Switch 2 owners have found a very player-friendly quirk in how CD Projekt handles the free upgrade to The Witcher 3 Remastered. A physical Switch cartridge of The Witcher 3 can be used an unlimited number of times to claim a digital copy of the remaster – and it doesn’t have to be your own cartridge.
In practice that means you can borrow a copy from a friend, rent one, or pick up a cheap second-hand card, redeem the upgrade and then hand the game back. Once the digital version of The Witcher 3 Remastered is tied to your account, you no longer need to keep the original cartridge inserted.
Why this works at all
CD Projekt promised that the upgrade for the relaunched RPG would be free on every platform, including for owners of physical copies. There is no version of The Witcher 3 Remastered for the original Nintendo Switch, but the old Switch cartridge still acts as the key that unlocks the free remastered version on Switch 2.
The remaster has already been making noise elsewhere, too – on PC it pushed the game to a new Steam player record.
What the remaster actually changes
The list of additions is long. Among the headline features:
- improvements to combat, traversal and movement
- revamped mount handling and enhanced monster behaviors
- a skill tree revamp, armor transmog and new finishers
- an expanded photo mode
- cross-platform mod support
- new quest tracking, immersive meditation and a looting rework
- refined animations, UI improvements and a tutorial modernization
- new accessibility features
On the technical side there are HDR improvements, a foliage shading rework, ray-tracing improvements, a global lighting rework, a new shading model, subsurface scattering, refreshed motion blur and a new tone mapper. We went through the whole thing in our full changelist.
And there’s more coming
All of this lands ahead of Songs of the Past, The Witcher 3’s third expansion, due next year – that one is paid, and CD Projekt hasn’t narrowed down when in 2027 it arrives. We’ve already covered the expansion’s first soundtrack EP.
In the meantime, The Witcher 3 Remastered is an enormous game, and it now ships with the first two expansions as standard. If you want to keep track of what’s next for the series, we collect everything in our The Witcher news hub.
FAQ
No. Any physical Switch copy of The Witcher 3 works, including one you borrow, rent or buy second-hand.
No. Once you’ve claimed the digital version of The Witcher 3 Remastered, the original Switch cartridge is no longer needed.
There’s no limit – the same physical card can grant the free digital upgrade an unlimited number of times.
No. The Witcher 3 Remastered isn’t available on the first Switch, but the Switch cartridge still unlocks the free Switch 2 version.
No. The remaster includes the first two expansions as standard, but Songs of the Past is a paid expansion arriving sometime in 2027.