CD Projekt RED today has made the unfortunate announcement that it will be letting go of some of its staff. In a post on the studio’s official blog, CD Projekt CEO Adam Kiciński says the company will need to lay off a small portion of staff to keep in line with the studio’s high expectations for creating the best role-playing games and being able to meet that goal.
Kiciński says this will lead to about 9% of CDPR’s employees being laid off. Which amounts to around 100 employees. All of this is reportedly part of a process to refining the shape of CDPR’s teams. “What we mean by that is having teams that are built around our projects’ needs; teams that are more agile and more effective,” Kiciński says.
These big changes are coming amidst ongoing development of CDPR’s many upcoming games. New titles in The Witcher series were announced last year. But the studio is also working on a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, and its Phantom Liberty expansion which releases in late September. So no doubt the studio’s teams are busy. All of this makes it a bit odd that CD Projekt is letting staff go due to being “overstaffed.” Especially when it’s made a point to get rid of its crunch culture.
CD Projekt RED staff layoffs won’t be immediate
To the employees affected, it likely doesn’t remove much of the sting to know that layoffs aren’t happening right this moment. However, it does potentially make things a tiny bit easier with regards to finding new placement somewhere else.
According to Kiciński, the layoffs aren’t going to be immediate. And some employees that are part of the layoffs won’t be let go until as late as Q1 2024. Kiciński states that this is to give employees time to make adjustments. He also says that every employee being laid off has been offered a comprehensive severance package. So perhaps between that, and the time of the layoffs, it’ll hopefully make finding new jobs easier.