When CD Projekt Red escaped „annihilation.” Studio's CEO recalls the difficult moments of The Witcher trilogy's creators
The CEO of CD Projekt Red talked in an interview about the company's difficult past. At one point, he had to make an effort for the studio to avoid „annihilation”.
This month, CD Projekt Red celebrated the 10th anniversary of the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. On this occasion, Michal Nowakowski, CEO of the Polish company, gave an interview to PC Gamer, in which he talked about the company's challenging past.
The developer mainly referred to the year 2008 when the global financial crisis broke out. Because of that, some employees of the company were worried that they might have to shut it down, even though the first installment of the popular Witcher series was released the year before, and it was relatively successful (although it was far from the results of the third installment).
Until 2011, that is, until the release of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, CD Projekt Red particularly cared about ensuring ing liquidity. Nowakowski called this time "a very tricky period for the company."
The early days were quite—for me, personally—focused on 'How do we escape 'annihilation?'
As we all know, the Polish studio managed to survive difficult times and create two hits. The Witcher 3 and The Witcher 4 and the sequel to Cyberpunk.
- CD Projekt Red was really surprised by The Witcher 3 success. „We felt like rock stars on stage”
- The Witcher 3 devs pinpointed the game's weakest elements and revealed whether there is anything they would design differently
- CD Projekt explained why there is no Yennefer and Ciri in The Witcher 1 and 2. „It would be a waste”
