Polish games giant CD Projekt is looking to hire an extra 250 people to support both its CD Projekt RED development studio and its GOG.com DRM-free marketplace.
That's according to CEO Adam Kiciński, who told investors in the company's most recent financial that the firm had bought a new 3,000 square metre plot of land next to its existing office to give it some extra room.
"A new item that [has] appeared in our asset is real estate," he said, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha.
"Last year at the end and we brought a plot of land neighbouring our current seat alongside an office building extending that. The building gives the possibility of developing some 3,000 new square meters of office space where we will be able to develop our current activity. 3,000 square meters, a slightly less than current half of the current seating also of our company. So, probably, we will be able to provide 250 new jobs for CD Projekt Group and GOG."
Pressed about whether this was for work on Cyberpunk, Kiciński said that this is mostly for the game firm's next game.
"Well, mainly next productions because the Cyberpunk 2077 team is not going to grow that much anymore," he said.
"But as a company, we are going to grow indeed. In our industry, creative capacities are in direct proportion to the team's sizes, because it's people doing and creating what we're selling. We don't plan to stop at a certain level."
Both Cyberpunk 2011 and CD Projekt's next triple-A RPG project are set to be out by 2021. The former was announced in 2013, before being re-revealed in bombastic fashion at the end of Microsoft's E3 2018 presentation.
In February, CD Projekt made around a dozen layoffs in the GOG team, with former staff telling Kotaku that the DRM-free storefront wasn't in the best financial health. The company, however, pointed to 20 roles it was looking to fill for the marketplace, suggesting that these job cuts were more the company changing its focus - not to say that doesn't mean it isn't in financial trouble.
For the last quarter of 2018, GOG brought in $3.14m (PLN12m) in revenue, the highest amount since the start of 2017.
However, as pointed out by one analyst, operating results weren't fantastic for GOG. Kiciński was asked whether this is down to changes in the market - i.e. new players like Epic coming into the space - he said it's too early for that to affect its business, as well as CD Projekt investing heavily in improving GOG.
"When talking about last year's results, the market changes didn't yet have a chance to translate into GOG operations," he said.
"But the GOG was mainly affected in the first half of the year that was the negative currency exchange rates and then participation Gwent that remained on the homecoming stage for most part of the year, that's limiting the revenue component of this project.
"And another factor we are not discussing all that strongly, but last year actually GOG put in a lot of energy working on new technologies. Technologies to support the web store and so these are attributable to development affords but this also engages GOG staff, also inflating the general management and administrative costs for this team, while we have not yet seen positive results from that I hope we will be able to do that and to publicise that soon."
