Project Sirius, CD Projekt Red’s unsettled attempt at a multiplayer Witcher spinoff, is facing further difficulties. Following a Kotaku report, the Polish dev-publishers confirmed to IGN that they were cutting 18 staff members from the project – believed to be around a quarter of the game’s overall team size, which was already dwarfed by the CDPR crew assigned to mainline singleplayer sequel The Witcher 4.
Of the affected developers, half have been made redundant, while half “have been invited to internal recruitment processes for potential roles on other CD Projekt Red projects.” This is also the second time the company have slashed Project Sirius staff, with layoffs following an effective reboot in 2023.
We haven’t seen anything of the game – also rumoured to be an RPG – since then, nor indeed since it was originally announced in 2022. Its original development team, The Flame in the Flood and Drake Hollow makers The Molasses Flood, were acquired by CDPR a year earlier, with the public assurance that they would “keep their current identity and will not be merged with existing teams.” That commitment ended in 2025, when The Molasses Flood was fully absorbed into their parent company.
Regardless of the fortunes of any particular game, it remains deeply frustrating that mass redundancies have become an almost daily occurrence for the medium, particularly one where companies continue to rake in millions, if not billions, in revenues and profits. Supermassive Games just made their third big jobs cut in as many years, Crossfire developers That’s No Moon made 14 people jobless shortly after the game’s unveiling, and Halo Studios – of that famously niche and cash-strapped series, Halo – capped off a new remake by letting go of multi-game veteran contractors. And that’s all just in the past week.
Today at HQ, we had special guests from Microsoft leadership. We refuse to let executives forget what game studios are actually made of: their workers.
As welcome gift, we placed hundreds of flags outside, honoring all of the game workers who have been laid off by Microsoft in 2026 (so far).
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— OneBGS – Bethesda Game Studios Union (@bethesdaunion.bsky.social) August 11, 2026 at 6:06 PM
Developers themselves appear to be running out of patience. Also this week, unionised Bethesda workers erected a giant inflatable rat outside the company’s HQ, in protest of visiting Microsoft gaming chief Asha Sharma and her plan to lay off up to 3,200 staff. Thought it was their other additions to the lawn that perhaps made the stronger statement: a small flag for every affected current and former colleague, stretching out in a heartbreakingly protracted strip of flickering red.
