During a recent shareholder meeting, CD Projekt announced that it is rebranding the entire company to CD Projekt Red. Previously, CD Projekt was the name of the parent company under which Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt developer CD Projekt Red operated. Going forward, the entire company will be known as CD Projekt Red.
In its published resolution, the company said that this decision was made in order to fully unify CD Projekt Red as a single entity, especially since both the parent company and the development studio share core business activities – development and publishing of video games and the management of IP.
“In the opinion of the Management Board, the new company name will ensure full brand consistency and facilitate the identification of the Company with its products on the global market,” explains the resolution.
As far as rebrandings go, CD Projekt’s decision to be known as CD Projekt Red is quite understandable, since for most people, they’re essentially the same company, known for their large-scale open-world RPGs. As for fans that might be worried about whether this affects the development of upcoming titles like The Witcher 4 or the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, there is little to worry about, since this was purely a change in branding and the company has announced no changes to its development pipelines, at least for now.
Earlier this month, co-CEO Michał Nowakowski had spoken about the studio’s slower approach to game development, since the previous console generation saw only the release of The Witcher 3 and a poorly-received port of Cyberpunk 2077. While he said that CD Projekt wants to make more games, “we never want to turn into the studio that’s going to be launching a big game every year.”
“It may happen, but this is not the goal,” he continued. “We have a rough ten-year rolling plan, but the goal is not to flood the games market with CDPR games. We just want to make really cool games, and we don’t want to have a ton of IPs either. We’re not planning to grow in that way.”
Looking to the company’s future and its past, Nowakowski also acknowledged the technical issues that plagued Cyberpunk 2077 when it originally launched back in 2020. Despite the more positive opinions on the title in recent times, especially since the release of its Phantom Liberty expansion, he said that the studio hasn’t quite redeemed itself just yet.
“I’m not 100 percent convinced we went through the full redemption arc,” he acknowledged. “I’m convinced that we lost the faith of some people indefinitely, and that’s a fair thing.” He went on to say that he hopes that the company “will be able to make it back – if not with The Witcher 4, then with whatever comes next.”
As for The Witcher 4, the title is in development for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S and doesn’t yet have a release date. Nowakowski had previously mentioned that CD Projekt is planning a trilogy of The Witcher games within a six-year period and that any expansions to The Witcher 4 “would be difficult”.
