CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski has issued a strongly worded response to accusations that the studio “is in numerous hassle proper now” due to “range hires,” saying the folks peddling such nonsense have to “cease searching for conspiracy theories.”
“Appears we stay in occasions the place anybody can document full nonsense and make a narrative out of it,” Nowakowski stated in response to a publish on X by YouTuber Endymion, who has a protracted historical past of stridently complaining about range and “wokeness” in videogames.
“CDPR expertise leaving? We have now the bottom rotation of individuals in recent times. DEI-driven recruitment? We rent primarily based on advantage and expertise alone, simply as we make video games pushed by creative imaginative and prescient alone. Why did we select [Unreal Engine]? As a result of it permits us to work on our video games extra effectively and we stay innovative 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 price noting, as a optimistic, that CD Projekt does make a degree of embracing range initiatives regardless of Nowakowski’s “on advantage 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 company “aiming to spice up the variety of girls in board seats and government management of firms all around the world,” for its menstrual go away initiative. It additionally created a mentoring and scholarship program known as Women within the Sport!, which helps women in highschool “take their first steps within the videogame trade.”
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 trade, and CD Projekt management deserves credit score for making no bones about that truth in public-facing statements.
“Our mission is to create revolutionary video games for gamers all over the world 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 trade 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 crucial notorious bombs of all time it spent years turning it round into what is sort of probably the best-known videogame redemption arc of all time. Now it is obtained a number of highly-anticipated initiatives within the works throughout studios all over the world. The place is the imagined unfavourable impression of various hiring, a lot much less “dire hassle?” Solely, I’m fairly positive, in perpetually aggrieved imaginations.
