Former BioWare Disruptor: CD Projekt's Ambitions Put The Studio In A Very Dangerous Position

This article was first written on the site Gimfa Gimfa: news, reviews of games, cinema, movies and series in the former dismaying link of Bioware: CD Project's ambitions have put this studio in a very dangerous position. Mark Dara, the former executive producer of Anthem and one of the veteran directors of the Bioware game development studio, while warning about the rising and staggering development costs in AAA titles, believes that

Mark Dara, the former executive producer of Anthem and one of the long-time managers of the Bioware game studio, while warning about the rising and staggering development costs in AAA titles, believes that the CD Project Red studio, the creator of The Witcher and Cyberpunk franchises, is in a very vulnerable and dangerous position due to the excessive scale of its projects.

According to Rock Paper Shotgun media, during an interview recently published in the book Summer Eternal Anthology, Mark Dara dissected the economic problems governing the game industry and the increasing complexity of the production process of expensive works. He believes that the extreme specialization of various departments in game development has led to the inflation of manpower and the excessive size of the production teams; To the extent that even the smallest changes require coordination and simultaneous involvement of several expert forces.

He goes on to explain how the unbridled increase in the number of employees greatly increases the vulnerability of studios to possible delays. According to Dara, if a studio with a development team of 500 people is delayed by just one month in the release of its game, this short-term delay can impose a heavy financial burden equivalent to 5 to 10 million dollars in excess costs to the overall budget of the project; A situation that shows how much delays, even in minor dimensions, can have devastating financial consequences.

The veteran executive argues that the video game industry is polarizing at an alarming rate. On one side of this field, there are giants such as GTA, Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed and Battlefield, which have the ability to digest astronomical budgets thanks to their huge fan base. But on the other hand, there are a huge number of studios that do not have the necessary economic resilience to bear such costs and sooner or later, they will be forced to reduce and adjust the scale of their projects.

Referring to CD Projekt Red's approach, Dara notes that this Polish company has now entered the high-risk club of creators who need to sell tens of millions of copies of their work just to break even. In this regard, he clearly states:

Their games now need to sell somewhere between 15 and 20 million copies in the market just to break even. Being in such a dead end is really scary and risky.

Of course, it should be kept in mind that the figures presented by Mark Dara are only personal estimates based on his experiences, and CD Project Red managers have not yet confirmed such a heavy sales threshold to guarantee the success of their future projects.

These kinds of concerns are raised at a time when the dimensions and scope of the process of making the expected game The Witcher 4 has experienced an exponential growth. According to the latest official statistics provided by CD Project, by the end of July 2026, as many as 519 developers were directly involved in the construction of this project; A figure that alone is more than twice the number of members of the entire team making The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. In addition, the studio is parallely advancing the development of the second version of Cyberpunk and several other side projects.

In another part of this interview, Dara mentions the game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as a successful and different model in the development of role-playing titles. According to him, the Sandfall Interactive studio has succeeded in creating a high-quality and standardized work by adopting a smart policy of maintaining a relatively small internal core and outsourcing major parts of the production process to third-party companies. He believes this flexible structure has the potential to become a lifesaving model for other studios to shed their crippling dependence on multi-hundred-person teams.

With all these interpretations, Mark Dara's realistic warnings do not necessarily mean that the CD Projekt Red studio is currently facing a crisis or financial problems. Financial reports show that in the first six months of 2026, the company has managed to record an income of 435 million Polish zlotys and a net profit of 249 million zlotys. In fact, the main concern of this veteran producer is focused on the foggy future of the game industry and the staggering risk of investing in projects whose survival depends on the sale of several tens of millions in a competitive and ruthless market.