Too darn bad if true! (in so far as what blotunga said, an unwillingness to make an actual DRM-free version) But not much we can do. I do hope GOG can get one or more highly-anticipated releases for their 15th anniversary this fall; Bethesda still seems willing to work with GOG.

PLN 3 292 thousand is 3,292,000 = ~$766,900, correct?

edit: or more like $90,000 for just the title assumed to be Hitman 2.

Facts and Numbers (Based on the 2022 Annual Report of the CD Projekt Group)

From an article that's due to go live later today(?).

Much appreciated, thanks. I was hoping we could get a good summary like that. Looks like things are going pretty well for GOG since they started trying to make changes according to our feedback! Let's hope they keep listening.

Q1 2023 results are out today. GOG sales are up 1.2 million zloty vs 2022, net profit is at 248 thousand zloty vs 152k in the prior quarter.
https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/investors/result-center/
In the conference call, they confirm that CDP is not for sale and are not in talks with Sony.

So they made about $59,000 USD in profit in contrast to about $36,000 USD which they had made previously?

The numbers sound much less impressive when stated in USD. Although I guess it's good that at least they aren't losing money. But I wouldn't call those numbers a huge success.

An update on their teams. They make claims of being overstaffed and will be letting ~100 people go at the beginning of Q1 2024.

https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/media/news/cd-projekt-red-organizational-update/

That's rather stupid of them. They could just do as Dreamworks did during the development of Prince of Egypt/Shrek and send the staff that have demerits to work for GOG.

I agree, it's not a good look. At best, it looks like they're no longer concerned about reducing crunch. At worst, it looks like they're in dire straits financially.

Not a good sign.

Q: How to ensure that you make "quality games, on time and without crunch" ?
A: By laying off 10% of your workforce.

Sure. The logic is sound.

Some people on Twitter made a serviceable counter-point, though. With them shuttering Spokko (and The Witcher: Monster Slayer), as well as them effectively placing Gwent in an indefinite maintenance mode, they can reduce their team size from that. The problem is that I can't imagine the two games' teams had 100 people, even combined. Even so, why let them go? Why not add them to one of the main games' dev teams? "Overstaffing" for a company that's still going to take ages to release their games is not an excuse, in my opinion.

Less than serviceable counterpoint: We know GOG is severely understaffed and could use new staff anyway. They could have filled all immediate roles and supplanted support staff or at the very least given them the option to transfer into GOG. That could have allowed maybe 25 people to remain close to the company with opportunity to transfer back in should things pick back up, and kept good will, instead of making further additional CDPR splinter groups.

I'm not business manager (as my personal view of the world would make such a position self-sabotaging), but I feel many of them underestimate the value of retention and especially the value of people who understand the internal culture of a development. Hades help you if you're someone who was trained on Kanban getting lead into the useless tyre fires of Agile.

No way Gwent's core team had more than 10 people. And, by looking at the recent updates, it already feels like 1-2 people at max. The info about the changes in Gwent was released long time ago and I do not think it will play any significant role in the current wave of predicted layoffs.

I would have to agree. If CDPR wants to make more money, improving GOG is a great way to do that. They seemed to be interested in doing so but we've seen very little effort this year so far, sadly enough.

My thoughts exactly, I was just offering what I saw mentioned on Twitter as a possible explanation. I don't think it's accurate. Gwent, even at its peak, probably didn't have more than 25-30 people on board. I'd also say Spokko probably never had more than that either, as Monster Slayer was a cool idea but most of the development was derived from Google Maps so I don't think it's likely that they needed much of a dev team.

H1 2023 financials are out now:
https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/investors/result-center/
Due to the weakest Q2 results in 5 years, GOG posted revenue for the H1 period in the amount of ~84 million zloty and a net loss of 141 thousand zloty. Pre-order income from Phantom Liberty won't be realized on the balance sheet until the expansion releases. Minimum guarantees, advance and prepayments went up from 41.457 million zloty to 47.706.