CD Projekt CEO pays tribute to BioWare: 'massive part of CDPR history' after closure

The studio that defined the modern computer RPG is gone, and the company that inherited its crown wants the world to know the debt. CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski took to X on October 21, 2026 to honor BioWare, which was shuttered that day, writing: "Bioware has been a massive part of CDPR history." His tribute was not ceremonial. He detailed exactly how BioWare's help, from a loaned engine to a shared E3 booth, allowed The Witcher to exist in the first place. "We befriended them when localizing and selling Baldur's Gate games in Poland, Czech, and Slovakia. And later they were great help when lending us their engine for Witcher 1, sharing their wisdom and even giving us a spot at their booth at E3," Nowakowski wrote. The acknowledgment reframes BioWare's legacy: its influence extends beyond Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age, straight into the very foundations of modern RPG powerhouse CD Projekt.

That engine was the Aurora Engine, BioWare's follow-up to the Infinity Engine, best known for powering Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, and Jade Empire. CD Projekt used it for The Witcher, the breakout RPG that launched the studio's rise from Polish localizer to global industry heavyweight. The relationship predates The Witcher. As Nowakowski recalled, CD Projekt approached BioWare and Interplay to localize Baldur's Gate for Poland, won the gig, and turned that release into a major hit. A subsequent plan to localize Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance collapsed when Interplay fell apart, but the bond with BioWare held, and that resilience became the foundation for a historic collaboration. The E3 photos shared by Ryszard Chojnowski, a translator whose credits include The Witcher and Baldur's Gate 2, show CD Projekt's tiny corner of BioWare's booth in 2004, separated by a curtain, with a PC running a rough Aurora-Engine demo of The Witcher.

For context on how consequential that help was, consider the state of the industry in 2004. BioWare was already a legend, having resurrected the CRPG genre in the late 1990s with Baldur's Gate and followed it with Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, and Jade Empire. CD Projekt was a scrappy distributor, not yet a developer. The Aurora Engine loan gave the Polish upstart a technical backbone it could not have built alone. The E3 booth space gave it visibility at the industry's most important trade show, an almost unimaginable gift from a direct competitor in the same genre. Nowakowski's tribute makes clear that this was not a simple licensing transaction. It was mentorship, friendship, and a conscious act of lifting up a future rival.

That dynamic is rare in any industry, and it is vanishing in today's game development landscape. Consolidation, live-service pressure, and ballooning budgets have made studios far more protective of proprietary tools and trade-show real estate. The CD Projekt-BioWare relationship is a case study in how open collaboration can multiply the entire sector's value. A studio that shares its engine with a smaller competitor does not just gain a licensee. It gains a partner, an ecosystem, and ultimately a lineage that honors its own work. CD Projekt went from localizing BioWare's games to building The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and one of the most valuable franchises in gaming, while BioWare's influence lives on inside those codebases and those designers' mental models.

Nowakowski also remembered the personal side of the partnership: "I had a pleasure to visit them a few times in Edmonton and also host them in our Warsaw office. Very sad for the people affected, but also sad to see a legendary brand go down. Not a great day in the games industry." His tone speaks to a deeper truth about the risk embedded in studio culture. When a studio closes, it is not just a brand that vanishes. It is a repository of institutional knowledge, technical mastery, and relationships that have ripple effects across an entire generation of games. For executives running studios, the lesson is both obvious and uncomfortable: the same firm that once propped up a future giant can itself be shuttered by a parent company's strategy shift.

What is notable about Nowakowski's tribute is that it goes beyond the standard corporate condolences. He names specifics, gives credit to a direct competitor, and places BioWare at the very origin of CD Projekt's story. In a 2014 Polygon interview, CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwinski said, "It all started, in a way, with Baldur's Gate." That origin story, now retold by the current CEO, puts BioWare's closure into sharper relief. The studio that helped bring The Witcher into the world is gone, but its fingerprints remain on a franchise that has sold tens of millions of copies and defined an era of narrative RPGs. For decision-makers across tech and entertainment, the broader takeaway is strategic: collaboration with a smaller rival can look like self-harm on a quarterly earnings chart, but over two decades it can compound into an industry legacy far larger than any single product.

BioWare's closure does not just end a chapter for its own fans. It severs a thread that ties together Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect, and The Witcher, a thread that shaped how hundreds of millions of players understand role-playing games. Nowakowski's public tribute serves as a reminder that the value of a studio is not only in the games it ships, but in the engine code it lends, the booth space it gives, and the rivals it chooses to lift up. Those choices echo for decades. As the games industry grows more consolidated and proprietary, the CD Projekt-BioWare story becomes a rare counterexample, and a cautionary tale about what is lost when a legendary brand goes down.