Witcher studio CD Projekt Red to lay off another 9% of its workforce

CD Projekt has announced plans to undergo another round of layoffs due to what it describes as “overstaffing”.

The details:

• The layoffs were announced in a new organizational update from CEO Adam Kiciński, who stated that the company would be laying off around 100 employees, with some remaining until Q1 2024. Kiciński stated that, even though the majority of those affected are still working on current projects, the studio already knows that it does not have any other opportunities for them after the completion of their work, and has chosen to let them go with a "comprehensive" severance package.
• The layoffs will have a direct impact on its development, publishing, and back-office teams, but projects Polaris, Orion, and Hadar will continue development. The studio claims that the changes are part of an ongoing process of "deep transformations" within the studio, which it believes is "key to making quality games, on time, and without crunch" as it attempts to create "more effective project teams.”
• This is the company's fourth round of layoffs this year, with the most recent being in May when it was announced that it would be letting go of around 30 employees as the development of the Witcher card game, Gwent, shifts towards community-voted balancing with no further "official" updates being made. CD Projekt was able to reassign some developers to other projects, but the rest of the staff will be laid off throughout the second half of 2023.

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