CD Projekt declared in an investor regulatory announcement (issued on May 11) that its troubled "Project Sirius" multiplayer game was back on track with a renewed development focus. Their briefing is titled: "New framework for Project Sirius, decision concerning partial reversal of the impairment allowance for 2022, and write-off of part of the development expenditures incurred in Q1 2023." As reported back in March, the Polish gaming group made the difficult choice to reboot its multiplayer focused Witcher title and write-off a significant chunk of the development budget. Last week's update seems to indicate that their North American studio, The Molasses Flood, is still involved in the making of Project Sirius and that a smaller chunk of project expenditure has been written off in the mean time.

The company's investor announcement coincided with emerging rumors of employee layoffs - gaming news outlets started to pick up on social media declarations last Friday (May 12). Yesterday CD Projekt confirmed that the refocused and restarted development process has resulted in a round of headcount cuts on both sides of the Atlantic. In a statement issued to PC Gamer, a company spokesperson says: "Because the project changed, so has the composition of the team that's working on it - mainly on The Molasses Flood's side. The concrete number of employees we parted ways with is 21 team members in the US and 8 in Poland (working on the project outside of the US)."

CD Projekt has admitted to writing off the development funds spent so far expended on Project Sirius - a codename for a satellite studio produced spin-off game in its best selling The Witcher series. The Polish development and publishing group is restarting Project Sirius from scratch, and it is not clear whether their East Coast USA-based outfit, Molasses Flood, will remain as part of the rebooted cycle. Within a recently released company financial report its reasoning was made clear: "The aforementioned decision is based on results of evaluation of the scope and commercial potential of the original concept of Project Sirius, and ongoing work on formulating a new framework for this project."

CD Projekt had spent over $7 million in 2022 on development costs for Project Sirius. More than $2.2 million has been spent in 2023, presumably right up until the decision to bin all currently completed work. Project Sirius was announced in the autumn of 2022, and at around that time Molasses Flood was undertaking a large scale recruitment drive. The game was in a pre-production phase by the end of the year, with over sixty members of staff confirmed to be working on it. Development was also being supported by members of CD Projekt RED's team at their Warsaw headquarters, and now it is very apparent that the overseers were not happy with what was going on in New England.