Eleven years after its release, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is still capable of breaking its own records. The free remaster, which upgrades the visuals, the combat system and a long list of smaller details, pushed the game to the highest concurrent player count in its history on Steam. Yesterday the game peaked at just under 121,000 players at once, comfortably beating the previous high of roughly 103,000 – a number set during the hype wave around the first season of the Netflix series.
And that is only one version of the game
The Steam figure tells only part of the story. The remaster is also available through other digital PC storefronts, and consoles aren’t out of the picture either. Players on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series can go hunting for Ciri in the polished version as well, and the remaster launched as a native Switch 2 release too – a massive step up compared to what ran on the previous Nintendo handheld. If you want to see exactly what changed, we’ve put together a full changelist of the remaster.
Not everyone is thrilled
Impressions aren’t universally positive. Some players don’t like the new lighting system, which makes the world of The Witcher noticeably more colorful and brighter than before. You’ll also run into complaints about optimization and other technical hiccups. Problems with AMD graphics cards should already be fixed by new drivers. Overall, though, the positives dominate: the remaster currently sits at the very top of the best-reviewed games of the year according to Metacritic.
Official mod support on every platform
Alongside all the improvements and tweaks, the console versions got one major new feature with the remaster. The Witcher 3 now officially supports community modifications on all platforms, and you can download them straight from the main menu in the game.
Horse armor for watching, armor for linking an account
CD Projekt prepared a few special promos around the remaster’s launch that let you unlock exclusive cosmetics. Watch 90 minutes of Twitch.tv streams and you’ll get a fiery set for Roach. If you subscribe to a streamer in that category, you’ll also receive a badge to decorate your name in chat.
Geralt gets a new wardrobe piece too – all you have to do is link the game to your CD Projekt account. A number of players are reporting that the scarlet armor never showed up in their stash even after completing every step, so hopefully the developers sort that out soon.
If you own Cyberpunk 2077 on top of the Wild Hunt remaster, linking all your games to a CD Projekt account nets you two more bonuses: a new haircut and a face mask for Geralt. Whether either of them fits the setting is another question entirely.
Where to next
If you want to keep following the series, we track everything in our The Witcher news hub, and we also covered the first Songs of the Past EP in a separate article.
FAQ
The game peaked at just under 121,000 concurrent players, beating its previous record of about 103,000 from the first season of the Netflix series.
Yes. Owners of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt received the remastered version at no extra cost.
PC via Steam and other digital storefronts, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and a native version for Nintendo Switch 2.
Yes. The Witcher 3 now officially supports community modifications on all platforms and you can download them directly from the in-game main menu.
Watch 90 minutes of Twitch.tv streams for a fiery set for Roach, and link the game to your CD Projekt account for new armor for Geralt. Linking Cyberpunk 2077 as well adds a haircut and a face mask.