The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has reached its highest concurrent player count on Steam ever, days after CD Projekt Red released the free Remastered edition. More than 120,000 people were playing the 2015 RPG at once, according to GamesIndustry.biz, citing figures from tracking site SteamDB.
That beats every previous high the game has posted on the platform. GamesIndustry.biz lists a launch peak of 92,000 in 2015, a spike to 103,000 in January 2020 when Netflix's Witcher series was at its peak popularity, and 89,000 in December 2022 around the next-gen update. The new number left the game just shy of Steam's ten most-played titles over a 24-hour window, and it only counts Steam. Players on GOG, the Epic Games Store, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch 2 are not included.
The Remastered edition arrived on September 29, according to Gamebonk's release tracker. It is a free upgrade for owners of any existing version, and both expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, come along at no extra cost, GamesIndustry.biz reports. Eurogamer describes the overhaul as far reaching: reworked visuals, improved animations, changes to enemy behaviour and a revised skill tree.
A second hotfix reworks lighting in Velen on PC
Not every change has landed well. The new lighting has split players, and CD Projekt Red has now shipped a second hotfix, version 5.00c, that tackles those complaints on PC, Eurogamer reports. It follows a console-focused hotfix released a day earlier that also included lighting adjustments.
The PC patch includes:
- Visual adjustments across Velen, covering bloom, vegetation lighting, saturation and path tracing lighting
- A fix for voiceover audio dropping well below other in-game sound after browsing the pause menu tabs
- A fix for saving and loading failing when the Documents folder path contained special characters
- A reverted change that had caused serious performance and visual problems for some players with HairWorks turned on
- A fix that restores the ability to launch the Classic (1.32) version of the game
- Fixes for marketing telemetry settings not saving and for GOG achievements not showing as unlocked
The studio signed off its notes by thanking players for their patience while it keeps investigating reported problems.
“Once again, thank you for your patience as we continue investigating the issues you report.”CD Projekt Red
Hundreds of mods already updated
The modding community has moved fast. PC Gamer counted more than 450 Witcher 3 mods on Nexus Mods that were either newly released or updated since September 29, just two days after the PC launch.
Many of those are long-standing staples of the scene dating back to the 2010s, now patched to work with the Remastered version. PC Gamer's list includes The Witcher 3 Mod Manager, Fast Travel From Anywhere, AutoLoot, Enhanced Camera, the HUD Scaling Fix, No time for Gwent, Complete Animations Redux and The Stable. De-mastered Geralt, from a modder named GrimReaper2121, caught the outlet's attention as well. PC Gamer was less impressed by a trend of mod pages using AI-generated thumbnail images, calling the practice baffling for a game whose look everyone already knows.
