A bunch of developers who worked at CD Projekt Red on games like The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 have formed a new studio. In the last decade, Polish developer CD Projekt Red has quickly risen as one of the most acclaimed studios out there. The developer had been quietly raising the bar for itself for years, but really made a mainstream name for itself when it launched The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2015. The game was showered with awards, immense commercial success, and had people speaking about the team in the same breath as other RPG developers like BioWare and Bethesda. Although CD Projekt Red burnt up some of its goodwill with the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, people have still been able to appreciate the game for what it is and acknowledge the studio has worked hard to make it better since it came out.
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With that said, some of the talent that made up that studio and gave us those great games have moved on to found their own team. The studio will be known as Blank and it’s already working on a new, untitled project that’s described as character driven story set in the post-apocalypse with a “twist or two”. Blank aims to tell original, “novel” stories that aren’t “clones” of other games players are already familiar with. The studio has about 10 people on staff currently and is looking to expand to 60 people at its studio in Warsaw.
“We’re thrilled to announce Blank. and to start expanding our incredible team,” said Mateusz Kanik, Blank. Co-founder and Game Director. “After working for years in an increasingly conservative industry, we’re ready to make bold, impactful projects that share our unique creativity and values. Where the industry champions a dictatorship of the creative individual, we want to give ownership to the team. Where the industry leans on crunch culture, we prefer work-life balance. Where the industry says bigger is better, we’re setting our sights on highly polished games with a focus on emotion, story, and craftsmanship.”
As of right now, we have no idea how this will turn out. It will likely be many years before this project sees the light of day given how small the team is right now and how early it all seems to be. Nevertheless, it has a lot of talented folks backing it, which should hopefully allow them to make something pretty special.
