expanding the brand through collaborations, merchandise and other media.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 is scheduled to launch on Netflix on 20 October 2026, again in collaboration with Studio Trigger.
CD Projekt has also highlighted licensing as an increasingly important part of the business.
That does not mean the company is abandoning games.
Instead, games act as the centre of a wider franchise.
The same strategy is now being applied to The Witcher.
Project Sirius explores another type of Witcher game
Not every future Witcher project is another enormous single-player RPG.
Project Sirius remains part of CD Projekt Red’s long-term roadmap.
The project includes multiplayer elements and is intended to explore the Witcher universe from another direction.
Development originally involved The Molasses Flood.
CD Projekt later integrated that team more closely into its North American studio structure while continuing the project.
TechnologyBlog should avoid inventing gameplay details until CD Projekt officially reveals more.
The strategic purpose is already clear enough.
The company wants The Witcher to support different kinds of experiences rather than one mainline RPG series alone.
The original Witcher is also being remade
Another project returns to the beginning.
The Witcher Remake is being developed in collaboration with Polish studio Fool’s Theory.
It is a complete modern reimagining of CD Projekt Red’s first game and is being built using Unreal Engine 5.
CD Projekt Red retains creative supervision.
The project has also been connected technically to work on The Witcher 4 so that tools, pipelines and assets created for the new saga can contribute to the remake’s development.
That makes sense.
Rather than independently solving the same technical problems twice, CD Projekt can develop systems that support multiple games.
This is another example of the multi-project development model the studio is trying to establish.
Hadar could become CD Projekt Red’s third major universe
Perhaps the most interesting future project is the one we know least about.
Project Hadar is a completely new intellectual property created internally by CD Projekt Red.
Unlike The Witcher and Cyberpunk, it is not based on an existing external universe.
CD Projekt began conceptual work on Hadar several years ago and has since progressed into active game development.
The company has explicitly said it wants Hadar to become its third major IP, providing a foundation for future high-budget games alongside The Witcher and Cyberpunk.
That makes Hadar extremely important.
For the first time, CD Projekt Red is building an entirely new major universe from the ground up.
Hadar will test whether the studio can create rather than adapt a world
Both of CD Projekt Red’s established franchises began elsewhere.
The Witcher originated in Andrzej Sapkowski’s books.
Cyberpunk came from Mike Pondsmith’s tabletop RPG.
CD Projekt Red transformed both into major video-game franchises.
However, it did not invent either universe.
Hadar is different.
The studio controls the IP from its foundation.
That means it can design the world around the needs of the games from the beginning.
There is no external rulebook.
There is no decades-old canon the studio must preserve.
There is also no established audience waiting for it.
That freedom creates opportunity.
It also creates risk.
The Witcher and Cyberpunk came with strong concepts before development began.
Hadar must establish its own identity.
CD Projekt Red still believes strongly in large story-driven RPGs
The industry around CD Projekt Red has changed enormously.
Subscriptions grew.
Free-to-play games expanded.
Live services became a major business model.
Mobile gaming continued increasing in scale.
CD Projekt Red has nevertheless remained strongly associated with premium narrative games.
Its official studio description still centres on creating story-driven role-playing games.
The company is experimenting with multiplayer and broader franchise development.
However, its largest investments remain huge RPG projects.
The Witcher 4.
Cyberpunk 2.
Eventually, Hadar.
That tells us where CD Projekt Red still believes its strongest competitive advantage lies.
Storytelling remains the studio’s identity
Technology changes.
Team sizes change.
Corporate structures change.
The most recognisable CD Projekt Red games still share one major trait.
They care deeply about characters.
Geralt works because players become invested in the people around him.
V works because Night City is filled with characters who make the broader world personal.
Johnny Silverhand matters because Cyberpunk’s themes become tied to a relationship rather than an abstract discussion about technology.
CD Projekt Red frequently builds enormous worlds.
Yet the most memorable parts usually involve smaller human stories inside them.
That is the real challenge as the studio grows.
Bigger teams do not automatically make better games
CD Projekt Red now has access to far more resources than it did during the first Witcher.
That brings advantages.
More specialists can work on animation.
More engineers can develop systems.
Larger writing and quest teams can build more content.
Different studios can work simultaneously.
However, scale creates its own difficulties.
Communication becomes harder.
Leadership becomes more complicated.
Teams become more dependent on production systems.
A creative decision can affect hundreds of people.
Cyberpunk 2077 demonstrated what happens when an enormously ambitious project reaches a point where production reality and expectations stop matching.
CD Projekt Red’s multi-project strategy therefore requires more than hiring developers.
It requires organisational discipline.
Cyberpunk 2077 changed how CD Projekt Red develops games
The troubled Cyberpunk launch forced the company to reconsider its development process.
One important response was the move towards a model capable of supporting simultaneous AAA production.
Another was the shift to Unreal Engine 5.
Management structure changed as well.
North American development expanded.
The company also became more deliberate about franchise planning.
These changes do not guarantee that future projects will launch perfectly.
No studio can guarantee that.
However, the organisation building The Witcher 4 is not structured exactly like the organisation that shipped Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020.
That is an important distinction.
CD Projekt Red remains financially strong
Large RPGs are expensive.
Running several major projects simultaneously is even more expensive.
CD Projekt Red’s financial position therefore matters.
In 2025, the group generated PLN867 million in revenue and PLN595 million in consolidated net profit. It invested more than PLN513 million in future releases, with The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 receiving much of that investment.
The company ended 2025 with more than PLN1.3 billion in cash, bank deposits and government bonds.
The first half of 2026 remained profitable.
CD Projekt Red reported PLN435 million in revenue and PLN249 million in consolidated net profit for the period.
That financial buffer gives the studio room to fund long development cycles.
Older games continue funding future projects
This may be one of the strongest parts of CD Projekt Red’s business model.
The Witcher 3 continues selling more than a decade after launch.
Cyberpunk 2077 continues selling nearly six years after release.
Phantom Liberty continues generating revenue.
That allows the studio’s older games to help finance future production.
CD Projekt calls part of this approach lifecycle management.
Games expand to new platforms.
Updates extend interest.
Franchises move into animation, licensing and other media.
The objective is not simply to make one large amount of money at launch.
It is to keep successful games commercially relevant for years.
The 2026 company itself has also changed its name
There is an unusual corporate detail in 2026.
The publicly listed parent company previously operated under the name CD PROJEKT S.A.
Following amendments registered in August 2026, the corporate name changed to CD PROJEKT RED S.A.
That aligns the listed company more closely with the development brand recognised by players.
For readers, the distinction between CD Projekt and CD Projekt Red has historically been confusing.
The new structure makes the development identity more prominent.
Why CD Projekt Red matters
CD Projekt Red’s history is essentially a story of repeatedly increasing the size of the problem it is trying to solve.
First, it had to prove a Polish developer could build a commercially successful RPG.
Then it had to create a better sequel.
Then it attempted a huge open-world Witcher game.
Then it tried to build an entirely different open-world science-fiction RPG.
Now it wants to make several massive games at once.
The studio has more than 1,200 people across five cities.
The Witcher has sold more than 90 million games.
Cyberpunk 2077 has passed 40 million.
Phantom Liberty has passed 15 million.
The Witcher 4 is targeting 2028.
Cyberpunk 2 is in pre-production.
Project Sirius remains in development.
The Witcher is being remade.
Hadar is intended to become a third major franchise.
This is no longer the company that bet everything on Geralt of Rivia.
The challenge now is almost the opposite.
CD Projekt Red has several valuable worlds, international development teams and enough financial strength to pursue them.
It also has a very public reminder of what happens when ambition becomes difficult to control.
Cyberpunk 2077 eventually became a major success.
However, CD Projekt Red would probably prefer not to repeat the route it took to get there.
That makes the next few years particularly important.
The Witcher 4 needs to prove that the company can launch its next generation successfully.
Cyberpunk 2 needs to show that Night City has a future beyond V.
And Hadar needs to demonstrate that CD Projekt Red can create a major universe entirely of its own.
The studio has already proved that it can recover from failure.
Now it needs to prove that it can manage success at scale.
