Nearly Half of Cyberpunk 2077’s 5,000-person Team Were Involved in the Game’s Localization

CD Projekt Red revealed that nearly half of the game’s colossal 5,381-person team worked on localization, translating the sci-fi RPG into 19 languages with voiceovers in 11 of them.

Cyberpunk 2077’s script contains approximately 1.1 million words and 82,000 voiceover lines. According to CD Projekt Red, 2,456 contributors were involved in localization efforts.

This included:

• 20 internal team members who spearheaded the project;
• 117 translators, editors, and proofreaders were ensuring accuracy across languages;
• 120 quality assurance testers dedicated to fine-tuning the experience;
• 233 project managers, voice directors, and engineers orchestrating the process;
• 1,966 voice actors lending their talents to immersive dialogue.

“For each language, we employed 120-200 actors,” said Mikołaj Szwed, Localization Director at CD Projekt Red. “Finding the right voices for characters like Takemura, who is not a native English speaker, was especially challenging. We even worked with an actor commuting between Berlin and Tokyo to nail the German version.”

The localization process also emphasized English as a base language, reflecting its importance in the game’s futuristic U.S. setting and its broader accessibility for translators. “If you want to play in the original language, play in Polish,” Szwed quipped, noting that even English voiceovers were an adaptation of the Polish script.

Despite early setbacks, Cyberpunk 2077 has been a commercial success, selling over 30 million copies to date, with its Phantom Liberty expansion adding another 8 million.

As the studio turns its attention to The Witcher 4 and other projects, Szwed reflects on the evolving localization team, which has grown from a one-person department in 2013 to a 20-member team overseeing more than 2,000 external contributors. “Working on a big game for several years is never not stressful,” Szwed said. “But it’s also what makes the job exciting.”