CD Projekt Is Rich Again, Throws an Army of Devs at The Witcher 4
resh off the Cyberpunk 2077 money train, CDPR's latest report shows a studio with a very, very short memory and a whole lot of ambition.
Remember the great Cyberpunk 2077 meltdown of 2020? The apologies, the refunds, the game getting yanked from the PlayStation store? It feels like a lifetime ago, because according to CD Projekt's latest earnings report, the company is now basically printing money again. They’ve pulled in a cool $121 million in revenue with a fat 35% profit margin, and they're using that mountain of cash to fund a development army the likes of which they've never seen before. The comeback story is complete, and it seems the first order of business is to throw almost everyone at the next big thing.
The Witcher Gets (Almost) Everyone
Let's get straight to the headline number, because it's a wild one. CD Projekt RED now has 799 developers on staff. Of those, a jaw-dropping 444 are working on the next major Witcher game, codenamed Polaris. That's over half the entire studio, all focused on a single project that is now in full production. This is a monumental gamble. It signals that the studio is betting its entire future on the next chapter of the fantasy saga, which will reportedly follow Ciri as the protagonist. Meanwhile, the next Cyberpunk game is simmering away in pre-production with a much smaller, though growing, team.
Cyberpunk's Redemption Arc Prints Money
The supreme irony in all of this is where the money is coming from. The very game that nearly tanked the company's reputation is now its financial engine. The Cyberpunk franchise accounted for a massive 76% of their revenue so far this year. The recent release on the Nintendo Switch 2 apparently helped goose those numbers significantly. And in a bizarre twist that spits in the face of the all-digital future, CDPR revealed that physical cartridge sales on the Switch 2 absolutely crushed digital downloads, making up 75% of the total. Who knew people still liked owning things? The game has gone from a pariah to the sugar daddy funding its more popular sibling's very expensive future.
Are They Actually Learning?
The report does hint at a smarter, more cautious CD Projekt. They're no longer a one-game-at-a-time studio. Juggling multiple massive projects means they have to be better organized. A key sign of this is the growth of their "shared services" team, a group dedicated to mastering Unreal Engine 5 and building a solid technical foundation for all their upcoming games. You have to assume this is a direct lesson learned from the technical catastrophe of Cyberpunk's launch. They're also smartly expanding their IP beyond games, with a second season of the fantastic Edgerunners anime in the works with Studio Trigger.
It's a hell of a turnaround. CD Projekt stared into the abyss and didn't blink. Now they're back, richer than ever, and throwing hundreds of people at their most beloved franchise. The only question is whether a team of 444 can create a focused masterpiece, or if they're just building a very expensive, bloated sequel. We'll find out soon enough.