CD Projekt Red valued at over $2bn despite H1 2017 revenues dip
Studio's profits dropped $5m year-on-year but still ongoing success of The Witcher, GOG and Gwent drive firm forward
CD Projekt Red has released its financial results for the first half of 2017, showing a slight dip in both revenues and profits.
For the six months ended June 30th, the developer behind The Witcher games generated revenues of 254.82m zloty (just over $71m), with profits after tax of 143.24m zloty (approx. $40.2m), according to the studio's report.
However, for the same period in 2016, the firm saw revenues of 318.99m zloty ($89.8m) and profits of 163.1m zloty ($45.9m) - a $5m decrease year-on-year for the latter.
Nonetheless, GamaSutra notes that upon release of these results CD Projekt Red was valued at around 8.2bn zloty or $2.3bn. That's more than double the $1bn it was valued in August 2016.
The Polish firm's success stems from the popularity and ongoing sales for The Witcher series. The Witcher III and its expansions Heart of Stone and Blood & Wine continue to drive sales for the firm. It's worth noting that CD Project Red also operates online digital retailer GOG.com, which the firm notes showed a strong performance over the past six months.
A major contributing factor to GOG's success this year is Gwent, the free-to-play digital card game spun out from The Witcher III. Currently in beta, the game has proven to be popular enough to warrant CD Projekt Red attempting to establish it as an esport, with a major $850,000 tournament now in the works.
The esport tournament was announced at Gamescom, as was a new single-player RPG expansion for the game, Gwent Thronebreaker. CD Projekt Red is also working on the hotly anticipated sci-fi RPG Cyberpunk 2077.