Time For the New Adventure
After nearly eight years with CDPR, Andrzej Zawadzki, the studio’s senior gameplay designer – and one of the creative minds behind Cyberpunk 2077 – is leaving the beleaguered company behind.
After almost 8 years, my time at CDPR has come to an end. It's time for the new adventure.
To every person I've met on the way – thank youIt was an honor and pleasure.
See you around— Andrzej Zawadzki (@ZawAndy) March 22, 2021
Zawadzki first joined CD Projekt Red as a QA Tester for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, being offered the role of Junior Gameplay Designer in 2016, working on Cyberpunk 2077. Since then he’s taken on numerous roles within the game’s development such as RPG Coordinator, eventually working his way up to the role of lead game designer.
“After almost 8 years, my time at CDPR has come to an end. It’s time for the new adventure.” said Zawadzki, “To every person I’ve met on the way – thank you It was an honor and pleasure. See you around :)”
It’s not just his creative input that will see Zawadzki missed – he was among the most vocal names in the studio to stand against the death threats staff received following Cyberpunk 2077’s numerous delays, and its eventual buggy release.
There’s no word yet on why Zadawzki has decided to leave the studio, or what his future career goals are. However, he did reveal that he’s going to be taking “long holidays” – and, let’s face it, in a year that’s seen massive crunch time and had you receiving multiple death threats, long holidays are justified.
I want to address one thing in regards of the @CyberpunkGame delay.
I understand you're feeling angry, disappointed and want to voice your opinion about it.
However, sending death threats to the developers is absolutely unacceptable and just wrong. We are people, just like you.— Andrzej Zawadzki (@ZawAndy) October 27, 2020
Whether you like the final product or not, it’s hard to deny that Cyberpunk 2077 had a lot of hype, and it still has a lot of potential. Poland has been growing into one of the biggest markets for game development over recent years, with CDPR at the crest of the wave, so don’t discount the announcement of a new studio, with Zawadzki at the helm, sometime soon.