The Polish company is not afraid that Larian Studios will open a studio in Warsaw, because they believe that the more studios in Poland, the better it is for the gaming industry.
Under the codename Polaris, CD Projekt RED (CDPR) is developing the new trilogy of The Witcher. This is now officially the company’s biggest project, as their CFO Piotr Nielubocwicy told us during their latest presentation: “Over 400 people are currently working on the game, and we plan to enter the production phase in the second half of the year.” There are no significant changes from the previous figure, and the project is still in the pre-production phase. Adam Badowski, co-CEO of CD Projekt (CDP), said in January that he would like to have about 400 people working on Polaris by the middle of the year. That has been achieved.
In 2021, CDP said they would not advertise their games until they were closer to release. They decided to do this because it took eight years between the announcement and release of Cyberpunk 2077. This is a strategy they have no intention of changing, and Piotr Karwowski, the company’s director of cooperations, told us:
“I wouldn’t actually look at Cyberpunk as a guide to what’s going to happen with The Witcher specifically. Everything that happens before that is going to be more informational, it’s going to be more PR oriented and so on, and that’s something you can expect earlier than the actual launch of the marketing campaign, but I really wouldn’t necessarily look at what happened with Cyberpunk and at what point in time. That’s not necessarily what we’re going to do here. [Regarding a The Witcher 4 teaser,] we don’t comment on speculation, whether it’s timing or who’s working or not working on any possible, potential teasers or trailers,” Karwowski said. So don’t really expect to see any videos of the game from CDPR in June.
Karwowski was also pleased to hear that Larian Studios, which had great success with Baldur’s Gate 3, has opened a studio in Warsaw: “When it comes to Larian opening a new studio, the more the merrier. Larian are great people, Swen is a great guy, and the team is great… I finished [Baldur’s Gate 3], I loved it. Big fan of D&D personally as well. Do we see any threats? To be honest, there’s always a threat that someone could leave and go somewhere else, and whether it’s a studio in Warsaw or a job opportunity somewhere else, the difference isn’t that big. The world is a pretty small place, and developers, especially at the senior level, are very mobile. And if someone didn’t want to work on the project, but they dream of working with someone else, they’ll do it anyway. So having Larian next door or not does not change much from our perspective. We wish them the best.”
So they don’t think it’s going to hurt their business.
