{"id":592001,"date":"2026-08-13T12:28:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T12:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/592001\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T12:28:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T12:28:08","slug":"cd-projekt-red-has-laid-off-nine-project-sirius-developers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/592001\/","title":{"rendered":"CD Projekt Red has laid off nine Project Sirius developers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine people have been laid off by The Witcher and Cyberpunk developer CD Projekt Red. As first reported by Kotaku<\/a>, all of the impacted employees were seemingly working on an upcoming Witcher multiplayer game codenamed Project Sirius. Another nine have been invited to apply for roles on different projects.<\/p>\n

A CD Projekt Red representative confirmed to Game Developer that four people in Boston and five in Poland have been laid off. Nine other people “have been invited to internal recruitment processes for potential roles on other CD Projekt Red projects,” the representative wrote.<\/p>\n

“We adjusted the size of the Sirius team to reflect the project’s needs at this stage of development,” they added.<\/p>\n

As of June 2026, CD Projekt Red employed more than 1,300 people<\/a> around the globe. Its development hubs are located in Warsaw and Boston, with offices in Canada and Europe. Project Sirius was announced in 2022 after Boston-based The Molasses Flood was acquired by CD Projekt in 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Related:Amazon to rescind its publisher role on Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty by early 2027<\/a><\/p>\n

Last year, CD Projekt Red confirmed The Molasses Flood (known for The Flame in the Flood) had been absorbed<\/a> and is no longer operating as an independent entity. There’s nearly nothing known publicly about Project Sirius, except that the Boston-based studio had been heading it up. It’s unclear whether that’s still the case.<\/p>\n

In 2023, CD Projekt Red laid off 29 developers<\/a>\u201421 in the U.S. and eight in Poland, per Kotaku’s 2023 report<\/a>\u2014after Project Sirius reportedly “changed.” CD Projekt Red said in a regulatory announcement<\/a> in May 2023 that it was implementing a “new framework” for the project, and recorded a $7 million write-down as a result.<\/p>\n

Those layoffs would have left the Boston-based studio relatively small. By February 2026, 71 developers were working on Project Sirius, per a quarterly report<\/a>. The team scaled up again, and had 83 people working on the game as of April 30, 2026, according to that same quarterly report. A much larger portion of the company\u2014513 people\u2014are working on The Witcher 4.<\/p>\n

The layoffs today bring Project Sirius’ development team back down to roughly 65.<\/p>\n

Kotaku reported Wednesday that, while the project has struggled since its announcement, it was moving along “relatively well recently.” In May, Destiny 2 narrative designer Kwan Perng announced that he is now working as lead writer on Project Sirius<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It will be some time before I can talk about the project, but in the meantime I’ve been immersing myself in the dark and eclectic universe of The Witcher,” Perng wrote in a post on LinkedIn<\/a> in May. “It’s humbling to get the opportunity to tell stories in this world and in the company of such talented developers.”<\/p>\n

Related:Developers expect generative AI to impact roles and team sizes in the next three years<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nine people have been laid off by The Witcher and Cyberpunk developer CD Projekt Red. As first reported…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-592001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}