Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
CD Projekt
CD Projekt S.A. (Polish: [ˌt͡sɛˈdɛ ˈprɔjɛkt]) is a Polish video game company based in Warsaw, founded in May 1994 by Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński. Iwiński and Kiciński were video game retailers before they founded the company, which initially acted as a distributor of foreign video games for the domestic market. The department responsible for developing original games, CD Projekt Red, best known for The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077, was formed in 2002. In 2008, CD Projekt launched the digital distribution service Good Old Games, now known as GOG.com.
The company began by translating major video game releases into Polish, collaborating with Interplay Entertainment for two Baldur's Gate games. CD Projekt was working on the PC version of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance when Interplay experienced financial difficulties. The game was cancelled and the company decided to reuse the code for their own video game. It became The Witcher, a 2007 video game based on the works of novelist Andrzej Sapkowski.
After the release of The Witcher, CD Projekt worked on a console port called The Witcher: White Wolf; however, development issues and increasing costs almost led the company to the brink of bankruptcy. CD Projekt later released The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings in 2011 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2015, with the latter winning various Game of the Year awards. In 2020, the company released Cyberpunk 2077, a role-playing game based on the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop game system for which it opened a new division in Wrocław.
A video game distribution service, GOG.com, was established by CD Projekt in 2008 to help players find old games. Its mission is to offer games free of digital rights management (DRM) to players and its service was expanded in 2012 to cover new AAA and independent games.
In 2009, CD Projekt's then-parent company, CDP Investment, announced its plans to merge with Optimus S.A. in a deal intended to reorganise CD Projekt as a publicly traded company. The merger was closed in December 2010 with Optimus as the legal surviving entity; Optimus became the current incarnation of CD Projekt S.A. in July 2011. By September 2017, it was the largest publicly traded video game company in Poland, worth about US$2.3 billion, and by May 2020, had reached a valuation of US$8.1 billion, making it the largest video game company in Europe. In March 2018, the company joined WIG20, an index of the 20 largest companies on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The company is also listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
CD Projekt was founded in May 1994 by Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński. According to Iwiński, although he enjoyed playing video games as a child they were scarce in the Polish People's Republic (which experienced political unrest, martial law, and goods shortages during the 1980s). Marcin Iwiński, in high school, was selling cracked copies of Western video games at a Warsaw marketplace (stalls on the streets with many such products were popular in the newly established and aggressively privatised Third Polish Republic of the 1990s). In high school, Iwiński met Kiciński, who became his business partner; at that time, Kiciński was also selling video games.
Wanting to conduct business legitimately, Iwiński and Kiciński began importing games from US retailers and were the first importers of CD-ROM games. After Poland's transition to a primarily market-based economy in the early 90s, they founded their own company. Iwiński and Kiciński founded CD Projekt in the second quarter of 1994. With only $2,000, they used a friend's flat as a rent-free office.
When CD Projekt was founded, their biggest challenge was overcoming video game piracy. The company was one of the first in Poland to localize games; according to Iwiński, most of their products were sold to "mom-and-pop shops". CD Projekt began partial localization for developers such as Seven Stars and Leryx-LongSoft in 1996, and full-scale localization a year later. According to Iwiński, one of their first successful localization titles was for Ace Ventura; whereas previous localizations had only sold copies in the hundreds, Ace Ventura sold in the thousands, establishing the success of their localization approach. With their methods affirmed, CD Projekt approached BioWare and Interplay Entertainment for the Polish localization of Baldur's Gate. They expected the title to become popular in Poland, and felt that no retailer would be able to translate the text from English to Polish. To increase the title's popularity in Poland, CD Projekt added items to the game's packaging and hired well-known Polish actors to voice its characters. Their first attempt was successful, with 18,000 units shipped on the game's release day (higher than the average shipments of other games at the time).
Hub AI
CD Projekt AI simulator
(@CD Projekt_simulator)
CD Projekt
CD Projekt S.A. (Polish: [ˌt͡sɛˈdɛ ˈprɔjɛkt]) is a Polish video game company based in Warsaw, founded in May 1994 by Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński. Iwiński and Kiciński were video game retailers before they founded the company, which initially acted as a distributor of foreign video games for the domestic market. The department responsible for developing original games, CD Projekt Red, best known for The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077, was formed in 2002. In 2008, CD Projekt launched the digital distribution service Good Old Games, now known as GOG.com.
The company began by translating major video game releases into Polish, collaborating with Interplay Entertainment for two Baldur's Gate games. CD Projekt was working on the PC version of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance when Interplay experienced financial difficulties. The game was cancelled and the company decided to reuse the code for their own video game. It became The Witcher, a 2007 video game based on the works of novelist Andrzej Sapkowski.
After the release of The Witcher, CD Projekt worked on a console port called The Witcher: White Wolf; however, development issues and increasing costs almost led the company to the brink of bankruptcy. CD Projekt later released The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings in 2011 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2015, with the latter winning various Game of the Year awards. In 2020, the company released Cyberpunk 2077, a role-playing game based on the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop game system for which it opened a new division in Wrocław.
A video game distribution service, GOG.com, was established by CD Projekt in 2008 to help players find old games. Its mission is to offer games free of digital rights management (DRM) to players and its service was expanded in 2012 to cover new AAA and independent games.
In 2009, CD Projekt's then-parent company, CDP Investment, announced its plans to merge with Optimus S.A. in a deal intended to reorganise CD Projekt as a publicly traded company. The merger was closed in December 2010 with Optimus as the legal surviving entity; Optimus became the current incarnation of CD Projekt S.A. in July 2011. By September 2017, it was the largest publicly traded video game company in Poland, worth about US$2.3 billion, and by May 2020, had reached a valuation of US$8.1 billion, making it the largest video game company in Europe. In March 2018, the company joined WIG20, an index of the 20 largest companies on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The company is also listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
CD Projekt was founded in May 1994 by Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński. According to Iwiński, although he enjoyed playing video games as a child they were scarce in the Polish People's Republic (which experienced political unrest, martial law, and goods shortages during the 1980s). Marcin Iwiński, in high school, was selling cracked copies of Western video games at a Warsaw marketplace (stalls on the streets with many such products were popular in the newly established and aggressively privatised Third Polish Republic of the 1990s). In high school, Iwiński met Kiciński, who became his business partner; at that time, Kiciński was also selling video games.
Wanting to conduct business legitimately, Iwiński and Kiciński began importing games from US retailers and were the first importers of CD-ROM games. After Poland's transition to a primarily market-based economy in the early 90s, they founded their own company. Iwiński and Kiciński founded CD Projekt in the second quarter of 1994. With only $2,000, they used a friend's flat as a rent-free office.
When CD Projekt was founded, their biggest challenge was overcoming video game piracy. The company was one of the first in Poland to localize games; according to Iwiński, most of their products were sold to "mom-and-pop shops". CD Projekt began partial localization for developers such as Seven Stars and Leryx-LongSoft in 1996, and full-scale localization a year later. According to Iwiński, one of their first successful localization titles was for Ace Ventura; whereas previous localizations had only sold copies in the hundreds, Ace Ventura sold in the thousands, establishing the success of their localization approach. With their methods affirmed, CD Projekt approached BioWare and Interplay Entertainment for the Polish localization of Baldur's Gate. They expected the title to become popular in Poland, and felt that no retailer would be able to translate the text from English to Polish. To increase the title's popularity in Poland, CD Projekt added items to the game's packaging and hired well-known Polish actors to voice its characters. Their first attempt was successful, with 18,000 units shipped on the game's release day (higher than the average shipments of other games at the time).