The Witcher 4 is the work of over twice as many CD Projekt staff as The Witcher 3, in a fresh display of how blockbluster team sizes have ballooned

Not including outer contributors

The Witcher 4 is the enactment of implicit doubly arsenic galore CD Projekt developers arsenic The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the company's executives person revealed. That's astir arsenic galore radical arsenic worked connected Cyberpunk 2077, though naturally, the fig excludes a batch of outer oregon infrequent contributors, specified arsenic dependable actors.

"As we are present successful the astir intensive signifier of The Witcher 4 development, the squad has grown to 513 developers, portion the Cyberpunk 2 and Sirius squad besides grew by a twelve oregon so," associated CEO Michał Nowakowski explained successful the company's latest financials. "This reflects a unchangeable organizational setup that has the close capabilities and expertise successful place."

(Cyberpunk 2 is CD Projekt's WIP sanction for their follow-up to Cyberpunk 2077, and yes, I person already written unspeakable jokes astir the caller crippled being acceptable soon aft the commencement of noted edgerunner Jesus Christ. As for Sirius, this is an unannounced Witcher multiplayer spin-off.)

Asked successful an online Q&A this week whether CD Projekt mightiness grow the squad further, VP of capitalist relations Karolina Gnaś observed: "we judge that close present we person the close premix of expertise and skills, but of people we whitethorn somewhat set the squad size depending connected our needs."

For context, CD Projekt revealed successful 2015 that The Witcher 3 had a halfway squad of 240 people, though astir 1500 radical contributed to the crippled astatine assorted points. As for the consequent Cyberpunk 2077, it was the enactment of 530 in-house devs, with a further 5200 radical "engaged" connected the task passim its development.

CD Projekt inactive person a mode to spell earlier they tin eclipse Ubisoft and the Assassin's Creed bid – according to its ain credits, Assassin's Creed Shadows is the enactment of implicit 7000 people, dispersed crossed 15 studios and including outer contributors. Consider each this fodder for the on-going speech astir sustainable squad sizes, and to what grade the biggest games effort to offset oregon 'hide' their bloat by outsourcing work.

It is bizarre to callback that the precise archetypal Witcher RPG kicked disconnected with a squad of astir 15. Certainly, fewer of those archetypal devs imagined that CD Projekt would swell to specified a fearsome scale, which is partially wherefore they neglected to support bully notes connected the instauration of their ain games.