CDPR attributes the lack of Cyberpunk 2077 DLC to the switch to Unreal Engine

Phantom Liberty will be the first and final DLC of Cyberpunk 2077 when it is released on September 26th. Afterward, CD Projekt Red will shift its focus to other projects, including the next Witcher game. According to the Senior Vice President of Business Development, Michał Nowakowski, this decision was made as the team has completed work with their in-house Red Engine.

"To be honest, it's a technological decision," Nowakowski said in a Q&A session (as reported by VGC). "This will be the last time we work on the Red Engine for now, and in the foreseeable future, as you know, we are working with Epic's Unreal Engine. This was one of the main reasons why we decided that this would be the only one."

The Red Engine was developed after the infamous canceled console port of 'White Wolf' for the first Witcher game. It was designed to make it easier to port The Witcher 2 and its successor to PlayStation and Xbox. Eventually, White Wolf nearly drove the company to bankruptcy due to a costly and protracted development process, as well as demands from Atari to repay the money for financing the port that was never released. Over the years, new iterations took shape, such as the Red Engine 4 used in Cyberpunk 2077, which now supports ray tracing. However, after the partnership with Epic Games, CDPR retired the Red Engine in favor of Unreal.

"This is an exciting moment as we transition from the Red Engine to Unreal Engine 5 and begin a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games," CD Projekt Red announced in a blog post last March. "This partnership encompasses not only licensing but also the technical development of Unreal Engine 5 and potential future versions of Unreal Engine, as relevant. We will collaborate closely with the developers at Epic Games, with the main goal being to adapt the engine for open-world experiences."

The release of Phantom Liberty is imminent, which means that CDPR is deploying more developers for its next major project. According to CDPR CEO Adam Kiciński, "a significant portion" of the 300-developer team from Phantom Liberty will be transferred to the next main game of The Witcher series, codenamed Polaris, after the DLC's release.

"At the end of July, the Phantom Liberty team working on the pre-production phase consisted of 300 individuals," Kiciński said in a conference call discussing the company's results. "That is fewer than at the end of 2022, but it is still our largest team. On the other hand, the Polaris team has grown to nearly 260 developers by the end of July."

We know nothing about this Witcher sequel, not even its name, but CDPR has stated that it will herald a "new saga" for the series.