CD Projekt Red says Witcher 4 engine switch was not about Cyberpunk launch
CD Projekt Red did not drop its own game engine because of Cyberpunk 2077.
That is the account from co-CEO Michał Nowakowski, speaking in an interview with the Deconstructor of Fun podcast reported on 18 September 2026. He said the decision to build The Witcher 4 with Unreal Engine 5 was not a reaction to the troubled launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020. Video Games Chronicle
The engine was not the problem. Nowakowski said the issue with Cyberpunk 2077 was not really REDengine itself, the studio's proprietary game engine, the core software it used to build its large open-world games.
REDengine powered three major releases in different forms: The Witcher 2, released in 2011, The Witcher 3, released in 2015, and Cyberpunk 2077, released in 2020. In March 2022, CD Projekt announced its next Witcher game would instead use Unreal Engine 5, which is made by Epic Games and licensed to many studios. Later in 2022, the company announced it was also remaking the original Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5.
So what prompted the change? Nowakowski pointed to The Matrix Awakens, a city-based tech demo, a real-time showcase built to display what new hardware and software can do, released by Epic to show off Unreal Engine 5. He said that demo, not the Cyberpunk launch, gave the studio its biggest incentive to switch.
The move came with a working arrangement. Nowakowski said CD Projekt Red formed a strategic collaboration with Epic to develop the Unreal Engine 5 features it needs for games of its size and scope, meaning large maps, dense crowds and long stories that must run smoothly on consoles and PC.
That partnership has already been shown in public. CD Projekt Red joined Epic on stage at State of Unreal 2025 to present a tech demo of The Witcher 4 running in Unreal Engine 5, according to a company announcement published on 3 June 2025. CD Projekt Red
For fans, this means the engine change is about tools for what comes next, not a verdict on what came before. The studio is betting that an engine used across the industry, shaped with its own input, will carry its next run of open worlds.
