CD Projekt cut 29 jobs, most of them from The Molasses Flood

In October of the preceding year, CD Projekt Red (CDPR) unveiled a suite of projects under development, which included new games set within the universes of The Witcher and Cyberpunk. Among these, Project Sirius, a novel offshoot of The Witcher, was being developed by The Molasses Flood, a Boston-based studio acquired by CDPR in 2021.

Image credit: CD Projekt RED

While Project Sirius was considered an innovation in The Witcher universe, CDPR encountered a series of issues with the project in March of the current year, according to PCGamer. They began to evaluate its feasibility and commercial potential, instigating the construction of a new framework for the game. This endeavor required approximately two months, and by May, Project Sirius was back on track. Despite appearing as though the game was undergoing a complete overhaul, the framework’s restructuring was actually based on elements already developed by The Molasses Flood.

Due to significant shifts in the development direction, CDPR made 29 redundancies, primarily from The Molasses Flood, comprising 21 members in the United States and 8 in Poland. According to LinkedIn data, The Molasses Flood currently employs between 11 and 50 individuals, a modest size considering the provision of a multiplayer mode within Project Sirius.

As per the details disclosed last October, CDPR may concurrently have a minimum of five projects underway, with some, like the official sequel to ‘The Witcher,’ being developed to AAA game standards. Given CDPR’s scale and history, this is an audacious move. However, the efficacy of Project Sirius’s reboot will only be discernible once further details of the game are publicly disclosed.