Lead Game Designer for The Witcher & Cyberpunk 2077 Resigns

Mateusz Kanik who was both the lead designer and director at CD Projekt and helped in the production of Cyberpunk 2077 has left the company after working there for 15 years. He joined the company in 2006 where he worked on the first Witcher game as a junior game designer. He is currently a self-employed freelancer.

CD Projekt nor even Kanik himself gave an official statement acknowledging his retirement, except for the updated information on his LinkedIn account. He also tweeted a well know quote from The Witcher which is “something ends, something begins”. Kanik never gave an explanation for leaving the firm but it doesn’t really come as a surprise considering he spent more than 15 years working at CDPR.

According to his portfolio, he joined CDPR in December 2006 and swiftly advanced through the ranks going on to become a senior game designer at the firm. While at CDPR, he focused on the development of the Witcher as well as one unreleased Xbox 360 port. Later around 2010 he served as the lead gameplay designer for The Witcher 2. He also took part in the production of the wither 3 but he wasn’t as involved as he was with the past Witcher games. In 2012 he got the position of Game director for the well-known Cyberpunk 2077 game.

As evident by the success of these games he was very good at his job and he held on to the position of both the lead game designer and director right up until January 2022. We know virtually little about Kanik's future ambitions but it looks like he is still interested in working on video games. For now, we do not know what projects Kanik may be working on or if he is even working on any project at all. Something ended but we do not know what will be beginning.

Why do you think he left CDPR? A new project, a scandal? We would like to know your thoughts on this so please share them with us in the comments section.