The Witcher 4 is the work of over twice as many CD Projekt developers as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the company’s executives have revealed. That’s approximately as many people as worked on Cyberpunk 2077, although naturally, the figure excludes a lot of external or infrequent contributors, such as voice actors.
“As we are now in the most intensive phase of The Witcher 4 development, the team has grown to 513 developers, while the Cyberpunk 2 and Sirius team also grew by a dozen or so,” joint CEO Michał Nowakowski explained in the company’s latest financials. “This reflects a stable organizational setup that has the right capabilities and expertise in place.”
(Cyberpunk 2 is CD Projekt’s WIP name for their follow-up to Cyberpunk 2077, and yes, I have already written terrible jokes about the new game being set shortly after the birth of noted edgerunner Jesus Christ. As for Sirius, this is an unannounced Witcher multiplayer spin-off.)
Asked in an online Q&A this week whether CD Projekt might expand the team further, VP of investor relations Karolina Gnaś observed: “we believe that right now we have the right mix of expertise and skills, but of course we may slightly adjust the team size depending on our needs.”
For context, CD Projekt revealed in 2015 that The Witcher 3 had a core team of 240 people, though around 1500 people contributed to the game at various points. As for the subsequent Cyberpunk 2077, it was the work of 530 in-house devs, with a further 5200 people “engaged” on the project throughout its development.
CD Projekt still have a way to go before they can eclipse Ubisoft and the Assassin’s Creed series – according to its own credits, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the work of over 7000 people, spread across 15 studios and including external contributors. Consider all this fodder for the on-going conversation about sustainable team sizes, and to what extent the biggest games try to offset or ‘hide’ their bloat by outsourcing work.
It is bizarre to recall that the very first Witcher RPG kicked off with a team of around 15. Certainly, few of those original devs imagined that CD Projekt would swell to such a fearsome scale, which is partly why they neglected to keep good notes on the creation of their own games.
