The headcounts of each The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2’s dev groups proceed to steadily climb, as the 2 RPGs inch nearer to our fingertips. In the meantime, CD Projekt have confirmed that their research division are nonetheless busy deciding what the mysterious authentic sport codenamed Project Hadar will seem like.
All of those particulars, plus some Nintendo Change stuff we have averted listening to by sticking our mouse and keyboard-focused fingers in our ears, had been revealed within the Polish publishers’ (*4*) masking the primary half of 2025.
First, the large weapons. As outlined by the helpful chart beneath, The Witcher 4 had 422 folks engaged on it as of April 30 and noticed that quantity develop to 444 folks by the shut of July, whereas Cyberpunk 2 has hopped over the three digit threshold in that point, going from 96 chooms to 116. Oh bugger, sorry for dropping the c-bomb, that Cyberpunk playthrough I am nonetheless on with is clearly attending to me.
“Our recruitment efforts have considerably sped up over the past three months, and as a consequence the overall variety of proficient builders working throughout our tasks has grown by 10%, reaching virtually 800 folks,” CD Projekt joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski defined in a presentation to buyers. It is value noting that this present development follows the studio shedding employees again in 2023, with some remaining employees deciding to unionise as a consequence.
With Cyberpunk 2 now having totally moved from the research part of CD Projekt’s books into the event part – it has been in pre-production for a short time now – the mysterious Project Hadar’s the most expensive research project CD Projekt have on the go. Whereas we now have some sense now of The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2, and Molasses Flood’s Witcher spin-off Project Sirius, Hadar stays an enigma a number of years on from its preliminary announcement again in 2022.
We all know it should be an authentic story, and some job listings have prompt that it is an motion RPG with melee fight. Nowakowski’s additionally been weirdly specific in ruling out that it is a “cosmic horror in feudal Japan”. Apart from that, shrug emoji. Although, with Hadar’s 22 individual robust workforce now seeking to be the principle focus of CD projekt’s research division, the corporate’s buyers are clearly as curious for more information on it as we’re.
Within the call accompanying these financials, one in every of them reasonably bluntly requested whether or not any choices relating to the sport’s future can be made by the tip of this yr or 2026. Nowakowski appeared a bit stunned by the concept of sharing extra so quickly.
“Hadar is nonetheless mainly an IP idea, so not a sport growth challenge but,” he responded. “We’re engaged on the sport’s story, its background – so to say; there is some prototyping happening by way of gameplay, as a result of it’s exhausting not to try this when the tip purpose is to make a online game – however I’m unsure what you imply by ‘choices’ – I imply, as in to progress to growth, or whether or not we’re going to make [a game] or not…? We wish to make this IP occur, so that call is kind of made by way of – once we’re going to enter growth, we’ll announce it in due time, I feel.”
You can argue it has been a little bit of an odd transfer for CD Projekt to have introduced Hadar on the identical time they did the recent Witcher trilogy and Cyberpunk 2, in the event that they had been nonetheless going to be at this early a stage with it practically three years down the road. Then once more, that form of transparency’s nice for us journos and has in all probability helped CD Projekt recruit of us to work on Hadar. My cash’s on it being a Keanu Reeves gacha sport with 4X technique parts and a roguelike mode based mostly across the idea of the phrase ‘woah’.
