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Witcher maker CD Projekt RED responds to negative Glassdoor reviews

Witcher maker CD Projekt RED responds to negative Glassdoor reviews

Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt RED has released a statement in response to rumours of poor studio morale and working conditions.

Posting on Twitter (below), a statement signed by studio co-founder Marcin Iwinski and studio head Adam Badowski, that replied to some of the criticisms the company had received on employee rating and feedback site, Glassdoor. One review describes working at the Polish game maker as 'chaos' with 

The duo decided to respond to this negativity, not due to the feedback itself, but rather the public perception; bad reviews, plus no messaging about upcoming action RPG Cyberpunk 2077. That title was announced four years ago with literally no details since. Though to be fair to CD Projekt RED, The Witcher 3 - and its card game spin-off Gwent - have blown up in popularity.

Essentially, CD Projekt RED is much bigger than it once was. When the team made The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, around 200 people were at the company. Now the studio has more or less doubled in size.

Thus, the scope and pressure the studio is working with is much larger, also. By the studio's own admission, making games in this manner is not for everyone. 

"Every role-playing game we ever developed seemed impossible to achieve at the moment we set out to create it,” the studio wrote.

“It took us five years to finish The Witcher 1, we had to make our own engine to complete The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and we had to entirely reinvent the way we made gams to deliver an open world for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. When we start down the road of creating something, we know the destination and we’re sure of one thing: even if something feels impossible, it doesn't mean it is. As it turns out, most often things are perfectly possible, they just require a lot of faith, commitment and spirit.”

"This approach to making games is not for everyone. It often requires a conscious effort to 'reinvent the wheel' - even if you personally think it already works like a charm. But you know what? We believe reinventing that wheel every friggin' time is what makes a better game. It's what creates innovation and makes it possible for us to say we've worked really hard on something, and we think it's worth your hard-earned-cash. If you make games with a 'close enough is good enough' attitude, you end up in a comfort zone. And you know where the magic happens.

"Cyberpunk 2077 is progressing as planned but we are taking our time - in this case the silence is the cost of making a great game."

The studio's full statement is below. 


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.