CD Project Red to stop active development of GWENT in 2024

CD Projekt Red has announced plans to stop the active development of the The Witcher-based digital card game GWENT in 2024 and hand it over to the community.

Game director Vladimir Tortsov and senior communication manager Pawel Burza announced the plan in a recent GWENT roadmap video. They also revealed that the development team would release new card drops and esports activities before moving on to other projects.

There will be seventy-two new cards launched throughout April, July and September next year. It will also organize two tournaments, one in the summer and one in the winter, with more details to follow.

“We are not planning to release new cards starting from 2024, so the cards which will release in 2023 basically will be the last brand-new ones that we will be adding to the game,” Tortsov said.

Project Gwentfinity

The developer wants to keep GWENT surviving in another form. It is encouraging the community to participate in Project Gwentfinity, a community-led initiative.

For the time being, the developer’s primary goal is to nurture GWENT to a self-sustaining point. It will then give the community the tools they need to make changes and support the game after it leaves.

Project Gwentfinity will include a seasonal progression system that will prize players for having a creative deck and a feature that will allow the community to vote on how to develop the game.

“We’re working on the solution which will allow players to do it directly in the GWENT client, so it’s not some complicated external system,” Tortsov said.

Tortsov also said that no developer or special access would be required for the community. However, he admitted that the system might not be as reliable as the official tools for large-scale work, including adding new cards or inventing new abilities.

Tortsov promised to ensure players can interact with the game by playing it and determining which direction it should go. The most challenging aspect of the process, according to Burza, will be agreeing on functional changes.

“Balance is also one of these things that always give you these polarized opinions when it comes to what cards should be, how they should work, so I’m interested to see how this will actually affect the decision making from the community standpoint,” Burza said.

“Because if you look at it from a developer’s standpoint, we’re kind of looking into things from, standing from, and looking from kind of up above. But when it comes to players who are playing the game I feel like there is also this personal engagement within the game which causes you to favor and disfavor certain archetypes.”

Burza expressed his interest in seeing how the changes would affect community participation. A small team will continue to work on GWENT to keep the project running. Still, most of the people at CD Projekt Red will work on other projects, with the company revealing seven projects in development earlier this year, including a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel.

GWENT can be downloaded for free on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Android, and iOS devices.