CD Projekt Red is growing Project Hadar's concept team while Fool's Theory waits on The Witcher 4 technology before moving ahead with The Witcher Remake.
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Project Hadar is getting a bigger team before it gets a public identity
CD Projekt Red is staffing up Project Hadar, its still-unannounced new IP, while The Witcher Remake remains paused around technology dependencies tied to The Witcher 4. That is the useful tension in the studio's latest public signals: CDPR is putting more people on the earliest playable experiments for its next original world, but it is not yet ready to resume full work on the remake of the game that started its RPG reputation.
According to IGN's report on CD Projekt Red's latest earnings call, vice president of investor relations Karolina Gnas said the Project Hadar team is now "over 30 people strong" and that CDPR plans "to hire more, up to 50 developers by the end of this year." Gnas also described the work as focused on "testing different approaches, ideas" and "prototyping some gameplay element," while stressing that Hadar is "still in the concept phase."
That wording matters. CD Projekt Red hiring around Project Hadar does not amount to a game reveal, a genre confirmation, a release window, or a platform plan. It does show that CDPR new IP work is moving from a tiny incubation effort into a larger concept and prototyping group. For an RPG studio, that is where foundational questions usually live: what kind of world supports progression, how players express agency, which verbs are interesting enough to build quests around, and whether an idea survives contact with playable systems. CDPR has not publicly answered any of those Hadar questions yet.
The headline number is smaller than some phrasing makes it sound
There is a distinction worth preserving for readers tracking CD Projekt Red hiring. IGN's article says Project Hadar is at more than 30 developers and is planned to reach up to 50 developers by the end of the year, citing Gnas on the earnings call. GamesRadar's headline frames CDPR as wanting to hire "50 more devs" for the secret project, but the quoted figure in IGN's sourced account describes a team growing up to 50 total developers, not an extra 50 on top of the current staff.
That difference changes the scale of the story. A 50-person concept team is meaningful, especially for a company already carrying The Witcher 4, a Cyberpunk sequel, The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past, The Witcher Remake, and Project Sirius in public reporting. It is not the same as a full production army. CDPR is increasing Hadar's capacity to explore and prototype, not telling investors that Hadar has entered the kind of content production cycle where hundreds of quest, environment, cinematic, combat, and technical staff are locking a shipping game into place.
The confirmed read is simple: Hadar is alive, internally active, and becoming large enough to test its assumptions with more discipline. The unconfirmed part remains almost everything fans would want from a reveal. CDPR has not announced whether Project Hadar is fantasy, sci-fi, contemporary, first-person, third-person, party-based, single-protagonist, class-driven, or even formally an RPG, though IGN reasonably noted that some kind of RPG is the safest expectation given CDPR's history with The Witcher and Cyberpunk.
The Witcher Remake is waiting on The Witcher 4's foundation
The Witcher Remake pause is not being described by CD Projekt Red as cancellation. It is being described as a production dependency. In a statement to GameSpot, quoted by IGN and Push Square, CDPR said Fool's Theory is focused mainly on The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past, while a relatively small part of the studio is supporting The Witcher 4. CDPR also said development on The Witcher Remake has been "temporarily integrated" with The Witcher 4 because of dependencies in the production process.
The key sentence from CDPR's statement is the practical one: "As The Witcher Remake will be built on the foundation laid by The Witcher 4, we need to have the necessary assets, tools, and pipelines ready for efficient development." That is less romantic than a remake announcement, but it is exactly the kind of issue that determines whether an RPG remake becomes a coherent modern game or a brittle conversion exercise.
Push Square notes that The Witcher 4 is CD Projekt Red's first major move away from its in-house REDengine and onto Unreal Engine 5. If the remake is meant to inherit tools, assets, workflows, and production logic from The Witcher 4, then pushing ahead too early could mean rebuilding work later. For a remake that has already been described in prior IGN coverage as open-world and willing to remove or remake outdated parts of the original, the dependency is especially important. The first Witcher was built around older quest structure, combat assumptions, and hub design. Turning that into a modern open-world RPG is not a texture pass. It needs the toolchain that will define the next Witcher era.
Fool's Theory has shifted from remake studio to Witcher support pillar
Fool's Theory was originally contracted to remake the first Witcher, according to Push Square's report, but its current workload has changed. CDPR's GameSpot statement says the studio is mainly developing The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past and has a smaller group supporting The Witcher 4. Wolf's Gaming Blog also points to comments from CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski, who told The Game File that Fool's Theory was supposed to work on The Witcher 1 Remake, but CDPR realized it needed more time because of technology dependencies with The Witcher 4.
That makes Fool's Theory a bridge team rather than a single-project remake shop, at least for the moment. Songs of the Past gives it an immediate Witcher production role with a familiar released game. The Witcher 4 support role lets it learn the new Unreal Engine 5-based pipeline that the remake is expected to rely on later. The paused remake is the delayed beneficiary of that arrangement, if CDPR's plan holds.
From a player-choice and quest-design perspective, this is the more patient route. A Witcher 1 remake that borrows from The Witcher 4's asset standards, quest tools, open-world systems, and pipelines has a better chance of feeling like part of the same modern lineage. The cost is obvious: players who wanted to revisit Vizima before moving into The Witcher 4 should reset that expectation. CDPR's current allocation points the other way.
CDPR's release runway is crowded, and the remake is behind the flagship sequel
The public schedule places The Witcher 4 at the center. IGN and Push Square both report that CD Projekt Red is targeting a 2028 launch for The Witcher 4. Songs of the Past is due in 2027 according to Wolf's Gaming Blog and Push Square's timing from its September 2026 report. IGN also reports that The Witcher 3 Remastered is due this month as a free upgrade for existing owners, with old save files supported.
Those dates create a staged Witcher runway: The Witcher 3 Remastered in 2026, Songs of the Past in 2027, and The Witcher 4 targeted for 2028. The Witcher Remake sits outside that chain because CDPR says it needs The Witcher 4's tools, assets, and pipelines to be ready first. IGN's interpretation is that fans should not expect the remake before 2028. Push Square goes further, speculating that 2029 or so is more likely. CDPR has not announced a release year for The Witcher Remake in the provided statements.
For fans, the practical guidance is to treat The Witcher Remake as a post-The Witcher 4 project unless CDPR says otherwise. It may resurface earlier through development updates, but the current staffing and technology explanation does not support expecting it to launch before The Witcher 4. If you are planning a series replay, The Witcher 3 Remastered and Songs of the Past are the near-term Witcher products with reported timing. The remake remains a longer wait.
Hadar hiring does not appear to be the reason the remake is paused
It is tempting to read every CD Projekt Red hiring update as a zero-sum contest between worlds: a new IP gaining people while The Witcher Remake loses momentum. The confirmed information points to a different cause. CDPR has tied the remake pause to The Witcher 4's technology and production pipeline, not to Project Hadar.
GameRant, reporting on CDPR's development allocation updates, said the company listed 975 active developers at the end of April across The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2, Project Sirius, Project Hadar, and other needs and services. GameRant also reported that The Witcher 4 had 513 developers at that point and Cyberpunk 2 had 163, with CDPR hiring 70 more developers since then. Those figures, if read alongside IGN's Hadar update, suggest a company expanding across multiple tracks rather than simply moving the remake's staff to Hadar.
The remake's bottleneck is more specific. Fool's Theory is occupied with Songs of the Past and supporting The Witcher 4, while CDPR says the remake needs The Witcher 4's foundation before efficient development can continue. Project Hadar's growth says CDPR is willing to invest in its future beyond licensed or established worlds, but it does not explain why Geralt's first game is waiting. The pause is about sequencing, tools, and shared technology.
What fans should realistically expect next
Project Hadar should be watched as an early-stage signal, not as the next CDPR game to plan around. A team growing toward 50 developers by the end of the year can make real progress on prototypes and creative direction, but Gnas's "concept phase" description should keep expectations grounded. No title, setting, protagonist, combat model, release window, platform list, price, or store page has been announced in the provided reporting.
The Witcher 4 is the nearer flagship, with a reported 2028 target. The Witcher Remake is still attached to Fool's Theory and still part of CDPR's plans according to the company's statement, but it is waiting for the sequel's technology base to mature. That makes the remake less of a parallel nostalgia project and more of a downstream use of the new Witcher pipeline.
For RPG players, the healthiest expectation is patience with clear categories. The Witcher 3 Remastered and Songs of the Past are the playable Witcher updates with near-term timing in the current reports. The Witcher 4 is the major systems reset for the franchise, especially with CDPR's move to Unreal Engine 5. The Witcher Remake is paused until that reset produces the tools it needs. Project Hadar is CDPR's longer-horizon bet, now large enough to be taken seriously, but still too early to be treated as a known game.