Executive Overview
CD Projekt is navigating one of the most ambitious eras in its corporate history. While the Polish video game titan commands mainstream attention through tentpole franchises like The Witcher 4, the eventual successor to Cyberpunk 2077 (officially designated as Cyberpunk 2), and various remasters and remakes, a quieter narrative unfolds behind closed doors. Tucked away from the primary marketing machine are two long-simmering mystery initiatives known only by their internal codenames: Project Sirius and Project Hadar.
For years, these titles have existed on the periphery of public awareness, overshadowed by blockbusters designed to drive immediate shareholder confidence. However, during a recent H1 investor earnings call, CD Projekt’s Vice President of Investor Relations, Karolina Gnaś, provided a much-needed status update. Gnaś reassured stakeholders that both projects remain active components of the company’s long-term multi-ip strategy, even if their timelines are extraordinarily protracted.
Project Sirius—a multiplayer-focused spin-off set within The Witcher universe, spearheaded by the fully absorbed studio The Molasses Flood—is currently crawling through pre-production amidst restructuring and team downsizing. Meanwhile, Project Hadar—an entirely original intellectual property (IP) crafted from scratch—remains mired in the conceptual phase, roughly where it stood when conceptualization began half a decade ago.
This deep-dive report examines the turbulent histories, development hurdles, and strategic importance of Sirius and Hadar, contextualizing them within CD Projekt’s broader corporate evolution as the studio transitions from a single-franchise powerhouse into a multi-project enterprise.
Detailed Chronology: The Long and Winding Road of Sirius and Hadar
To understand where Projects Sirius and Hadar stand today, one must trace their origins through CD Projekt’s turbulent post-Cyberpunk 2077 restructuring. Both initiatives were conceived during a pivotal corporate pivot in late 2020 and early 2021, when management formally abandoned its old "single-Axiom" development model in favor of concurrent, multi-project pipelines.
The Genesis and Reboots of Project Sirius
Project Sirius first entered the public consciousness in 2021, when CD Projekt acquired Boston-based studio The Molasses Flood, renowned for atmospheric survival titles such as The Flame in the Flood and Drake Hollow. The studio was tasked with developing an ambitious, game-changing project within The Witcher universe.
Unlike single-player epics centered around iconic protagonists like Geralt of Rivia, Sirius was designed to break new ground by leaning heavily into multiplayer mechanics, systemic gameplay, and cooperative systems. The goal was to broaden the demographic appeal of The Witcher brand without cannibalizing the core single-player audience targeted by The Witcher 4 (codenamed Polaris).
However, ambition frequently breeds friction. By early 2023, Project Sirius ran into severe structural and creative roadblocks. CD Projekt abruptly halted development, initiated a comprehensive strategic evaluation, and took a massive impairment charge. The project was sent back to the drawing board for a total reboot.
The cascading effects of this reset continued to ripple outward. Initially promised operational independence to preserve its distinct creative culture, The Molasses Flood saw its autonomy steadily eroded. By early 2025, CD Projekt fully absorbed the studio, bringing its operational structure entirely under the corporate umbrella. Shortly thereafter, the development team suffered a brutal downsizing, with over 20% of its personnel laid off to align headcount with the project’s scaled-back, highly focused post-reboot requirements.
The Stagnation of Project Hadar
If Sirius’s timeline reads like a cautionary tale of corporate intervention and creative pivoting, Project Hadar’s history is defined by ethereal quietude. Unlike Sirius or the studio’s legacy cash cows (The Witcher and Cyberpunk), Hadar represents a brand-new, homegrown IP conceived entirely from scratch.
Announced formally in 2021 as a foundational pillar of CD Projekt’s post-2020 strategy, Hadar was envisioned as an emotional, narrative-driven open-world role-playing experience. Executive statements at the time heavily implied that while the setting and lore would be entirely divorced from monsters, witchers, and cybernetic mercenaries, the emotional resonance and structural depth would mirror the studio’s hallmark cinematic RPG formulas.
Yet, despite existing on paper since 2021, Hadar has made agonizingly slow progress. For years, executive updates regarding Hadar have relied on corporate euphemisms. Phrases like "progressing dynamically"—a term that often signals continuous internal iteration without tangible milestone delivery—have done little to mask the reality that the game has languished in pre-conceptual limbo. Gnaś confirmed during the recent investor briefing that Hadar remains firmly planted in the concept phase, virtually identical to its developmental state five years prior.
Supporting Context & Metrics: Inside the Numbers
Analyzing CD Projekt’s operational expenditure reveals why these secret projects move at a glacial pace. The studio’s resource allocation is heavily skewed toward its flagship endeavors. The Witcher 4 (Polaris) consumes the lion’s share of the company’s engineering talent, narrative designers, and technical infrastructure. Concurrently, early-stage pre-production for Cyberpunk 2 (Orion) absorbs secondary tier-one resources, keeping long-term horizons occupied.
By comparison, Sirius and Hadar operate as low-burn, high-risk auxiliary initiatives.
- The Sirius Headcount: Following the 2023 reboot and subsequent 2025 layoffs, the team size working under The Molasses Flood banner has been strictly rationed. Management has emphasized that the team cuts reflect the "current needs of the project," signaling a lean development philosophy designed to prevent the catastrophic bloat that plagued Cyberpunk 2077’s early development cycle.
- The Hadar Scaling Strategy: Hadar’s metrics reflect a minuscule footprint by AAA standards. Gnaś noted that the current team working on the original IP hovers just above 30 people. However, CD Projekt plans to aggressively scale this number, targeting a modest workforce of up to 50 developers by the close of the year.
These numbers paint a clear picture: Sirius and Hadar are not consuming massive capital expenditures or diverting crucial talent away from the primary revenue engines. They are being incubated under tightly controlled conditions, minimizing financial exposure while exploratory teams figure out foundational design loops.
Official Statements and Industry Insights
The most definitive insights regarding the state of Sirius and Hadar emerged directly from Karolina Gnaś during the H1 investor relations conference call. Addressing investor anxieties surrounding the protracted timelines and apparent lack of visible progress, Gnaś broke down the strategic reality of both titles.
Regarding Project Sirius, Gnaś contextualized the persistent structural adjustments:
"Pre-production is ongoing, and at this stage we are focused on testing different solutions and ideas we develop. This project is very different from our other projects because it’s focused on multiplayer. So there’s a lot of learning and testing in this particular one."
This emphasis on "learning and testing" underscores CD Projekt’s institutional inexperience with robust, standalone multiplayer ecosystems. Historically renowned for single-player narrative masterpieces, crafting a sustainable, scalable multiplayer loop represents an existential design challenge for a studio whose organizational DNA is built around authored, cinematic storytelling. The decision to trim staff was framed not as a failure, but as a calibration toward sustainable prototyping.
Turning to Project Hadar, Gnaś offered a grounded, albeit stark, assessment of its infancy:
"Right now the team is mostly focused on testing different approaches and ideas, and prototyping some gameplay elements… This is it."
The blunt finality of that closing remark amused industry watchers, cutting through the dense layer of corporate PR spin typically deployed during shareholder briefings. It reaffirmed a hard truth: Hadar is an embryonic concept, far removed from any tangible marketing campaign, vertical slice, or public release window.
Future Outlook: When—and If—We Will See Them
As CD Projekt looks toward the back half of the 2020s and beyond, the ultimate fate of Project Sirius and Project Hadar remains wrapped in uncertainty.
For Project Sirius, the path forward relies heavily on the success of its current prototyping phase. As the industry shifts away from poorly executed live-service models toward deeply engaging cooperative and community-driven experiences, CD Projekt cannot afford a misstep with its first major multiplayer foray. If The Molasses Flood can successfully merge The Witcher’s dark fantasy atmosphere with robust multiplayer systems, Sirius could establish a lucrative new vertical for the company. However, given its troubled history of reboots and downsizing, a release prior to the late 2020s or early 2030s appears highly improbable.
Project Hadar presents an even more distant horizon. With a team size capped at roughly 50 developers by the end of the year and its mandate strictly confined to conceptual experimentation, Hadar is effectively a generational bet. It represents CD Projekt’s insurance policy against creative stagnation—a third pillar designed to ensure the studio is not forever bound exclusively to The Witcher and Cyberpunk.
For general consumers and fans of CD Projekt’s single-player pedigree, these projects demand immense patience. With The Witcher 4, the Witcher 1 remake, Cyberpunk 2, and various expansions filling up the studio’s plate for the foreseeable future, Sirius and Hadar can afford to take their time. Whether that patient incubation yields artistic masterpieces or serves as a cautionary tale of protracted development purgatory remains one of the modern gaming industry’s most compelling unanswered questions.
