CD Projekt's co-CEO sees a wave of fully AI-generated games coming — and isn't convinced it's a good idea

CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski says he knows for a fact that games built entirely with generative AI are on the way — but he's openly skeptical about whether that's the right direction for the industry.

Nowakowski shared a conversation he had with the founder of an AI-first studio who claimed they could produce 40 prototypes in a week, narrow those down to five games within two weeks, and ship a finished product by week three. His response: "Maybe that's going to be successful, but I have some doubts whether this is really the path to follow." His comments came shortly after Epic Games announced plans to integrate AI models like Claude and Gemini into Unreal Engine 6 to cut tedious work from the development pipeline. That's relevant here because CD Projekt apparently has an unusually close relationship with Epic — Nowakowski claimed they're currently the only studio Epic allows to go into the "black box" of Unreal Engine and modify its internals, which means CD Projekt could have some influence over how UE6's AI features actually take shape.

The skepticism isn't limited to CD Projekt. At this year's Digital Dragons conference, 11 bit Studios external development director Rufus Kubica pushed back on AI-heavy prototypes from a publisher's perspective. "If everything is done with AI, how do you know they have the artists to make it happen?" he said, adding that leaning on generative AI this heavily makes it "kind of easier to overpromise quality early" — a real problem when studios are trying to secure funding based on a prototype's apparent polish.

Beyond the AI debate, Nowakowski's broader advice for studios trying to survive the current market is blunt: stay lean and cheap. With an unprecedented number of games launching every year and the fight for player attention fiercer than ever, he argues that a studio's ability to keep making games comes down to whether it was profitable enough to self-fund the next one. Keeping costs low and targeting a specific audience precisely gives studios the best shot at staying in the game long-term.