Gaming

CD Projekt Cuts Sirius While Witcher 4 Grows

CD Projekt Red cut 18 people from Project Sirius on August 12, 2026, shrinking the team 22 percent in 3.5 months. Its own Q1 2026 filing shows The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 headcount growing in the same window, its only live-service bet shrinking.

GamingBy Servola Tech Desk2026-08-154 min read

AI-assisted, edited by humans. | Editor-in-Chief: Leon Soliman | Editorial standards

CD Projekt Cuts Sirius While Witcher 4 Grows

Key takeaways

On August 12, 2026, CD Projekt Red cut 18 people from Project Sirius, its Witcher co-op and multiplayer spinoff, the second round of layoffs to hit the project in three years. Nine employees left the company outright, four from the Boston studio and five from Warsaw, while the other nine entered internal recruitment for roles on other CD Projekt Red projects. The team shrank from 83 developers as of April 30, 2026, according to CD Projekt's own Q1 2026 investor presentation, to roughly 65, a cut of about 22 percent in three and a half months. The studio's statement: 'We adjusted the size of the Sirius team to reflect the project's needs at this stage of development.'
The same Q1 2026 investor presentation that put Sirius at 83 developers also disclosed The Witcher 4 team growing to as many as 499 people as of February 28, 2026, and the Cyberpunk 2 team growing from 135 developers in October 2025 to 149 by February 2026. In the identical reporting window CD Projekt's own filings show Sirius shedding staff, its two flagship single-player franchises were both staffing up.
CD Projekt's own medium-term financial target, disclosed alongside the same results, is PLN 5 billion in cumulative net profit for 2026 through 2029, built on a strategy the company describes as releasing high-quality RPG games and strengthening the potential of its brands. That language describes narrative single-player franchises. It does not describe a live-service or multiplayer growth pillar sitting alongside them.
Sirius, developed partly out of CD Projekt's Boston studio (the former Molasses Flood, acquired in 2021), remains the company's only announced live-service-adjacent title in active development, apart from the separate new-IP project Hadar. It is also the one line in CD Projekt's own headcount disclosures moving in the opposite direction from The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2, in the same reporting period, without the company ever describing that divergence as a strategic choice.

One Filing, Two Opposite Headcount Lines

CD Projekt Red confirmed on August 12, 2026 that Project Sirius, the Witcher co-op and multiplayer spinoff being built partly by its Boston studio, lost 18 people, the second round of cuts to hit the project in three years. Nine of the eighteen left the company entirely, four in Boston and five in Warsaw, and the remaining nine moved into internal recruitment for other CD Projekt roles. The team now sits at roughly 65 people, down from the 83 developers CD Projekt itself reported working on Sirius as of April 30, 2026, in its own Q1 2026 investor presentation, a drop of about 22 percent in three and a half months. The studio's explanation was brief: it had adjusted the team's size to reflect the project's needs at its current stage.

That same Q1 2026 presentation, the primary document that supplied the 83-person Sirius figure now being cut, also disclosed headcount for CD Projekt's two flagship single-player franchises in the identical window. The Witcher 4 reached as many as 499 people working on it as of February 28, 2026. Cyberpunk 2 grew from 135 developers in October 2025 to 149 by the end of February 2026. Read against Sirius's trajectory, the same filing describes a company adding staff to its two narrative flagships while cutting staff from its one live-service-adjacent title, inside the same fiscal quarter.

A Profit Target Written in Single-Player Language

CD Projekt has told investors it is targeting PLN 5 billion in cumulative net profit for the 2026 through 2029 financial years. The company's own description of how it plans to reach that number is to release high-quality RPG games and strengthen the potential of its existing brands, language built entirely around narrative single-player franchises: The Witcher and Cyberpunk. Nothing in that framing describes a live-service or multiplayer pillar standing alongside the RPG catalog, even though Sirius, a co-op and multiplayer Witcher spinoff, has been in active development the entire time that framing has been in circulation.

Sirius is not CD Projekt's only project outside the two flagship franchises; the studio is also developing Project Hadar, a wholly new IP, in parallel. But Sirius is specifically the one title built around live, shared, multiplayer sessions rather than a single-player story, which makes it the one line item a reader can check directly against CD Projekt's own stated profit strategy. On that language alone, Sirius does not fit the plan CD Projekt has described to its own shareholders, whatever the studio's internal roadmap for the project actually says.

The Choice CD Projekt Has Not Had to Announce

No CD Projekt executive has stood up and said the studio is deprioritizing live-service or multiplayer development. It has not needed to: its own investor filings already show the allocation decision, made in headcount rather than in a press statement. The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 both gained developers in the same window Sirius lost nearly a quarter of its team for the second time in three years, and the company's medium-term profit target is described entirely in single-player RPG terms.

CD Projekt's next earnings report, covering the second quarter of 2026, is due September 2, 2026, and will disclose a fresh Sirius headcount figure alongside updated numbers for The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2. Whether that filing shows Sirius stabilizing at roughly 65 people or continuing to shrink will be the clearest public signal yet of whether this month's cut was a one-time correction, as CD Projekt's statement implied, or the continuation of a reallocation its own numbers have already been showing for months.

Frequently asked questions

What happened to CD Projekt's Project Sirius on August 12, 2026?

CD Projekt Red cut 18 people from the team, nine of whom left the company (four in Boston, five in Warsaw) while nine moved to other internal projects. The team shrank from 83 developers as of April 30, 2026, to roughly 65, a cut of about 22 percent in three and a half months, the second round of layoffs to hit the project in three years.

What do The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 headcounts show in the same period?

CD Projekt's own Q1 2026 investor presentation, the same document that reported Sirius at 83 people, disclosed The Witcher 4 team growing to as many as 499 people as of February 28, 2026, and the Cyberpunk 2 team growing from 135 developers in October 2025 to 149 by February 2026.

What is CD Projekt's stated financial strategy?

CD Projekt is targeting PLN 5 billion in cumulative net profit for 2026 through 2029, a target the company says it will reach by releasing high-quality RPG games and strengthening the potential of its existing brands, language centered on The Witcher and Cyberpunk rather than live-service or multiplayer titles.

What is Project Sirius?

Sirius is a co-op and multiplayer Witcher spinoff developed partly by CD Projekt's Boston studio, the former Molasses Flood acquired in 2021. It is the company's only announced live-service-adjacent title in active development, apart from the separate new-IP project Hadar.

CD Projekt did not announce a retreat from live-service ambitions. It filed one. The same Q1 2026 report that showed Project Sirius at 83 people also showed The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 both growing, and the same investor language that describes a PLN 5 billion profit plan describes it entirely in single-player RPG terms. The August 12 cut to Sirius did not create that divergence. It confirmed a headcount allocation CD Projekt's own disclosures had already been showing, months before the layoff made the news.

CD Projekt RedProject SiriusThe Witcher 4Cyberpunk 2layoffslive serviceRPG

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