CD Projekt RED has been going strong in its development of The Witcher 4 as well as the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077. The studio has confirmed that it has expanded its development teams by quite a bit in a recent H1 report, as caught by PCGamer. In this report, the studio has confirmed that its team working on The Witcher 4 has grown from 422 as of April 30 to 444 as of the end of July. Similarly, Cyberpunk 2’s team has grown from 96 as of April 30 to 116 as of July 31.
“Our recruitment efforts have significantly sped up over the last three months and as a result the total number of talented developers working across our projects has grown by 10% reaching almost 800 people,” said joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski in a presentation to investors. “This growth was primarily driven by our two largest development teams.”
“The Witcher 4 team grew to over 440 developers while the Cyberpunk 2 project which transitioned into pre-production recently in Q2 as you may remember added 20 new team members. We anticipate further gradual growth in our total developer headcount by the end of the year, particularly for the teams working on projects in the most advanced stages of production.”
Of the two projects, The Witcher 4 is quite a bit further along in development than the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, as evidenced by the fact that the team for the former is much larger than the latter, as well as the fact that The Witcher 4 was officially unveiled back in December 2024 with a trailer.
Since then, CD Projekt RED has been revealing more details about the action RPG. Back in July, narrative director Philipp Weber spoke about how much pressure the team has been facing to make The Witcher 4 better than its critically-acclaimed and beloved predecessor.
According to Weber, “‘Witcher 3 was one of the best games ever made, how are they going to top it?’” he went on to mention that he agrees with discourse surrounding the 2015 RPG, saying “I’m like ‘yeah, how are we going to do that?’”
“I think the way we want to do justice to the legacy of The Witcher 3 is to take the philosophy we had during The Witcher 3 – how to make a game, how to really care about these things, how to tell stories – and keep that philosophy,” Weber continued. “At the same time, there are new questions we want to answer, because this is supposed to feel like a true sequel, not just redoing what we did before. And I think it’s really trying to have that healthy mix of really moving forward and also trying out some new things, but doing justice to what was there, not trying to beat it.”
The Witcher 4 doesn’t yet have an official release date. The title is being developed for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, and is making use of the most cutting edge technology available for Unreal Engine 5 out there.