The next Witcher game in trouble as CD Projekt Red announces layoffs

An upcoming multiplayer game set in The Witcher franchise has suffered from a round of layoffs at CD Projekt Red, putting the title’s future in doubt.

The currently nameless multiplayer game in The Witcher series, which has the working title of Project Sirius, has reportedly lost several developers at the CDPR-acquired studio that was working on it.

In the works for four years so far, this marks the second time the project has been hit with layoffs following a similar process in 2023.

According to Kotaku, nine individuals who were working on Project Sirius have been laid off from the company, with another nine in the process of moving to other projects within the studio.

CD Projekt Red issued a statement to Kotaku regarding these layoffs, saying: “We adjusted the size of the Sirius team to reflect the project’s needs at this stage of development.”

Of the nine who were let go, four staff were located in the company’s Boston office, and the other five on its Warsaw site. Prior to this, 83 people were working on the game, with the total now being 65.

This decision has also come with a “broader shift in development strategy”, which could mean that the focus of Project Sirius has changed again.

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Project Sirius is being worked on alongside two other Witcher projects

Project Sirius was announced in 2022, developed as a new game set in The Witcher universe with single-player and cooperative gameplay.

It’s being developed by The Molasses Flood, a studio that CD Projekt Red acquired in 2021. Just a year after the reveal, Project Sirius was rebooted in 2023 with 29 developers laid off.

Kotaku reports that progress had been going well with the game since the rebooted focus, with some more changes made in the spring, which kept it on track. In May 2026, CD Projekt Red hired Destiny 2 writer Kwan Perng as lead writer on the game.

CD Projekt Red currently has six games in development, as well as a new expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt titled Songs of the Past.

These new outings include three Witcher projects; Project Sirius, as well as The Witcher 4 and a remake of the original The Witcher. It’s assumed that these games will hit current-gen and next-gen platforms, but no release date has been confirmed for any of them just yet.

Additionally, CD Projekt Red is also developing Cyberpunk 2, the sequel to 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077, which was announced last year. Two more games, one based on an existing CDPR IP and another that is a brand-new IP, are also in development.

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