Entertainment news and discussion on TalkFuse.
CD Projekt Confirms Layoffs on The Witcher Multiplayer Spinoff, Issues Statement
CD Projekt has confirmed that nine employees working on Project Sirius, its multiplayer Witcher spin-off, have been made redundant. The company said it had reduced the team to match the project’s current development needs, highlighting continuing uncertainty around a game that has already been restarted once and remains unseen nearly four years after its announcement.
Four staff in Boston and five in Warsaw are leaving, while nine others have been invited to apply for roles on other CD Projekt Red projects. Sirius had 83 staff as of 30 April, so its team may now be about 60 people; the project was previously reworked in 2023, when layoffs also followed. CD Projekt has not indicated that Sirius is cancelled, while its larger teams are focused on The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2 and the new Project Hadar IP.
In short
- Nine Project Sirius staff have been laid off.
- The Witcher multiplayer spin-off remains in development.
- CD Projekt is prioritising several larger projects.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Project restructuring is normal in game development when technical realities emerge. CD Projekt has shown commitment to Project Sirius by maintaining approximately 60 staff, not cancelling the project, and offering the nine departing employees opportunities to transition to other company projects rather than simply making them fully redundant. Adjusting team size to match actual development needs, rather than maintaining an oversized workforce, represents responsible fiscal management during a period of recalibration.
The case against
The repeated restarts and continued layoffs over four years with no public progress suggest fundamental problems beyond normal development iteration. Whether due to flawed initial vision, poor technical planning, or unrealistic ambitions, the pattern indicates systemic issues that make this restructuring concerning rather than reassuring. For remaining employees, investors, and the gaming community, ongoing instability on a project already reworked once raises legitimate questions about whether this approach will ultimately succeed.
Explained simply
CD Projekt is a Polish video game company best known for The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077. Project Sirius is a separate game set in the world of The Witcher, planned as a multiplayer spin-off.
Sirius has been in development for several years and was reworked in 2023, making its progress difficult to gauge from outside the company. CD Projekt is also developing other large games, including a new main Witcher title, so changes to Sirius’s team form part of a wider slate of projects.
The latest staff changes do not mean the game has been cancelled. They matter because they add to questions about how Sirius is developing and how CD Projekt will allocate people across its projects.