Polish video game company CD Projekt Red is reaping the rewards of the recent The Witcher renaissance, becoming the second most valuable game company in Europe. The company is perhaps best known for its series of The Witcher video games, with their most recent release, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, out since May 2015. In addition to winning numerous awards, the game helped nab CD Projekt Red the coveted Studio of the Year award at the 2015 Game Awards.

CD Projekt’s The Witcher games follow the adventures of Geralt of Rivia, the monster-slaying hero of a series of popular Polish fantasy novels by author Andrzej Sapkowski. In December 2019, Netflix released The Witcher show based on those same novels. Despite middling reviews, the show was a hit with viewers, becoming one of Netflix’s most-watched shows ever. The popularity of the show led to a resurgence of interest in the 2015 video game, with gamers flocking to Steam and other game platforms to play. The recent port of the game to the Nintendo Switch helped boost the game’s sales, too. Even actor Henry Cavill, who plays Geralt in the Netflix show, has played the game more than once.

It’s no surprise that CD Projekt’s value has soared in the stock market, too. As first spotted on Reddit (via Rock Paper Shotgun), CD Projekt’s market valuation on the Warsaw Stock Exchange has recently surpassed the equivalent of $8 billion. In the European video game market, this puts them behind only one other game company, Ubisoft, which is valued at over $9 billion.

It’s worth noting that this valuation is for CD Projekt as a whole, which includes both the GOG game store and the game development studio CD Projekt Red. Still, there’s no doubt that the skyrocketing popularity of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt after the Netflix show is the driving factor behind the company’s upward market trend. The other big news for CD Projekt Red lately has been the delay of their upcoming role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077, which isn’t so likely to positively affect the company’s market valuation.

CD Projekt Red and Ubisoft are very different companies. Ubisoft launches several games every year, ranging from single-player giants like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to online multiplayer hits like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. Meanwhile, CD Projekt Red has only released a handful of games, and The Witcher 3:Wild Hunt is a purely single-player game. The fact that CD Projekt Red is on the road to compete with Ubisoft is a testament to the quality and strength of its game experiences.

Next: Toss A Coin To Your Witcher: Netflix Didn’t Know What They Had

Source: Reddit (via Rock Paper Shotgun)