CDPR Confirmed Around 330 Devs Working On Project Polaris

Polish studio CD Projekt RED recently held their third-quarter earnings call, in which they highlighted key achievements regarding Cyberpunk 2099 and The Witcher. Regarding the latter, they provided an update on one of its ongoing projects, the fourth entry in the mainline Witcher series codenamed Polaris, as their development team expanded during the third quarter.

The news, which was detailed during their conference call presentation, highlighted that the development team has increased following the release of Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty expansion. CD Projekt RED's CEO Adam Kiciński states, "The [Polaris] team is steadily growing, having reached almost 330 developers at the end of last month."

This data stands as of 31st October 2023, in which Kiciński noted that Polaris' development team will continue to expand going into 2024. This is due to the Phantom Liberty team having transitioned to Project Polaris; as Kiciński commented, "It's expected to grow to over 400 by mid-next year."

This corroborates a graph that accompanied Kiciński's statement, which showed that the bulk of the Phantom Liberty team has now moved on to the next Witcher game. However, there are still a few developers who are awaiting transfer or are currently working to provide support once Cyberpunk 2077's Ultimate Edition launches on 5th December 2023.

Speaking of The Witcher series, one of its ongoing spin-off projects, Sirius is still being worked on despite reports back in March 2023 that CD Projekt RED had to restart development as it was then being "re-evaluated," according to CFO Piotr Nielubowicz. American studio The Molasses Flood, acquired by CDPR in 2021, will still work on the project with a "new framework" in mind despite the studio layoffs in May 2023.

According to a CDPR spokesperson who commented on the layoffs to VGC, "Because the project changed, so has the composition of the team that's working on it – mainly on The Molasses Flood's side." This ultimately saw CDPR writing off "the development expenditure incurred in 2022 related to the Project, which originally amounted to PLN 33.4 million and was charged to the financial result of the Company and the CD PROJEKT Group for 2022, was partially reversed, in an amount of PLN 21.5 million."