Eleven years after launch, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt just broke its own record again. The Remastered version landed this Tuesday (09/29), free for anyone who already owns the game, and within hours it already had the highest concurrent player count in the title’s history on Steam.
Image: CD Projekt Red.
The record
The previous peak was 103,329 concurrent players, set in January 2020 right after the Netflix show premiered. With the Remastered launch, that number passed 121,000, and was still climbing as outlets covered the release.
- Over 121,000 concurrent players
new all-time Steam record for the game, beating the 103,329 peak from January 2020.
The year’s highest score
Critics approved too. On Metacritic, the PC version of the Remastered sits at 94, the highest score of any game released in 2026 so far, above the 92 to 93 the original game got back in 2015, depending on the platform.
What’s new in the Remastered
- Price Free for anyone who already owns the base game on qualifying platforms, including Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine
- Platforms PC (Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store and, for the first time, Battle.net), PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2
- Visuals and gameplay Updated graphics and performance, reworked combat, new finishing moves, a transmogrification system
- Extras Expanded photo mode and over 40 mods already available at launch on PS5
Not everything is perfect
The update also had a side effect: it broke an ambitious mod restoring a cut plague-related quest from the original game, “Project WAR.” According to Rock Paper Shotgun, CD Projekt Red has already confirmed it will ship “something extra” in a future update to get the mod working again.
Sources: CD Projekt Red, Kotaku, Video Games Chronicle, Rock Paper Shotgun
