Poland's CD Projekt happy with pre-orders for Phantom Liberty

By Adrianna Ebert

GDANSK (Reuters) -Poland's biggest video game developer CD Projekt is content with advance sales for Phantom Liberty, an expansion to its Cyberpunk 2077 game that debuts Sept. 26, CEO Adam Kicinski said on a Wednesday conference call after first-half results.

"After two months, we are very happy with how it's going. But of course most pre-orders come in during the final pre-release days", he said without giving specific sales figures.

Kicinski added that the quality assurance process is almost complete for Phantom Liberty, which is the studio's first major new game release in nearly three years.

The game is the first and only expansion to Cyberpunk 2077, which came out in 2020, and the company started the marketing campaign for Phantom Liberty in June.

"Positive reactions from gamers and media representatives alike fill us with optimism", Kicinski said in a statement.

Member of the management board Michal Nowakowski reiterated on the conference call that Phantom Liberty will be the only expansion to Cyberpunk 2077.

"The decision has been actually made already, as we've announced a long time ago. We're not going to make a second or third expansion", he said.

He said the decision is related to the company's transition to the Unreal Engine software framework from its proprietary REDEngine technology. Phantom Liberty is the last project developed on REDEngine.

CD Projekt posted a 20% year-on-year fall in first-half net profit to 91.3 million zlotys ($22.35 million), with revenue falling 14% year-on-year to 325.2 million zlotys.

At the end of July, its biggest developer group, about 300 people, worked on Phantom Liberty. The team working on its new Witcher game, under code name Polaris, grew to almost 260 developers.

($1 = 4.0855 zlotys)

(Reporting by Adrianna Ebert and Patrycja Zaras; Editing by Tomasz Janowski, Josie Kao and Cynthia Osterman)