CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski has issued a strongly worded response to accusations that the studio “is in loads of hassle proper now” due to “range hires,” saying the folks peddling such nonsense have to “cease searching for conspiracy theories.”
“Appears we stay in instances the place anybody can document full nonsense and make a narrative out of it,” Nowakowski stated in response to a put up on X by YouTuber Endymion, who has a protracted historical past of stridently complaining about range and “wokeness” in videogames.
“CDPR expertise leaving? Now we have the bottom rotation of individuals in recent times. DEI-driven recruitment? We rent primarily based on benefit and expertise alone, simply as we make video games pushed by inventive imaginative and prescient alone. Why did we select [Unreal Engine]? As a result of it allows us to work on our video games extra effectively and we stay leading edge tech-wise. The Witcher 3’s director left? Nicely, yeah, greater than 2 years in the past… Now, can we cease searching for conspiracy theories and return to creating cool stuff?”
It is value noting, as a optimistic, that CD Projekt does make a degree of embracing range initiatives regardless of Nowakowski’s “on benefit and expertise alone” remark. The corporate is a signatory to the Variety Constitution in Poland, “a doc committing to non-discrimination within the office in addition to to the introduction of insurance policies that create and promote range.” In 2023 it earned recognition from the 30% Membership, a corporation “aiming to spice up the variety of girls in board seats and government management of corporations everywhere in the world,” for its menstrual depart initiative. It additionally created a mentoring and scholarship program known as Ladies within the Recreation!, which helps ladies in highschool “take their first steps within the videogame business.”
I am not a company cheerleader by nature, however to be completely, unmistakably clear, these and different associated applications are good issues for video games and the videogame business, and CD Projekt management deserves credit score for making no bones about that reality in public-facing statements.
“Our mission is to create revolutionary video games for gamers around the globe and that is WHY we have to empower the potential of our groups,” CD Projekt chief technique officer Adam Kiciński says in a message shared on the studio’s Variety and Inclusion web page. “A range of views unlocks creativity and will increase innovation.”
It is pleasing to see pushback from business executives on this sort of ridiculous nonsense and fairly frankly I would wish to see much more of it, however I do must marvel what led to the accusations within the first place. CD Projekt made one of many most-loved RPGs of all time, and when it subsequently dropped one of the vital notorious bombs of all time it spent years turning it round into what is sort of presumably the best-known videogame redemption arc of all time. Now it is acquired a number of highly-anticipated initiatives within the works throughout studios around the globe. The place is the imagined destructive affect of numerous hiring, a lot much less “dire hassle?” Solely, I’m fairly positive, in perpetually aggrieved imaginations.
