Two thirds of CD Projekt developers are now working on The Witcher 4, reaching its target staff size

Two thirds of CD Projekt are now working on the next game in the Witcher series, codenamed Polaris.

As revealed during an earnings conference for the publisher’s FY 2023 earnings, the development team now sits at 403 staff.

Joint CEO Michał Nowakowski explained that following the release of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, the number of staff working on that game has now dropped to just 17, with others being distributed to other projects.

“The Polaris team, on the other hand, has grown to over 400 developers,” Nowakowski said, “reaching its target size for entering the production phase. This is scheduled for the second half of the year.”

The team working on Witcher spin-off Project Sirius, led by The Molasses Flood, hasn’t changed in size since CD Projekt’s last update, and remains at just under 40 staff.

Back in January, CD Projekt joint CEO Adam Badowski said he hoped the production phase of the fourth main Witcher game, Polaris, would start this year.

CD Projekt confirmed last May that it had wrapped up its research phase on the game, which will be the first part of a new trilogy, and progressed to the pre-production phase.

It said last November that almost 330 developers were working on the project, making it CD Projekt’s biggest development team.

“We’d like to have around 400 people working on the project by the middle of the year”, Badowski said at the time, a target which has now been met.