CDPR Group update - 5 Witcher games, Cyberpunk 2077 sequel and new IP in production.

[Maxie]

Based. I hope they were all w*men.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Based. I hope they were all w*men.

Nah, the silly gits are laying off Developers and the back office, when they should really be culling HR and Marketing. Those two departments tend to be bloated and dead weight, in my observation.

 

[Maxie]

Based. I hope they were all w*men.

Nah, the silly gits are laying off Developers, when they should really be culling HR and Marketing. Those two departments tend to be bloated and dead weight, in my observation.

I assure you that female devs exist and are shit

 

[Aarwolf]

Based. I hope they were all w*men.

Of course not:

Unfavorable comments about the company have been appearing on the GoWork website for employees and employers since the beginning of the year.

"Gender discrimination and more and more circuses instead of focusing on the merits of the business. If you want to be a category B employee, it's enough to be a guy. I strongly advise against it. Nothing good will happen to you here anymore" – reads one of the entries signed "I'm running from thisTitanic".

In the comments there are allegations about the "pathetic level of personnel" and "milling juniors". The company, which was considered a model, appeared to be thoroughly "American" and set trends in the IT labor market, today it does not have the best opinion.

I'm surprised that this comment was brought up in liberal newspaper without moaning about incels and sexism, though.

The rest of the article, if anyone's interested goes here, translated:

CD Projekt announces mass layoffs."Agile methodology" in practice, i.e. "we have no tasks for you"

100 people will be cut, which is about 9 percent of the staff at the CD Projekt Red studio. Those employed in production, publishing and back office teams will lose their jobs. This is another example that the crisis in the IT industry also affects the local Polish market.

The reduction is related to the ongoing transformation, which aims to "optimize the organization of work", according to the company.

"The change of approach and the pursuit of building more effective project teams is a continuation of the ongoing transformation processes, which the company considers to be crucial for creating high-quality games, released on time and created without burdensome and excessive overtime," the release reads.

The company informs that it "wants not only to hire the best people, but also to properly form teams", because in this way it will be able to "meet its own requirements and ambitions to create the best role-playing games".

By "properly" the company means building teams with the needs of a given project in mind; teams that will be characterized by "greater agility and efficiency".

CD Projekt is facing a slight stagnation in production.

The company estimates that the costs of layoffs, including severance pay, will cost approx. PLN 4.5 million. And it will burden the group's financial result in the third quarter of 2023. Completion of the process is planned for the first quarter of 2024.

Time to upgrade

The case has already been commented on by Adam Kiciński, president of CD Projekt.

– Those of you who are familiar with our strategy know how much is going on at CD Projekt Red. Polaris (The Witcher), Orion (Cyberpunk) or Hadar (new franchise) are just some of the projects that will expand our studio's portfolio in the future. An important part of our strategy is the ongoing transformation process leading to deep, internal changes, which we consider the key to creating high-quality games without delays and crunch. After the implementation of the Agile methodology and changes in the philosophy of project management, the time has come to improve the way our teams are organized - explained Adam Kiciński.

Kiciński also admitted that there are ... too many employees in the company.

- We work with talented people for whom, taking into account the current and expected needs related to projects, we will not have new tasks next year - emphasized the president of CD Projekt.

Red alerts at the Polish giant

The situation in the IT industry is still very good, but the wave of redundancies has reached the Vistula River. NetGuru recently laid off over 150 employees. Just Join IT also informed about the reduction.

Smaller or larger reductions affect almost all companies in the new technology industry present on the market.

It is worth noting that these are not the first redundancies at CD Projekt Red. Earlier layoffs were the result of the fiasco associated with the premiere of the game "Cyberpunk 2077". Then the board admitted to a whole litany of mistakes and oversights.

https://wyborcza.biz/biznes/7,17715...6-871693572.1685357471#S.TD-K.C-B.10-L.2.duzy

 

[negator2vc]

Since after the Cyberpunk expansion (to be released winter 2023) any new CD Projekt game will be using Unreal engine my guess is that the layoffs are from the REDengine team

 

[GhostCow]

I expect the endgame at this point for the heads is to sell to MS or Tencent.

Do we really want GOG.com owned by either of them. God damn this'd send curation back to the dark ages.
We'd have to liferaft all their shit to Archive.org if it happened, the ESA would go crazy slapping lawsuits on everyone like used to happen in the old abandonware days.
This will be a really shit outcome. Fuck I hate CDPR.

I want Microsoft to buy everything so we can have another video game crash

 

[Gerrard]

They canned a few projects, so it could be why.

If CDPR's leadership had any sense, they would have concentrated as much of their workforce as possible on The Witcher IV two-and-a-half years ago.

Concentrated shit is still shit.

 

[ropetight]

They canned a few projects, so it could be why.

If CDPR's leadership had any sense, they would have concentrated as much of their workforce as possible on The Witcher IV two-and-a-half years ago.

Concentrated shit is still shit.

Even more so.
Whetever they do next, will have very litlle difference to UbiSoft, post ME1 BioWare and other corporate productions.
Last game they gambled all in, developed it for almost 10 years, it turned out to be ESG-compliant cyberpunk GTA clone that was saved from disastrous launch with neverending marketing hype.
And Keanu Reeeves.

Guess what their management learned from that - more money to the marketing and less to the development.
And we can expect Tom Cruise or someone similar doing cameo for the next game.

 

[Aarwolf]

If anyone's interested, here's info about teams allocations in ongoing projects at CDPR:

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Well, Polaris was already yeeted out of the stratosphere, for one.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The Investor Day stream is starting:

 

[AwesomeButton]

Lol, did I get it right - 3 mln Cyberpunk sales since Phantom Liberty's premiere?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Lol, did I get it right - 3 mln Cyberpunk sales since Phantom Liberty's premiere?

They sold like a million or so copies on release day apparently, in fact it took them less than 20 or so hours to start making profit from the game.

edit: i'm talking about the original game's release date

 

[lukaszek]

dunno what they said but stock took a dive

 

[AwesomeButton]

dunno what they said but stock took a dive

Yes big dive, it's $3 down since the end of August.

Some interesting data - Cyberpunk 2077 cost about 64 mln USD to produce ("Immediate production costs" whatever that means), plus about 21 mln USD in marketing costs.

 

[MasPingon]

Lol, did I get it right - 3 mln Cyberpunk sales since Phantom Liberty's premiere?

They said it's 15% of base game numbers.

 

[Lord_Potato]

dunno what they said but stock took a dive

Yes big dive, it's $3 down since the end of August.

Some interesting data - Cyberpunk 2077 cost about 64 mln USD to produce ("Immediate production costs" whatever that means), plus about 21 mln USD in marketing costs.

That sounds very low

 

[MasPingon]

dunno what they said but stock took a dive

Yes big dive, it's $3 down since the end of August.

Some interesting data - Cyberpunk 2077 cost about 64 mln USD to produce ("Immediate production costs" whatever that means), plus about 21 mln USD in marketing costs.

That sounds very low

They said it about Phantom Liberty. As far as I remember CP2077 was 300 mln$ - 100 mln for production, 200 mln on marketing. It's nice that proportion switched.

 

[moon knight]

Yes big dive, it's $3 down since the end of August.

Time for RPG Codex users to put together money, buy stocks and become majority shareholders. It's the only way to stop decline

 

[Lord_Potato]

This is interesting - sales of CDPR games by region. US and Europe are equally important markets, with Asia somewhat behind. Perhaps they need Witcher 3 playable on mobile phones.

 

[just]

sudacas paying for few minutes of yt commercials

 

[Roguey]

That sounds very low

That's the Poland Advantage. Currency exchange means they get to make games for fewer dollars than most other countries.

Yes. Witcher 2 cost about 30 million zloty to make which is about 9 million dollars. AAA console games costs tens of millions to make and from what I've seen, the dollar equivalent of the average Polish programmer's salary is barely more than minimum wage in the US.

Edit: AwesomeButton's claim actually refers to the Phantom Liberty DLC. They spent a lot more on the base game.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Yes, I was already corrected on that.

 

[Riddler]

Well, Polaris was already yeeted out of the stratosphere, for one.

Where is there any indication that this is the case? Or do you mean in the sense of what happened to cyberpunk where they scrapped everything that had been done and restarted development when blood and wine was finished?

 

[sebas]

dunno what they said but stock took a dive

IT stock is mostly about increased revenue forecasts and hype. For example, I closely follow Adobe stock and it's up 58% this year solely because of Firefly which atm barely makes a dent in Adobe's income.