The Success Story of CD Projekt Red, Which Sold Pirated Games When First Established (1/2)

CD Projekt Red, one of today's giant game companies, actually has very humble beginnings. This company, which has authored cult games such as Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher series, has managed to survive in the harsh conditions of Poland and make a place for itself in the gaming industry.

CD Projekt Red is a Polish-based video game developer and publisher, known for titles such as The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077. When the company was founded in 1994, it was a game distributor that sold only pirated games.

However, over time, it started to make its own games and achieved great success worldwide. So how did CD Projekt Red go from being a pirate CD distributor to one of the most valuable game companies in the world?

Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński, founders of CD Projekt Red, were two friends with a passion for gaming living in Poland in the early 1990s.

They loved to play games, but it was very difficult for them to access games. Because Poland was a communist country at the time and Western games were banned in their country. Therefore, the duo obtained games illegally and copied and sold them. There was no law protecting copyrights in Poland at that time. So in a way they were pirating.

Realising that they were making good money from pirated game sales, the duo founded a company called "CD Projekt" in 1994 and started distributing games. As you will understand, the word "CD" in the name of the company comes from the piracy business they were dealing with.

CD Projekt's first major project was to bring Baldur's Gate to Poland in a deal with Interplay.

He negotiated with Interplay and BioWare and secured a deal that was perhaps the company's biggest turning point. Baldur's Gate was a huge hit in Poland and raised CD Projekt's profile.

Baldur's Gate, which they localised with the most famous voice artists, sold 18,000 copies on its first day and 50,000 copies in its first year, when it was expected to sell 3,000.

The situation that affected this sale the most was that it made a difference against pirated games by having quality boxes, manuals and extra content.

In a way, they made the versions that are sold as "Collector's Editions" today.

Although it is a pirate business, it was the first company to officially import and distribute games in Poland because of their devoted work.

As the Polish distributor of games such as Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Fallout, Diablo and Warcraft, it has become a pioneer in the Polish gaming market. It facilitated access to games by translating them into Polish and adapting them to the needs of local gamers.

After the success of Baldur's Gate, it continued its contact with Interplay and BioWare. But there was bad news for our company in this part. The upcoming Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance would not be released on PC.


Meanwhile, Interplay asked CD Projekt, "Why don't you make the PC version of this game?" The company, which always wanted to make a game, worked on this game for 6 months.

However, due to Interplay's financial problems, the PC version of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance was cancelled. This situation both upset and put CD Projekt into a big crisis.

Since there is a limit, the continuation will be in the next blog. Don't forget to comment and follow. See you again soon :)