Witcher and Cyberpunk CEO addresses bogus claim CDPR is in "dire trouble" because it's too "woke" - "Seems we live in times where anyone can record complete nonsense"
"Now, can we stop looking for conspiracy theories and go back to making cool stuff?"
CD Projekt is the latest game studio to receive a spurious claim that it's failing because it's gone too woke. That in itself is hardly news - there's a whole industry out there of people profiting off of misplaced gamer rage - but this one has gone and gotten a response from one of the CEOs of the Witcher and Cyberpunk studio.
"Seems we live in times where anyone can record complete nonsense and make a story out of it," joint CEO Michał Nowakowski says on Twitter, quote tweeting a link to a video making a lot of extreme claims. "CDPR talent leaving? We have the lowest rotation of people in recent years. DEI-driven recruitment? We hire based on merit and talent alone, just as we make games driven by artistic vision alone. Why did we choose UE? Because it enables us to work on our games more efficiently and we remain cutting edge tech-wise. The Witcher 3's director left? Well, yeah, more than two years ago… Now, can we stop looking for conspiracy theories and go back to making cool stuff?"
The Witcher 3 was, of course, one of the most beloved games of all time, and while the state of Cyberpunk 2077 bruised the company's image in a major way - the director of Cyberpunk 2 has acknowledged they may "never" win some fans back - years worth of updates and the response to the excellent Phantom Liberty expansion have certainly adjusted the narrative.
With all the upcoming CD Projekt Red games in development right now, the company is making big bets, and it's entirely possible some - or all - of them will fail to pan out in the end. But anybody who's here to tell you the company is failing today because of 'wokeness' or 'DEI' is simply trying to make you mad and profit off of that anger.
We admittedly don't know a lot about The Witcher 4 yet, but you can follow that link for a breakdown of everything CD Projekt has said so far.
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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.