Amidst the shock whirlwind of CD Projekt’s main bulletins immediately got here a smaller however nonetheless very important piece of inner information. Marcin Iwiński, who co-founded the studio in 1994 and presently serves as its co-CEO, is stepping down.
“For me, it is a enormous second. I have been at CD Projekt for nearly 30 years and I’ve seen it go from a handful of passion-driven rebels to an internationally acknowledged developer of story-driven position taking part in video games beloved by hundreds of thousands globally,” Iwiński wrote in his farewell message. “Again when Michał Kiciński and I based the corporate, I do not assume both of us would have been in a position to think about this unimaginable journey, not even in our wildest goals.
“After I take into consideration the way forward for CD Projekt, it’s so thrilling for me. In the present day, the corporate consists of over 1,200 folks throughout places of work everywhere in the world. However CD Projekt has by no means been about bodily place or scale—it is all in regards to the enormous quantity of expertise we’ve got, and the arduous work and dedication of everybody who chooses to work right here.”
Whereas Iwiński is stepping down from his chief govt position, he isn’t leaving the corporate. As a substitute, he’ll turn into chairman of CD Projekt’s supervisory board (opens in new tab), which oversees the actions of CD Projekt Capital Group—separate from the board of administrators (opens in new tab)—and can after all additionally stay a significant shareholder within the firm.
“In my new non-executive position I’ll stay energetic and engaged dedicating my concentrate on supporting your entire administration board,” he mentioned. “I will even stay linked to the core of what makes us particular, which is making the perfect storytelling video games on this planet and doing proper by players.”
A message from Marcin Iwiński ― co-founder and Joint CEO of CD PROJEKT. pic.twitter.com/NTp7F9RcFwOctober 4, 2022
That final level, “doing proper by players,” feels notably salient given CD Projekt’s current historical past. The massively anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 was such a large number at launch that it fully derailed the studio’s plans for updates and new content material (opens in new tab), and badly broken CD Projekt’s repute amongst followers. Nevertheless it’s continued to work on the sport over the previous two years, bringing it to a minimum of a degree of respectable performance, and participant counts (opens in new tab) and gross sales (opens in new tab) have each bounced again accordingly. Cyberpunk 2077 remains to be no Witcher 3, but it surely’s not a wholesale humiliation, both.
CD Projekt additionally introduced immediately that it’s opening a brand new studio in Boston that, together with its present operation in Vancouver (opens in new tab), shall be referred to as CD Projekt Crimson North America. The brand new operation shall be unbiased from The Molasses Flood, the Boston-based developer of The Flame within the Flood that CD Projekt acquired in 2021 (opens in new tab), and can allow CD Projekt “to totally faucet into the North American expertise pool.”
Continued progress goes to be crucial to CD Projekt’s long-term plans. The studio additionally introduced immediately that it has plans for a brand new Witcher trilogy (opens in new tab) to be launched over a span of six years (which appears ridiculously optimistic), two extra Witcher spin-off video games (opens in new tab), a full-scale Cyberpunk 2077 sequel (opens in new tab), and a wholly unique new mission (opens in new tab) of some type—all of that on prime of the present work being achieved on Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher next-gen improve, and no matter it’s that The Molasses Flood is doing. That is a hell of a slate for any studio, a lot much less one which’s traditionally struggled to complete one sport at a time.
