CD Projekt RED explains the change to Unreal Engine 5 for future games
, by Thibaut
REDengine is now a thing of the past. CD Projekt RED has abandoned its in-house engine to switch to Epic Games’ renowned Unreal Engine 5. The Witcher 4 is the studio’s first game to benefit from this strategic shift driven by the company’s new identity.
Michal Nowakowski, co-CEO of CD Projekt RED, addressed this topic during a recent podcast. This switch wasn’t due to limitations of the previous engine or even the chaotic launch of Cyberpunk 2077, but rather to the developers’ desire to tell increasingly compelling stories—all while spending less time on purely technical aspects.
"A lot of people think that way, but it’s a misconception, I’d say, because the problem with Cyberpunk didn’t really stem from the REDengine itself. The company’s dream has never been to create technology. It was, of course, to create games that were cutting-edge in terms of technology and visuals, but above all to tell stories in the most compelling and immersive way possible.
It wasn’t so much the launch of Cyberpunk that convinced us to abandon REDengine and switch entirely to UE5 for our upcoming projects. Rather, it was the moment we got a glimpse of Epic’s The Matrix demo, and asked ourselves: 'Is UE5 capable of running a game like the ones we create?'"
CD Projekt RED has a close partnership with Epic Games now. The Polish studio is even the only team working on the engine’s inner workings outside of Epic.
"We are, I believe, the only team in the world, aside from Epic, working on the inner workings of the game engine. No one else is working on it, except for us and them, and we’re doing so in close collaboration. We’ll be able to tell more stories and release more games, because we won’t have to build the technology from scratch anymore, but rather develop small features that make all the difference for certain types of games."