Cyberpunk 2The development team will grow significantly over the next few years as CD Projekt ramps up the pace of development. Although most of their ranks are now included The Witcher 4a game that has at least made a few public cameos, even if it still doesn't have a release date, when 2027 rolls around, Cyberpunk 2 doesn't seem to be far behind.
This information is taken from the latest financial reportcovering the period from July 1 to September 30 of this year.
In its presentation, CD Projekt put to rest talk of the original Cyberpunk continuing to sell well by showing a developer headcount chart projecting how they plan to continue to “lay the groundwork for Cyberpunk 2” in 2026 and 2027. These efforts follow the lessons CD Projekt says they learned from the infamous launch of the first Cyberpunk 2. staff shortage due to pandemic contribution to preparation for decisive moments and more game-oriented shortcomings such as RPGs European style manhole covers it's symptomatic of some of the European development team's struggles to truly capture the nuances of an American dystopian city.
As of October 31 of this year, the studio reports that there are 135 developers working on Cyberpunk 2. The timeline shows that Cyberpunk 2 development is split between teams in Warsaw and Vancouver, as well as a larger team at CD Projekt's new Boston studio created specifically to work on the sequel. According to these financial reports, the 135 companies mentioned are primarily located in Boston, and CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski noting There are about 80 people in this team, mostly senior level employees.
“Having achieved our goal of building a strong leadership team, we are now moving to hire more mid-level positions to continue the preparatory work,” he explained. “We plan to expand the Boston Cyberpunk team as the project progresses and double it in size over the next two years.” Thus, by 2027 the team will have about 160 people. Meanwhile, the teams in Canada and Poland will also grow, so the entire ensemble will increase to just over 300 employees over the same time period.
The chart doesn't give exact numbers for planned future headcount, and Nowakowski has hinted that he wants to “shift the share” between the two development teams to “around 50%” at the same time, which makes it a little difficult to compare those numbers to the 447 developers currently working on The Witcher 4. At the time of writing, it looks like the 2027 headcount will lag behind Witchery's headcount by about 100 developers. Nowakowski added that the company still firmly believes that all the investments they have made and plan to make in building the Boston studio “will pay off in the future, taking the next cyberpunk experience to the next level.”
We'll see if that means the teams working on it will eventually outnumber the number of people CD Projekt threw at the original, which presentation For the company's 2020 financial results, I went back and dug up quotes from 530 developers. Cyberpunk 2077 was notoriously buggy at launch, so hopefully with all this investment, its sequel will avoid the same fate. However, this may not mean attracting more developers, especially since most of CD Projekt's spending was aimed at simply being able to work on Cyberpunk and The Witcher at the same time, rather than switching back and forth.
Either way, with a more thoughtful build-out over the next two years, hopefully the results will be smoother once the game really starts to pick up speed. For now, Nowakowski is “pleased with the progress the CP2 team has made” but cautioned that “it is too early to talk about moving to the next stage or phase of this project.”
Numbers, right? For now, The Witcher 4 is something to keep an eye on in terms of release as it's much further into development, although Nowakowski has already tweeted that it will not appear at the Game Awards this year after its presentation, at least not in the annual version.
