CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski has issued a strongly worded response to accusations that the studio “is in a lot of trouble right now” because of “diversity hires,” saying the people peddling such nonsense need to “stop looking for conspiracy theories.”
“Seems we live in times where anyone can record complete nonsense and make a story out of it,” Nowakowski said in response to a post on X by YouTuber Endymion, who has a long history of stridently complaining about diversity and “wokeness” in videogames.
“CDPR talent leaving? We have the lowest rotation of people in recent years. DEI-driven recruitment? We hire based on merit and talent alone, just as we make games driven by artistic vision alone. Why did we choose [Unreal Engine]? Because it enables us to work on our games more efficiently and we remain cutting edge tech-wise. The Witcher 3’s director left? Well, yeah, more than 2 years ago… Now, can we stop looking for conspiracy theories and go back to making cool stuff?”
Yeah the “they’re ruining the integrity of video game journalism” argument was insane to me. What integrity? Companies routinely paid for good reviews and everyone knew it. It’s a really corrupt industry, but people only got upset because of some shenanigans by women? I think? I never actually looked into what it was about because the whole thing seemed nonsense to me.
Reviews of some indie games were bought, it was asserted, because the games involved just wandering round a location investigating things (i.e. the diary notes in Resident Evil and System Shock) and didn’t even let you collect experience points like a proper masculine game.