Founding CD Projekt was founded in May 1994 by Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński. According to Iwiński, although he enjoyed playing video games as a child they were scarce in the
Polish People's Republic (which experienced political unrest,
martial law, and goods shortages during the 1980s). Marcin Iwiński, in high school, was selling
cracked copies of Western video games at a
Warsaw marketplace (stalls on the streets with many such products were popular in the newly established and aggressively privatised
Third Polish Republic of the 1990s). In high school, Iwiński met Kiciński, who became his business partner; at that time, Kiciński was also selling video games. Wanting to conduct business legitimately, Iwiński and Kiciński began importing games from US retailers and were the first importers of
CD-ROM games. After Poland's transition to a primarily
market-based economy in the early 90s, they founded their own company. Iwiński and Kiciński founded CD Projekt in the
second quarter of 1994. With only $2,000, they used a friend's flat as a rent-free office. According to Iwiński, one of their first successful localization titles was for
Ace Ventura; whereas previous localizations had only sold copies in the hundreds,
Ace Ventura sold in the thousands, establishing the success of its localization approach. With its methods affirmed, CD Projekt approached
BioWare and
Interplay Entertainment for the Polish localization of ''
Baldur's Gate''. They expected the title to become popular in Poland, and felt that no retailer would be able to translate the text from English to Polish. To increase the title's popularity in Poland, CD Projekt added items to the game's packaging and hired well-known Polish actors to voice its characters. Their first attempt was successful, with 18,000 units shipped on the game's release day (higher than the average shipments of other games at the time). CD Projekt continued to localize other games after
Dark Alliances cancellation. Especially the localization of
Gothic (released in Poland in 2002) and
Gothic II (in 2003), for which CD Projekt was also the publisher in Poland, was a success for the company. The
main series of Gothic became very popular in Poland and – according to developers of CD Projekt itself – a primary influence in the later development of
The Witcher game series. CD Projekt received Business Gazelle awards in 2003 and 2004. CD Projekt acquired the rights to the
Wiedźmin franchise in 2002. According to Iwiński, he and Kiciński had no idea how to develop a video game at that time. Iwiński and Kiciński pitched the demo to a number of publishers, without success. The Łódź office closed and the staff, except for Zieliński, moved to the Warsaw headquarters. The team, unfamiliar with video-game development, spent nearly two years organising production. The game's budget exceeded expectations. The original 15-person development team expanded to about 100, at a cost of 20 million
złoty. According to Iwiński, content was removed from the game for budgetary reasons but the characters' personalities were retained; however, there was difficulty in translating the game's Polish text into English.
Atari agreed to publish the game. After five years of development, Sales were satisfactory, and the development of sequels began almost immediately after
The Witcher release. The team began the design work for
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and experimented with consoles to develop a new engine for
The Witcher 3. Their development was halted when the team began work on
The Witcher: White Wolf, a console version of
The Witcher. according to Iwiński, CD Projekt paid them more than their own staff members. The team cancelled the project, suspending its development. Unhappy with the decision, Atari demanded that CD Projekt repay it for funding the console port development and Iwiński agreed that Atari would be the North American publisher of the sequel of
The Witcher 2. The dispute over
White Wolf was costly; the company faced bankruptcy, with the
2008 financial crisis as a contributing factor. To develop
The Witcher 2, the company suspended development of Metropolis'
first-person shooter, titled
They. After three-and-a-half years of development,
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings was released in 2011 to critical praise After
The Witcher 2, CD Projekt wanted to develop an open-world game of a quality similar to its other games, and the company wanted to add features to avoid criticism that it was
Witcher 2.5. They wanted to push the game's graphics boundaries, releasing it only for the PC and
eighth-generation consoles. This triggered debate on the team, some of whom wanted to release the game for older consoles to maximise profit. A report alleged that the team had to
crunch extensively for a year in order to meet release date deadlines. After multiple delays, it was released in May 2015 to critical praise.
Wild Hunt was commercially successful, selling six million copies in its first six weeks and giving the studio a profit of 236 million złoty ($62.5 million) in the first half of 2015. The team released 16 free
content downloads and two paid expansions,
Hearts of Stone and
Blood and Wine. The team decided that
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt would be the final game in the series with Geralt. Regarding the future of the
Witcher series, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, game director of
The Witcher 3, stated in May 2016 that he hoped to continue working with the series sometime in the future, but had nothing planned at the time. The success of
The Witcher 3 enabled CD Projekt to expand. In March 2016, the company announced that it had another role-playing game in development, and that the title is scheduled to be released in the period of 2017 to 2021. They also announced plans for expansion, where the Red division will expand two-fold. It also listed itself at
Warsaw Stock Exchange, riding on the success of
The Witcher 3. As of 2017, the witcher series had sold over 33 million copies. A spin-off of the series,
Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, based on the popular card game in
The Witcher 3, was released in 2018. In March 2018, the opening of a new studio in
Wrocław was announced. Acquired from a studio called Strange New Things, it is headed by former
Techland COO Paweł Zawodny and composed of other ex-Techland,
IO Interactive, and CD Projekt Red employees. In August 2018, CD Projekt established Spokko, a development studio focused on
mobile gaming.
The Witcher 3s success as well as CD Projekt RED's customer-friendly policies during that period enabled the studio to earn a lot of goodwill within the gaming community. However, the studio's working conditions were questioned after disgruntled employees flooded the company's profile at
Glassdoor with negative reviews. Iwinski later responded by saying that the studio's approach to making games "is not for everyone". Following the successful release of
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt,
Cyberpunk 2077, the studio's next title, became one of the most anticipated video games of all time. It is an open-world role-playing game based on the
Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop system created by
Mike Pondsmith. The game was initially introduced in May 2012. The hype for the title, alongside the release of
The Witcher TV series on
Netflix, enabled CD Projekt to become the most valuable video game company in Europe in May 2020, surpassing
Ubisoft. The game suffered multiple delays, with the team stressing that it would not release the game until it was ready. While management introduced a "
non-obligatory crunch" model for the team to lessen the effects of game development on their personal lives, management broke their promise and forced all developers to
crunch and work six days a week. The game was released in December 2020. The PC version received generally positive reviews and became one of the biggest video game launches for PC. The development cost was fully recouped based on pre-order sales alone. However, the console versions were plagued with technical issues and software bugs, with some players reporting that these versions were unplayable. The studio was accused of hiding the poor state of the console versions from its customers during the game's marketing. On 18 December 2020 the game was removed from the PlayStation online store. Kiciński acknowledged that the company's approach to marketing the console versions eroded players' trust in the studio, and promised to release patches for the game. In early February 2021, CD Projekt Red was hit by a
ransomware attack, with the attackers able to acquire the source code to several of the studio's games, including
Gwent,
The Witcher 3 and
Cyberpunk 2077 as well as administrative files. The attackers demanded CD Projekt Red pay them a large sum of money within a few days under threat of leaking or selling the stolen code and files. CD Projekt refused to negotiate with the attackers, stating to the press that "We will not give in to the demands or negotiate with the actor", affirming no personal information was obtained in the attack and that it was working with law enforcement to track down the attackers. Security analysts saw the code being auctioned on the
dark web for a minimum price of , and subsequently closed later with the attackers stating they had received an offer that satisfied them. Within a week of these auctions, the code was being shared online via social media, and CD Projekt began using
DMCA takedown notices to remove postings of its code. In March 2021, CD Projekt Red acquired Vancouver, Canada-based Digital Scapes Studios and rebranded the studio as CD Projekt Red Vancouver. In May, it was reported that Tomaszkiewicz had resigned from studio following an internal investigation into workplace bullying allegations that found him not guilty. He founded his own studio and began developing
The Blood of Dawnwalker. In October 2021, CD Projekt Red acquired Boston-based independent studio
The Molasses Flood, the developer of
The Flame in the Flood. On 6 October 2022, CD Projekt announced a slew of new projects that were in the works. These included a sequel to
Cyberpunk 2077, codenamed Orion, and several new titles in
The Witcher series. These included a new trilogy of games, the first of which is codenamed Polaris; a standalone game known as Canis Majoris (later confirmed to be a remake of the first Witcher game); and a single-player/multiplayer hybrid game from The Molasses Flood. In December 2022, it was announced that active development on
Gwent would end after 2023. Instead of shutting down completely, the game would be controlled by the community, allowing players to determine matters like balance decisions. Thirty members of the
Gwent development team were laid off in June 2023. The game's final update was released in October 2023. On 20 March 2023, CD Projekt announced its intentions to write off funds allocated to the development of Project Sirius, and that work would need to be restarted from scratch. That May, 29 employees of The Molasses Flood were laid off once changes were made to Project Sirius. In July 2023, CD Projekt CEO Adam Kiciński announced that it would be laying off around 100 workers—9% of its total workforce—from CD Projekt RED.
REDengine REDengine is a
game engine developed by CD Projekt Red exclusively for its
nonlinear role-playing video games. It is the replacement of the
Aurora Engine CD Projekt Red had previously licensed from
BioWare for the development of
The Witcher. REDengine is
portable across 32- and
64-bit software platforms and runs under
Windows. REDengine 2, an updated version of REDengine used in
The Witcher 2, and both
OS X and
Linux, however these ports were made using a
compatibility layer similar to
Wine called eON. REDengine 3 was designed exclusively for a
64-bit software platform, and also runs under
PlayStation 4,
Xbox One, and
Nintendo Switch. REDengine 2 utilized middleware such as
Havok for physics,
Scaleform GFx for the user interface, and
FMOD for audio. The engine was used for the Xbox 360 port of
The Witcher 2. REDengine 3 was designed to run exclusively on a
64-bit software platform. CD Projekt Red created REDengine 3 for the purpose of developing
open world There is also support for high-resolution textures and
mapping, as well as dynamic physics and an advanced dialogue lip-syncing system. However, due to limitations on texture streaming, the use of high-resolution textures may not always be the case. REDengine 3 has a flexible
renderer prepared for
deferred or forward+
rendering pipelines. On 21 March 2022, CD Projekt announced a partnership with
Epic Games after retiring REDengine to use
Unreal Engine 5. In April 2022, Studio CTO Paweł Zawodny said that the decision to change engines came down to Unreal Engine 5's new focus on open world game design. Shifting to Unreal Engine 5 also enabled CD Projekt to leave much of the engine-level development to Epic Games, allowing the studio to focus primarily on creating its game.
Game distribution In 2008, the company introduced
Good Old Games, a distribution service with a
digital rights management-free strategy. CD Projekt partnered with small developers and large publishers, including
Activision,
Electronic Arts and
Ubisoft, to broaden the service's portfolio of games to triple-A and
independent video games. Despite suspicions that it was a "doomed project", according to managing director Guillaume Rambourg, it has expanded since its introduction. , GOG.com sold 690,000 units of CD Projekt Red's game
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt redeemed through the service, more than the second largest digital seller Steam (approx. 580,000 units) and all other PC digital distribution services combined. As of 8 July 2019, every third
Cyberpunk 2077 digital pre-order was sold on GOG.com. Income from GOG.com (known internally as CD Projekt Blue) accrues to CD Projekt Red. ==Subsidiaries==