CD Projekt RED has revealed they will be laying off 100 of their own employees.
In what they call an organizational update, CEO Adam Kiciński explains the situation, as reported by Video Games Chronicle:
“We’ve carefully assessed all teams in the company in terms of their expected contribution to the delivery of our strategy. There’s no easy way to say this, but today we are overstaffed.”
Kiciński also explained that the studio is trying to be more agile and effective, and so they have to streamline the company to reach this objective. In other words, the cycle of tech layoffs that was spearheaded this year by Microsoft is still ongoing, and finally caught up to CD Projekt RED.
Like Microsoft, CD Projekt RED won’t be laying off these employees immediately. Layoffs will extend to as long as Q1 of 2024.
It’s not great news, but both Microsoft and CD Projekt RED did do the responsible thing by notifying their employees early. As they have both put it, this move gives these employees sufficient time to prepare, and hopefully, transition to finding new jobs, or possibly making career and life changes to shift their way out of the games industry.
This also marks a stark contrast to yesterday’s news that Techland would be taking on Chinese conglomerate Tencent as majority shareholder.
Both are Polish companies, and both have had to deal with funding issues given their unique position. I won’t elaborate on Poland’s current political dilemma in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Mainly, these companies have to reckon with harder working conditions and a harder environment to maintain funding.
While Techland took years to make and release Dying Light 2, CD Projekt RED famously fumbled hard on their release of the overly ambitious Cyberpunk 2077.
The company decided to mitigate that risk by spreading their work across several large and small projects, but at the moment, they’re having to manage their money and justify that funding to their investors.
And so, both the Gwent team and Molasses Flood saw their projects and employees ramp down as well. CD Projekt RED promises that Molasses Flood’s upcoming Project Sirius is back on budget after setting a new framework, but it’s clearly a sign that the company is currently struggling.
While some fans will be tempted to complain that layoffs will lead to poorly made games like Cyberpunk 2077, the situation is actually reversed. Because of CD Projekt RED’s wrong choices and their failures with Cyberpunk 2077, the company is now dealing with its current struggles, without the goodwill of fans and investors to help carry them through.
Nobody wants to see a company as big as CD Projekt RED fail, but if the company can’t hold on to their employees, they’re clearly on that path as it is. We do want to see CD Projekt RED get it together, and hopefully, the lessons they have learned will guide them to be a better company in the future.
