Game News They had fun modifying video games as amateurs, now they are working on The Witcher 4 and the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077
CD Projekt RED is a renowned studio, one of the most renowned around. And a number of developers were discovered and then recruited even though they were “just”… modders.
Modding, a real goldmine for developers
CD Projekt is one of the most talented Polish studios and a huge machine with more than 1,230 employees. It must be said that its games are colossal (not to mention other divisions like GOG): Cyberpunk 2077, for example, was an extremely ambitious game, just like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. At the moment, The company is currently actively working on a brand new episode of The Witcher, which will start a new saga. Pending its official name, it is called “Polaris”.
To successfully complete the development, CD Projekt therefore had to recruit the best people possible… and it turns out that among them are many former modders who were not necessarily predestined to join the studio’s ranks permanently. Pawel Sasko, who is notably working on the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 (yes, already), returned to this corporate trend in an interview with Flow Games.
There was a video on YouTube about a guy who started converting the prologue of The Witcher 1 into The Witcher 3 without the official modding tools. I saw the video and thought, “Damn, this is very high quality work,” so I asked Philipp Weber (CD Projekt’s Narrative Director, ed.), who is also a modder himself, if he knew this guy in the community. And he said, “Yeah, yeah, I know who that is.”
I said, “Send him a message and tell him to send us his resume.” He sent me the resume and we did the test, which was great. He was great. He did a great design test.
From farmer to developer at CD Projekt
Pawel Sasko continues: This more than conclusive test made him ask questions the feasibility of recruiting Eero Varendi, an Estonian in his twenties who was working on a beet farm in Australia at the time.
He was picking turnips with some kind of giant combine harvester. That’s what he did during the day and modding at night; currently he’s a senior on Polaris, the new Witcher game. He’s absolutely passionate about The Witcher.
Although he doesn’t specify it, it seems that Eero Varendi is exactly the modder he spoke of before, the one who remade the prologue of the first The Witcher in The Witcher 3. An exemplary journey for the current developer, who is precisely not an isolated case: “Half of the team working on the quests” for the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 (or about twenty-four people) are former modders.
In addition, Pawel Sasko encourages the curious to get involved in modding, a real professional showcase for studios. “Honestly, some of the best people we have are former modders.” You know what you still have to do!
