First reported by TechPowerUp (opens in new tab), CD Projekt revealed in a March 20 investor announcement (opens in new tab) that it is writing off costs related to Project Sirius, one of the three Witcher games currently in development. The company revealed that it appears to be writing off costs related to the project and restarting the project." The aforementioned decision is based on the results of an assessment of the scope and commercial potential of the original concept of Project Sirius."

The investor's report states that it is "continuing work to develop a new framework for this project."

CD Projekt announced three new Witcher games (opens in new tab) in October, a bit of a Witcher bonanza before the release of Witcher 3's performance-oriented, but still pretty great Next Gen patch. Two of those projects are unaffected by the announcement: Canis Majoris, a remake of the original 2007 Witcher (opens in new tab) in development at CDPR and Fool's Theory, a studio with veterans of the Witcher series.

Sirius is being developed by The Molasses Flood, a Boston-based studio acquired by CD Projekt (opens in new tab) in April 2022 When Sirius was publicly announced in October, The Molasses Flood announced "Quest and multiplayer gameplay on top of a single-player experience that includes a story-driven campaign. While this is a far cry from the upper- and lower-case epic RPGs promised in Polaris and Canis Majoris, the expectation that the multiplayer game in Witcher (opens in a new tab) would be something that would set it apart from the rest of the series were quite excited.

CD Projekt's amortization announcement stated that they spent the equivalent of $7.75 million on the development of Sirius in 2022 and added $2.2 million earlier this year. That's certainly quite a bit of money, and "formulating a new framework for the project" sounds like CD Projekt and The Molasses Flood are trying to put development back to square one. There is no mention of the project being moved to another studio.

Using The Molasses Flood's April 2022 acquisition as a rough start date for the start of Sirius' development, and considering the increasingly long lead times for game development, it is fairly early days for a full reboot of this game.

Either these positions have already been filled, or the studio has put a hiring freeze in place due to the development shift, and there are currently no open positions listed on The Molasses Flood's careers page (opens in new tab). While this situation is certainly not ideal for developers working on Sirius, it is better than a late cancellation or reboot, such as Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines 2 being pulled from Hardsuit Labs, essentially on the eve of release. It may be better than a late cancellation or reboot, such as Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines 2, which was pulled from Hardsuit Labs and put into storage practically on the eve of its release.

Nor did we expect to get Sirius anytime soon. We knew only a few details about this Witcher spinoff, and games in that vein have come a long way; CD Projekt can only expect a Canis Majoris/The Witcher 1 remake in Polaris/The Witcher 4 (open in new tab), but no release date or even details have been released for Polaris/The Witcher 4. CD Projekt's next adventure is Idris Elba and Keanu Reeves' cyberpunk celebrity powerhouse Phantom Liberty (opens in new tab), which will be released this year.