Years ago, CDPR found a farmer who remade The Witcher into The Witcher 3, brought him from Australia to Poland, and now he’s working on The Witcher 4

CD Projekt Red’s Pawel Sasko, who is now associate game director on Cyberpunk 2, explained how a beet farmer in Australia caught his eye and he was subsequently transferred to Poland to work on The Witcher 4.

In a lengthy interview with Flow Games, Sasko advised aspiring game developers to “start learning how to mod,” since about half of the people making quests for Cyberpunk 2 right now are former modders. In the same interview, he shared an inspiring story about senior quest designer Eero Varendi, who started modding in the evenings after working hard in the fields for beets. Varendi first came to Sasko’s attention “seven or eight years ago” when a YouTube video was posted showing the prologue of The Witcher 1 in The Witcher 3 thanks to the miracle of mods.

“I saw the video and I was like, ‘Holy crap, this is really high-quality work,’ so I asked (Philipp Weber, CDPR’s narrative director), who’s a modder, ‘do you know this guy in the community?’ and he said, ‘yeah, I know who he is,’ (and I said) message him and tell him to send us his resume. He sent me the resume and we did the test, the test was wonderful. He was great. He did a great design test.

“And then we had conversations, and I think he was 20 or 21, and he was in Australia at the time, and he was picking beets with a huge combine harvester, like these huge combine harvesters that drive and pick. That’s what he was doing, and he was modding in the evenings. So I flew him from Australia to Poland, and he’s from Estonia and his name is Eero Varendi. Yeah, amazing guy. He’s in his final year of Polaris, the new Witcher game. He’s obsessed with Witcher.”

It’s not uncommon for video game studios to hire accomplished modders on staff, including Valve, Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, and even Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone, in addition to CDPR. That said, the makeup of Cyberpunk 2’s Quest team, which is half former modders, is extraordinary in any setting, and this idea from Sasko shows that it can happen to anyone, no matter where they live, as long as their work can speak for itself.

The Witcher 4 is the “most advanced” game CD Projekt is currently working on, ahead of Cyberpunk 2 and The Witcher remake.