Studio History
Rebel Wolves was founded in February 2022 in Warsaw, Poland. It was co-founded by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who directed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and led production on Cyberpunk 2077 at CD Projekt Red, alongside a group of colleagues from the same studio. He left CDPR in May 2021 and spent the following months assembling the team. The studio has grown to around 160 people. NetEase holds a minority stake; the majority of ownership belongs to Tomaszkiewicz and the other co-founders. Bandai Namco Entertainment publishes.
The studio's own launch-day wording for his role is Game Director and Co-Founder. He is also referred to as CEO in interviews. Founder without the co is an overstatement: the studio has consistently described itself as started by a group.
Growth Arc
"When we started Rebel Wolves in 2022, there were just 15 of us. Now we're over 150 developers strong." That quote from Konrad Tomaszkiewicz captures the studio's growth in three years. The founding team of 15 veterans in February 2022 had a clear vision: ship a single dark-fantasy action RPG at a smaller scale than the AAA studios most of them had come from.
By the May 2026 press cycle the studio had crossed 150 employees, and the launch-day figure from the game director is 160. The scaling did not change the studio's core pitch. Tomaszkiewicz has been explicit that 150-plus is still a fraction of the headcount his former employer carries, and the team has framed the smaller size as the reason tight creative control over the project is possible. The pre-launch playthrough-length target and the
30-day time-pressure structure both sit downstream of that headcount choice. Post-release accounts of a full run spread widely, from roughly thirty to forty hours for most players up to around fifty on average, which is what a clock the player controls produces.Key People
Person | Role |
|---|---|
Co-Founder, CEO, Game Director. Directed The Witcher 3, led production on Cyberpunk 2077. Cites Fallout 1 and 2 as design inspirations for the narrative sandbox structure | |
Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz | Creative Director. Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077 veteran |
Daniel Sadowski | Design Director. Witcher and Cyberpunk veteran |
Jakub Szamalek | Narrative Director. Led narrative on Witcher and Cyberpunk projects |
Bartlomiej Gawel | Art Director. Witcher and Cyberpunk veteran |
Design Philosophy
Tomaszkiewicz has described the vision as getting a few steps closer to pen-and-paper RPGs, where a gamemaster evolves the story based on player actions. The game has no main quest. Just one goal and optional content. "It's more similar to the old Fallout, where you have a clear goal and everything is optional, you decide." See Narrative Sandbox.
The game was originally scoped to be roughly the size of The Witcher 3's Blood and Wine expansion but became bigger during development.
CD Projekt Red Connection
The overlap with CDPR is hard to ignore. Tomaszkiewicz directed what many consider one of the best RPGs ever made. But Rebel Wolves is a much smaller studio: where CDPR has nearly 800 employees, Rebel Wolves has a fraction of that. The team has noted their smaller size allows tighter creative control.
Production Milestones
Rebel Wolves announced on July 15, 2026 that the game had gone gold, leaving roughly seven weeks between certification and the September 3 launch. Five days earlier the studio had reported passing two million wishlists. The studio also confirmed a playable booth at gamescom 2026 in late August, its last major public showing before release.
Launch and First Week
The Blood of Dawnwalker released on September 3, 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, with a day-one patch that the studio described as a further polish pass. In the launch statement the game director put the studio at 160 people and framed the game as more than four years of work by a team that started as a small group of friends.
The sales milestone followed within days. The studio said it had sold over one million copies in the opening weekend, and repeated the one-million figure in a storefront announcement on September 9. The two dates are different things: the milestone was reached over the opening weekend, the storefront post is when it was announced there. Five PC hotfixes followed in the first week, numbered 1.0.2 through 1.0.5. See Update History and Critical Reception.
What Comes Next
Less than a week after release, the studio's narrative director publicly advertised a Lead Writer position to work on the next chapter in the saga, saying the team was not resting on its laurels.
That is a job advertisement, and it should be read as one. It confirms that the studio intends to keep the series going, which the studio has said since 2022 anyway. It is not an announcement of a game: no title, setting, platform, scope or date has been announced, and the listing itself gives none. Coverage that describes a sequel as officially confirmed on this basis is running ahead of the evidence.
Multi-Game Plan
The studio has said since forming that The Blood of Dawnwalker was designed as the first chapter of a longer Dawnwalker Saga rather than a standalone project. Tomaszkiewicz has described planning several games up front so that story hooks could be seeded deliberately in the first one, and narrative director Jakub Szamalek has said attentive players will find breadcrumbs pointing at the wider arc. Each entry is intended to stand on its own, with no cliffhangers and no time travel, and the studio has said save data is meant to carry choices forward between entries.
Marketing
Rebel Wolves published a sixteen-part promotional lore series called The Secret History of Vale Sangora throughout 2025, written in-character by the chronicler Albertus Taurinus. The studio also ran a Community Bulletin Board series from November 2025 through August 2026, eleven entries in all, each covering a different aspect of the game, from the Vrakhiri and Svartrau to music, relationships and Coen's abilities. The most recent entry is number eleven, Skills and Power, published in late August 2026. A community Q&A in January 2026 answered player questions directly.
Music
The soundtrack is composed by Nikola Kolodziejczyk (lead), Piotr Musial, and Mikolai Stroinski. The main theme was performed by the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra of Tychy and debuted in the January 2026 launch year trailer. See Soundtrack.
Studio Size at Launch
Headcount has climbed steadily across the project. The studio was described as roughly 150 developers in early 2026, near 160 once administrative staff were included, and around 170 people by the time press went hands-on in July 2026. The team confirmed the game had gone gold on July 15, 2026, closing out development on its debut title a little under four and a half years after the studio was founded.
On release day the game director put the figure at 160 people in the studio's own launch statement. That is the number to lead with for the shipped game. The spread between roughly 150, 160 and 170 across 2026 comes from different counting points rather than from disagreement, since the earlier figures were taken at different months and some counted administrative staff separately. The studio also framed the project as more than four years of development, having been announced publicly in 2024 after forming in February 2022.