We’re just a few hours into the launch of The Witcher 3 Remastered, and it’s already beaten its previous record for concurrent players on Steam.
Before the remaster came out, Steam’s previous player peak for the 11-year-old The Witcher 3 came in January 2020, when the Witcher TV series came out. Back then, 103,329 people were all playing The Witcher 3 at the same time on Valve’s platform, according to SteamDB. Now that the remaster is here, The Witcher 3 has reached a new peak of 114,696 players, a massive 258% jump from last month, where 31,959 people were playing. Keep in mind, though, that this only takes Steam players into account, there are likely a huge amount of people playing on Xbox Series X and S, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and on other PC platforms such as GoG and Battle.net.
These numbers will likely go up throughout the week, too. As we head into the weekend, people will have more time to jump into the game, and because it’s a free update for anyone who already owns The Witcher 3, there’s a low barrier to entry – as long as you have a decent gaming PC. The game has also had some growing pains, where it wasn’t working properly on AMD graphics cards at launch, though that issue has been fixed with an AMD graphics driver.
It’s not hard to see why people are flocking to the Witcher 3 Remastered. CD Projekt Red has worked in a whole laundry list of improvements to everything from the graphics to Roach’s running animations. The game even works in path tracing, but for that you’re going to want an absolute beast of a gaming PC.
To ease you into Geralt’s life on the road, check out the things The Witcher 3 doesn’t tell you, plus IGN’s The Witcher 3 walkthrough and The Witcher 3 endings guide, which outlines all of the major quests and choices in the base game and expansions (now bundled in with the Remastered edition). When you’re ready for the tough choices, check out our The Witcher 3 sex and romance guide to see who Geralt can smooch and all the opportunities to do so. And to make Geralt as strong a monster hunter as possible, check out all the Witcher gear locations, Places of Power locations, and even Gwent card locations.
Jackie Thomas is the Senior Tech Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. She’s been covering gaming hardware for more than a decade for IGN, TechRadar, Gizmodo, PC Gamer and more. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
