CD Projekt board members reporterdly earned millions after Cyberpunk 2077 commercial success
CD Projekt’s employees and shareholders will receive huge bonuses after seeing record-breaking revenue and net profit for 2020. The lion’s share of the bonus money will go to the company’s board members.
During the recent earnings call, CD Projekt president Adam Kiciński was asked about the management compensation in the light of the company’s financial results. He was also asked whether he thought it was even appropriate for the execs to receive bonuses given Cyberpunk 2077‘s problematic launch (this part of the question Kiciński chose to ignore).
“Regarding bonuses — yes, it’s close to 20% [of net income] and it has always been like this; nothing has changed recently,” Kiciński replied. “Close to half of it goes to the Management Board. Our compensation was always directly linked to net earnings — that’s the money the Company earned. Higher net profit means higher bonuses; that’s been the case historically. When there are results, we get bonuses — those are the contracts we have — and that’s all I can say at the moment.”
Website WTFTime attempted an estimate of how much money executives received.
It appears that five members of the board got $28 million in total, a bit less than 10% of CD Projekt’s net profit for 2020:
- Adam Kiciński (president, joint CEO) — $6.4 million;
- Marcin Iwiński (co-founder, joint CEO) — $6.4 million;
- Piotr Nielubowicz (CFO) — $6.4 million;
- Adam Badowski (CD Projekt RED studio head) — $4.4 million;
- Michał Nowakowski (SVP Business Development) — $4.4 million.
On top of that, members of the board will receive an additional payment of $6 million (also linked to the company’s net profit, which was up 558% year-over-year). However, we don’t know how exactly this money will be split between the management team.
WTFTime also noted that CD Projekt decided to pay its shareholders $133 million, the generosity dictated by Cyberpunk 2077‘s commercial success. A lot of this money will go to the members of the board themselves, with Iwiński getting almost $17 million, Nielubowicz getting $9 million, and Kiciński getting $5.3 million (based on the percentage of share capital they own).
As for regular employees, their bonuses will depend on their number of worked hours, experience, and value for the company.
