One of the joint-CEOs at Polish giant CD Projekt, Michał Nowakowski, has admitted that the company lost the trust of some of its audience due to the messy launch of Cyberpunk 2077.
Speaking to RapidEyMovers creative director Jörg Tittel at DevGAMM Gdańsk, the executive described the sci-fi RPG’s release as a “heartbreaking” period for the company. Nowakowski added that while the game has been back on track, he still thinks CD Projekt has more to prove to its audience.
“I’m not 100% convinced we went through the full redemption arc,” he said.
“I’m convinced that we lost the faith of some people indefinitely, and that’s a fair thing. But I do hope we will be able to make it back – if not with The Witcher 4, then with whatever comes next.”
One upside of the tough period that CD Projekt went through in fixing the myriad problems with Cyberpunk 2077 is that the studio is stronger now, at least according to Nowakowski.
“We were left with seasoned, battle-hardened veterans,” he said.
“Leaders who were able to carry a different kind of challenge on their shoulders.”
Nowakowski also discussed CD Projekt’s shift from using its proprietary tech, Red Engine, to using Unreal Engine 5 for the upcoming The Witcher 4. The executive said that the onboarding for the former was “six to nine months”, something that he admits was “crazy”.
“Epic [allowed] us to go into the black box of Unreal Engine – I think we’re the only company right now that actually does that outside of Epic themselves – and fiddle with [it], so [we] would actually be co-building one of the biggest techs out there,” Nowakowski said.
“The rationale was we wanted to be able to tell more stories without worrying about the foundation of the engine itself. Epic [gave] us that backbone, and we can still build around that and differentiate ourselves.”
Cyberpunk 2077 launched at the end of 2020 to a disastrous reception, but CD Projekt was able to address the problems facing the ambitious sci-fi RPG and the title has now sold over 35 million copies.
