CD Projekt explained the transition of The Witcher 4 to UE5 - it was not the failure of Cyberpunk 2077

CD Projekt co-head Michal Nowakowski rejected the widespread version that the studio abandoned REDengine due to the problems of Cyberpunk 2077. According to him, the decisive moment was the demonstration of The Matrix Awakens on Unreal Engine 5 and the understanding that Epic was ready to develop the technology together with CDPR.

REDengine was not named as the cause of Cyberpunk problems

Novakovsky directly said that linking the transition to Unreal Engine 5 with the unsuccessful technical start of Cyberpunk 2077 is “a bit of a false assumption.”REDengine was used in The Witcher 2, The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk, but the company itself never set out to be an engine developer.

CD Projekt's priority is to create visually advanced games and tell stories, rather than maintaining a full technology stack in-house.This changes the meaning of the transition: we are talking about resource allocation, and not about declaring our own engine unsuitable.

The turning point was Matrix Awakens

According to Nowakowski, the early showing of The Matrix Awakens tech demo led the team to ask whether UE5 could handle a game of CDPR's scale.At the time, the answer was “not yet,” but working together with Epic could address the specific requirements of large open worlds.

This is where the strategic partnership grew.CD Projekt has gained access to deep work with the internal components of the engine and is involved in adding features needed by its projects.

What does this change for The Witcher 4

The Witcher IV becomes CDPR's first new major game based on this foundation.At the same time, the technologies and pipelines of the project should become the foundation for other developments, including a remake of the first Witcher.

The transition is also important for the pace of production: the studio does not need to develop the entire engine from scratch in parallel with the creation of each game.We recently wrote about new major update for The Witcher 3 — the old game still lives on the REDengine, while the future of the series is already being built differently.

Not a rejection of technology, but a change of role

CDPR still writes its own solutions on top of Unreal Engine and, together with Epic, changes the engine itself.The difference is that the underlying technology platform is now supported by a much larger ecosystem.For the player, the outcome will be assessed not by the name of the engine, but by stability, the scale of the world and how much the new technology helps the design.