CD Projekt Red Lays Off The Witcher Multiplayer Spinoff Developers

CD Projekt Red’s ambitious roadmap of new titles has hit a major roadblock as the studio puts one of its bigger in-development titles on the backburner indefinitely. Codenamed project Sirius, the game promised a unique blend of single-player and multiplayer elements set in The Witcher universe.

Unfortunately, the studio said that it needed to reevaluate the game’s scope and commercial potential and promising to work on a new framework for the project. This is after sinking over $7 million on the project.

In line with the suspension of Project Sirius, the game’s developer and CD Projekt Red subsidiary, The Molasses Flood, has been hit with multiple layoffs. A total of 29 employees who were working on the game have now been let go. This included 21 employees from the US and 8 from Poland. Considering that the team working on the project only consisted of roughly 60 people when it was first announced, that’s a big chunk of the team’s headcount.

“Because the project changed, so has the composition of the team that’s working on it – mainly on The Molasses Flood’s side,” said CDPR. It’s still unclear whether the multiplayer elements of the game will see the light of day following the studio’s framework revamp, which is exactly what happened to Cyberpunk 2077.

Readers will remember that the controversial steampunk game was originally meant to ship with a multiplayer component that ended up getting axed in the end, presumably due to time constraints. We’ll find out sooner or later whether Project Sirius will suffer the same fate.