New Witcher Game Project Sirius Is Undergoing Some Changes

It looks like changes are afoot for one of the new Witcher games that CD Projekt announced in October 2022. The company announced today, March 20, that the new Witcher game in development at The Molasses Flood in Boston underwent an "evaluation" of its "scope and commercial potential" against the original concept.

Based on that evaluation, CD Projekt decided to take an "impairment allowance" of close to $10 million. In a regulatory filing, CD Projekt Red the values of expenses incurred from this impairment allowance amounted to 33.4 million PLN ($7.6 million USD) for 2022 and 9.5 million PLN ($2.2 million USD) for January and February 2023. This comes out to 42.9 million PLN, or $9.7 million USD.

Video game business reporter Game Over Thirty said CD Projekt's move here suggests a "complete scrapping" of the existing version of Project Sirius. CD Projekt's statement went on to say that the company will now work on "formulating a new framework for this project."

A spokesperson for CD Projekt told GameSpot: "Our current focus is ensuring that Project Sirius is aligned with the strategy of the CD PROJEKT Group. At this point in time, we are neither providing insight into the evaluation of the project nor the potential future frameworks thereof."

The game was announced in October 2022 under that codename, with CD Projekt billing it as an innovative take on The Witcher series aimed at veterans and newcomers alike. It was in pre-production as of October 2022 and had more than 60 people working on it then.

The Molasses Flood previously developed The Flame in the Flood, a survival game featuring original music from Chuck Ragan.

Project Sirius was one of multiple games that CD Projekt announced in October 2022. Others included a new trilogy of mainline Witcher games from CD Projekt Red itself, as well as a third-party Witcher game codenamed Canis Majoris. The studio also announced a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel and a new IP with the codename Hadar.