CD Projekt RED has spoken about the mistakes made with Cyberpunk 2077’s development and how it’s avoiding the same for two of its biggest projects, The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2. However, in a Digital Dragon panel attended by GamesRadar, lead technical writer Jarosław Ruciński and senior technical writer Adrian Fulneczek discussed how the problems started much further back.
It started with the complete lack of documentation for The Witcher 1 and 2, and, surprise, “nothing from that period” exists.
“We were tasked to recreate the classic game for the mainstream audience, only to realize that we had little to no technical knowledge preserved from that time,” said Ruciński, referring to the upcoming remake from Fool’s Theory. With Cyberpunk 2077, the team opted for a “fresh start” and utilised Confluence, a “living documentation tool.”
Unfortunately, what started with the best intentions turned into over 8,000 pages of barely useful material (and maintaining it was, unsurprisingly, a “low priority”). Things became even worse when Phantom Liberty shifted to a “cloud instance of Confluence” for its documentation.
As Fulneczek notes, “It was chaos, right? Two spaces, two instances. It was very difficult to understand for us, for our outsource partners as well… If you can, don’t divide between platforms or different tools. You have to link very clearly between them.”
Thankfully, CD Projekt RED has overhauled its documentation process. Referring to The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2, Fulneczek said, “The future looks really promising for us. We learned our lesson.”
“We’ve got some new requirements, especially a new definition of ‘done’. So as you know, any project, any game goes through development stages, and right now, every stage ends with a gate. Part of the requirements to pass that gate is the documentation, which wasn’t the case before.”
Ruciński added, “Unlike in the past, now, today our knowledge isn’t locked between specific teams’ permissions. It’s a shared asset. If a team working on, let’s say, The Witcher figures out a solution for a specific issue, the Cyberpunk team can see it, benefit from it, take it into their own code, modify it probably a little bit.” This means that “problems aren’t being solved multiple times by different teams, and also that if a breakthrough happens on one of the projects, the whole company benefits.”
While this is all well and good, the fact that CD Projekt RED shipped some of the biggest games out there despite this messy approach says something. It also makes one excited about what a properly organised development team can deliver in the future, that too without severely burning out its workers.
The Witcher 4 doesn’t have a release date, though it entered full production in late November 2024. As for Cyberpunk 2, it was last noted to be in the pre-production phase as of May 2025. Teams for both have been scaling up, however, so it wouldn’t be surprising if there were new announcements this year.
It’s great to see CD Projekt RED reflecting on past experiences and striving to improve their development processes. Learning from mistakes is crucial for growth, and it will be interesting to see how these lessons shape their upcoming titles. Looking forward to what they create next!
Absolutely! It’s encouraging that they’re taking these lessons to heart, especially since good documentation can really streamline the development process. It’ll be interesting to see how these changes impact the overall quality and player experience in their upcoming titles.
You’re right! Good documentation can really streamline the development process. It’ll be interesting to see how these changes improve not just project management but also the overall experience for gamers in their upcoming titles.
Absolutely! Clear documentation not only helps with efficiency but also fosters better communication among teams. It will be fascinating to see how these lessons impact the overall quality of The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2.