CD Projekt, the Polish holding company behind The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077, no longer exists under that name. After a shareholder vote on June 23, the parent group officially rebranded to CD Projekt RED — the same name its game development studio has carried for over two decades. The change sounds minor until you realize it collapses a corporate structure that separated the holding company from its studio for 24 years. Whether that simplifies things or adds a layer of confusion depends entirely on how closely you follow the business behind the games.
How a 24-Year Split Between Parent and Studio Finally Ended
CD Projekt was founded in 1994 as a game distributor in Poland. It was never a studio — it was the business wrapper around one. In 2002, the company created an internal development arm called CD Projekt RED, and that division became the team responsible for building The Witcher franchise and, later, Cyberpunk 2077.
For over two decades, two names coexisted. “CD Projekt” meant the listed holding company on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. “CD Projekt RED” meant the developer. Journalists, investors, and fans often used them interchangeably, but technically they were different entities. The parent owned the studio. The studio made the games.
The shareholder vote changed that structure. Management’s stated reason was brand consistency — specifically, making the company easier to identify with its products on the global market and improving its position when recruiting international talent. The company’s own resolution language pointed to the fact that the parent and the development arm had been sharing the same core activities: game development, publishing, and IP management. Keeping two names for essentially one business was creating noise rather than clarity.
GOG Is Gone, and That Makes This Rebrand Make Sense
The name change does not happen in a vacuum. At the end of 2025, CD Projekt sold the GOG digital storefront back to its founder, Michał Kiciński, for $25 million. GOG had been part of the group for years, but the platform had drifted from the studio’s direction. The sale was a clean separation.
With GOG out of the picture, the remaining business is almost entirely about making games and managing intellectual property. The Witcher 4 is in active development for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S out of the Warsaw studio. A sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 is in development at CD Projekt RED’s Boston office. There are two additional projects in earlier stages — Project Sirius and Project Hadar.
A holding company called CD Projekt that owned a studio called CD Projekt RED made logical sense when you also had GOG in the group. Strip that out, and the two-name structure stops making business sense. Renaming the parent to match the studio is the cleaner move. The brand the world recognizes is CD Projekt RED. Now the listed entity carries that same name.
Where the Confusion Creeps Back In
Here is the wrinkle. For years, anyone who followed the gaming industry learned to use “CD Projekt RED” specifically for the development studio. The parent was “CD Projekt.” That distinction actually helped in some contexts — investors reading financial disclosures, journalists covering corporate news, and industry watchers tracking studio headcount versus holding company structure.
Now, “CD Projekt RED” covers everything. The listed entity. The Warsaw studio. The Boston studio. All of it. That merger of names removes a layer of specificity that served a purpose. If you are talking about the Warsaw team working on The Witcher 4 specifically, versus the broader corporate entity with multiple studios and projects, you now have fewer words to make that distinction.
From a pure branding standpoint, this is a strategic win. Most consumers never tracked the parent-studio split. They knew CD Projekt RED as the maker of their favorite games, and now the company’s stock listing and press releases carry that same name. Recruitment, global marketing, and investor communications all get cleaner.
From an industry-tracking standpoint, a subtle layer of corporate clarity disappears. That is a small trade-off for a company whose audience cares far more about The Witcher 4 than its holding structure — but it is worth naming.
The bigger signal here is strategic focus. CD Projekt RED is now a leaner organization with a clear identity, two active studios, and four projects in the pipeline. The rebrand does not change a single line of game code, but it does reflect a company that sold its non-core asset, unified its brand, and pointed everything toward the next generation of its franchises. For a studio that spent years managing a complicated post-Cyberpunk 2077 launch, that kind of structural clarity is not nothing.