This was honestly to be expected and shouldn’t be taken as indicative of how the company’s performing. CD Projekt Red has filed Project Sirius, one of the new Witcher IPs, as tax write-offs for the company as it is seemingly getting scrapped.
I was super hyped for CD Projekt Red’s announcement of 6 new Witcher games (Project Polaris Trilogy, Project Sirius, Project Carnis Majoris, and Witcher 1 Remake) and IPs in development, but I think everyone knew that all of these games actually coming to out consoles, PCs, etc. was unrealistic.
Don’t get me wrong, I have full faith in CD Projekt Red and its affiliate studios as the company has arguably produced one of the Top-10 greatest games/franchises in gaming history with The Witcher trilogy but making six new projects as a studio as small as CD Projekt Red is nearly impossible.
I still find CD Projekt Red to be a “Triple A” studio due to its game quality (well, most of the time), but it doesn’t even contend with the traditional big studios in terms of the number of employees. As of today, there’s only about 1,000 or so CD Projekt Red employees actively employed and working for the company on games, products, etc.
That’s not bad stat by any means, yet it’s dwarfed by the sheer size and power the other huge game developers have at their fingertips.
Just for comparison, Activision has over 9,500 employees worldwide, Ubisoft has over 21,000 employees worldwide, Rockstar has over 5,000 employees worldwide, Warner Bros. Discovery has over 11,00 employees worldwide, Electronic Arts has just about 13,000 employees worldwide, Nintendo has approximately 6,500 employees worldwide, Sony has a little under 110,000 employees worldwide, and Microsoft has an ungodly 221,000 employees worldwide.
Sure, companies like Microsoft, Sony, and Warner Bros. Discovery don’t have all of their workers just on video game development, but the sheer size of resources and scale of workforce said companies further proves the gulf of size and capabilities between them and the likes of CD Projekt Red.
In truth, the only “huge” video game developers comparable to CD Projekt Red is Capcom, which has a little over 2,000 employees, and Bandai Namco (the company that owns FromSoftware), which has around 750 employees.
Yet, you don’t see Capcom (even though the company is double the six of CD Projekt Red) or FromSoftware promise 6 new, huge open-world games to come out within a 6-year period (or one game per year) as that’s just a frankly ridiculous workload for the workforce. So, it’s no surprise CD Projekt Red is writing off its losses on the development of the game thus far.
Anyway, as for Project Sirus itself, this game was supposed to be the multiplayer-focused/integrated Witcher game, while the other five games (Wither 1 Remake, Project Polaris Trilogy, Project Carnis Majoris) were only single-player experiences that would serve as remakes, prequels, or sequels to the main The Witcher trilogy.
I’m not saying that this game wouldn’t have been fun or interesting as playing in The Witcher world with friends could have been a really unique experience, but I’m okay with this one being the project that was inevitably cancelled. CD Projekt Red and its subsidiary studios made their names off excellent quality, vast, expansive, open-world, single player games that people can divest hundreds of hours into.
Thankfully, all of those entities are still on track to be released in the future, while Project Sirus might still continue in a new form as CD Projekt Red made it clear the game was getting fundamentally redesigned.
Images Source: Featured Image: (CD Projekt Red) (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Complete Edition | Next-Gen Update Trailer – YouTube)
