CD Projekt

Founding

CD Projekt was founded in May 1994 by Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński. According to Iwiński, although he enjoyed playing video games as a child they were scarce in the Polish People's Republic (which experienced political unrest, martial law, and goods shortages during the 1980s). Marcin Iwiński, in high school, was selling cracked copies of Western video games at a Warsaw marketplace (stalls on the streets with many such products were popular in the newly established and aggressively privatised Third Polish Republic of the 1990s). In high school, Iwiński met Kiciński, who became his business partner; at that time, Kiciński was also selling video games.

Wanting to conduct business legitimately, Iwiński and Kiciński began importing games from US retailers and were the first importers of CD-ROM games. After Poland's transition to a primarily market-based economy in the early 90s, they founded their own company. Iwiński and Kiciński founded CD Projekt in the second quarter of 1994. With only $2,000, they used a friend's flat as a rent-free office.

Localization

The company was one of the first in Poland to localize games; according to Iwiński, most of their products were sold to "mom-and-pop shops". CD Projekt began partial localization for developers such as Seven Stars and Leryx-LongSoft in 1996, and full-scale localization a year later. According to Iwiński, one of their first successful localization titles was for Ace Ventura; whereas previous localizations had only sold copies in the hundreds, Ace Ventura sold in the thousands, establishing the success of its localization approach. With its methods affirmed, CD Projekt approached BioWare and Interplay Entertainment for the Polish localization of Baldur's Gate. They expected the title to become popular in Poland, and felt that no retailer would be able to translate the text from English to Polish. To increase the title's popularity in Poland, CD Projekt added items to the game's packaging and hired well-known Polish actors to voice its characters. Their first attempt was successful, with 18,000 units shipped on the game's release day (higher than the average shipments of other games at the time).

The company continued to work with Interplay after the release of Baldur's Gate, collaborating on a PC port for the sequel Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. To develop the port, CD Projekt hired Sebastian Zieliński (who had developed Mortyr 2093-1944) and Adam Badowski. Six months after development began, Interplay experienced financial problems and cancelled the PC version. CD Projekt continued to localize other games after Dark Alliance's cancellation. Especially the localization of Gothic (released in Poland in 2002) and Gothic II (in 2003), for which CD Projekt was also the publisher in Poland, was a success for the company. The main series of Gothic became very popular in Poland and – according to developers of CD Projekt itself – a primary influence in the later development of The Witcher game series. CD Projekt received Business Gazelle awards in 2003 and 2004.