Dying Light dev calls The Witcher a ‘turning point’ for Poland as the country becomes one of the most important modern hubs for game development

In the past two decades, there’s been a major shift in the games industry in Europe. Despite having a drastically small space in gaming in the late 1990s, Poland is now one of the biggest producers of game development in Europe with major studios like CD Projekt, Techland, People Can Fly, Bloober Team and more based in the country.

In an interview with VideoGamer for an upcoming episode of the VideoGamer Podcast, former Techland lead programmer and current Far From Home CEO Andrzej Blumenfeld discussed the huge growth of the Polish games industry. As a developer and gamer for his entire life, Blumenfeld explained just how important The Witcher was to the explosion of the modern games industry in the country.

The Early Polish games industry

While Blumenfeld is currently the CEO of indie studio Far From Home—which has just launched the 1.0 version of its popular survival anti-pollution game Forever Skies—the developer remembers just how hard it was to find solid work as a programmer just fifteen years ago.

“When I was studying, I mean, I knew from the very beginning that I would like to work as a game developer,” Blumenfeld told us. “So when I went to the studies, I was like directly trying to go in a direction that is like math… physics, you know, so I knew exactly what I would like to do. At the same time, I remember when I could start working during the holidays, maybe I could ask people for an opportunity to work. And it was really hard to get a job in [the] industry, there was not many companies. It was really wild.”

Blumenfeld took his first job without any payment, a sad reality for many early game devs in the region, but as the developer was growing into his own as a game developer, so too was the entire country’s games industry.

Why so many Polish games have their own engines

Making games anywhere is hard, but in Poland it was rougher than many would expect. The majority of popular game engines—Unreal Engine, RenderWare, etc—were made with American developers in mind. There wasn’t any localised documentation to help developers learn, and engines at the time also required a sizable licensing fee to use.

“It was so hard [back then],” Blumenfeld said. “I believe there was a lot of very motivated people with huge skill set of how to develop games. You know, we didn’t have the technology that is available right now, you know? Like Unreal Engine or Unity, that you can easily learn from the internet. At that time, most companies had their own engines. So we was like learning C++, sometimes assembly, so very deep programming languages just to create games.”

Until very recently, the majority of game developers in Poland worked on proprietary tools. Cyberpunk 2077 was made on the RED Engine, which the studio is abandoning for Unreal Engine 5, Techland uses the Chrome Engine, and many others were essentially forced to create their own tools to create their games, but those games were made.

“We are able to create games that are, like, universal. We are reaching to people all over the world.”

FAR FROM HOME CEO ANDRZEJ BLUMENFELD

The rise of The Witcher

While games like Call of Juarez and other AA titles were being created in the region, it took one game to turn all eyes onto Poland’s games industry: The Witcher.

Released in 2007, CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher—an adaptation of the Andrzej Sapkowski fantasy series—was a significant success for the year it was released. Over time, the original game—which only released on PC—sold over 1 million copies. While not the first game from Poland to see success outside of the country, it was a major “turning point” for the country’s games industry.

“We had a huge, huge demo scene where like people were trying to create a small video games or I would say video art that was like packaged in a small amount of memory,” the developer explained. “We got very huge amount of perfectly skilled programmers that from that stage they become programmers in companies later on, they were like working in Techland, CD Projekt, or so on. So I believe that we had this background that allowed us to dream about creating games.”

“All of this together creates The Witcher,” he continued. “I believe this [is a] turning point because from this small development we had in our country, we [as a country] created one of the most recognisable games. Of course, the first Witcher was not so big, but in Poland it was massive [what] was happening with that game. Then the second and the third title which is one of the most successful titles ever, not only from Poland, but reality.”

“All of this combined together allows us as a country that was sometimes a little bit separated from everything to become a hub for people that want to do something that’s not only selling in Poland. We are able to create games that are, like, universal. We are reaching to people all over the world. It gave us the voice, and it gave us the way to communicate, to use out skills to touch people, to show them what we are dreaming about.”

Since the release of The Witcher, the Polish games industry has skyrocketed in size. Techland, where Blumenfeld worked on Dying Light and Dying Light 2, now has over 550 employees in three locations; CD Projekt Red has 615 with an additional 519 in other companies. Game development in Poland is now huge, and it’s only getting bigger.

In 2022, the Polish games industry saw a massive boost in revenue of 250% over just five years, and that number is only continuing to grow. While it may be hard to believe for those who aren’t paying close attention, Poland is now one of the fastest-growing and most important hubs for game development in Europe. While The Witcher may be the turning point, continued releases such as Dying Light, Silent Hill 2 Remake, Frostpunk, Ghostrunner, and more are keeping the industry strong.