Bilawal Bashir 
Cyberpunk 2077’s first paid DLC, Phantom Liberty, is coming soon but will that be the last content update?
CD Projekt Red released its quarterly financial report for the current fiscal year. The documents reveal the plans and goals for the company in the near future. Those plans and goals don’t seem to include anything for Cyberpunk 2077 beyond Phantom Liberty.
Fans of the new IP already know what changes Phantom Liberty is bringing to the base game, but do they have anything to look forward to beyond that? There’s a definite answer to this question, and it’s not a popular one.
Will there be more Cyberpunk 2077 DLC after Phantom Liberty?
No more DLC will be released for Cyberpunk 2077 after the release of Phantom Liberty. Though there will likely be patches and fixes released in the game, there won’t be any significant content updates or expansions.
Initially, the team discussed plans to release multiple expansions for Cyberpunk 2077 ahead of the game’s release. The Witcher 3 received two sizable paid DLCs in Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. CDPR likely planned something similar with Cyberpunk 2077, but that is no longer the case.
Why is Cyberpunk 2077 getting one DLC?
Cyberpunk 2077 will only get one DLC expansion due to developers transitioning to a new game engine.
CD Projekt Red senior vice president of business development Michal Nowakowski discussed the matter during an earnings call. He elaborated that the decision was made due to technical reasons. The team decided to abandon its proprietary RED Engine and move to Unreal Engine 5 for all future titles and projects.
“As we have announced a long time ago, we’re not going to make a second or third expansion…This is the last time we’re working on the Red Engine for the time being at least, and in the foreseeable future as you know we are working on the Unreal Engine from Epic,” Nowakowski said.
The company used its in-house RED Engine on a number of titles including The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The first Witcher game used Aurora Engine made by Bioware.
Cyberpunk 2077 also uses Red Engine so any expansions made for it would also be made on the same engine, which makes developing new DLC after Phantom Liberty untenable. Porting a game from one engine to a completely different one would be an enormous technical challenge. Even with the ever-popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Valve opted to start over and make Counter-Strike 2 rather than port CSGO from its own Source engine to Source 2.
CDPR likely to move on to The Witcher 4 after Cyberpunk 2077
CD Projekt Red is likely set to work on The Witcher 4 while also working with other outside studios on separate projects. While it isn’t officially titled “The Witcher 4” yet, it is set to be a fourth game in the series.
In 2022 the company a “new saga” in The Witcher as its next big project. The game will use Unreal Engine 5. This decision was taken to make it easy for the developers to create large, open-world games.
Cyberpunk 2077 faced a lot of criticism at launch due to its poor performance on consoles. Transitioning to Unreal Engine 5 will ideally help the studio avoid those sorts of troubles with its next releases. There is no word on the release date for the next game in The Witcher series.
