The second spin-off studio to spawn from ex-CD Projekt staff has appeared, this time being founded by Mateusz Kanik, the Game Director of Cyberpunk and veteran of The Witcher series. This all-new studio – Blank – follows the likes of ‘Rebel Wolves’ a studio created earlier this year that was also founded by recent employees of Poland-based CD Projekt.
Blank, which at present is playing host to just ten team members, has lofty goals and philosophies – not to mention a huge amount of veteran experience and talent. Mateusz Kanik, alongside Jedrzej Mroz and Marcin Jefimow (Executive Producers, The Witcher and Cyberpunk) have spun off from CD Projekt to create a studio in Warsaw, and they’re preparing to start up ‘bold, impactful projects’.
Emotion, Story, and Craftsmanship
Mateusz Kanik spent fifteen years working at CD Projekt, covering the entire Witcher videogame series and then moving on to Cyberpunk 2077. Presently, almost every team member working within the Blank studio has some kind of connection to CD Projekt, with design, art, and narrative employees coming across to bolster Blank’s ranks.
In a statement, Kanik expressed his excitement at the studio’s future:
We’re thrilled to announce Blank. and to start expanding our incredible team. After working for years in an increasingly conservative industry, we’re ready to make bold, impactful projects that share our unique creativity and values. Where the industry champions a dictatorship of the creative individual, we want to give ownership to the team. Where the industry leans on crunch culture, we prefer work-life balance. Where the industry says bigger is better, we’re setting our sights on highly polished games with a focus on emotion, story, and craftsmanship.
There’s a desire to expand the team to around sixty employees which will ultimately support the development of the studio’s first title. There’s something in the works as we speak, but at the moment, nobody knows what kind of game the studio will create.
This news is nothing but encouraging, especially given the recent revelations that layoffs are being made internally at CD Projekt.
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