The Witcher 3 Remastered breaks its Steam record

CD Projekt's free remaster drew The Witcher 3's biggest Steam crowd ever, and patch 5.01 is out. Who gets it free, what was fixed and where to buy it.

News · By getcheapgames · · · 4 min read

Watch: The Witcher 3 Remastered breaks its Steam record

The Witcher 3 has never had more people playing it on Steam than it did in early October. CD Projekt Red released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered on 29 September as a free upgrade, and on 8 October it shipped patch 5.01, a wide-ranging set of fixes for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

What the remaster is

  • Free for owners on GOG, Steam, the Epic Games Store, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. On those platforms it replaces the Complete Edition.
  • Both expansions included. Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine come with it, even if you only ever bought the base game.
  • New places to buy it: Battle.net, and the Microsoft Store as an Xbox Play Anywhere title.
  • What changed: better textures, foliage, lighting and ray tracing, path tracing on PC, a reworked skill tree, new combat animations and finishers, new movement such as vaulting, and mod.io mod support on consoles. On PS5 Pro, CD Projekt promises 60fps with ray tracing, or up to 90fps on a VRR display.
  • Switch 2 gets a native version with gyro aiming and touch controls. It is a separate download, free if you own the original Switch version.

A record crowd on Steam

The free upgrade brought players back. Inven Global reported a launch-day Steam peak of 120,975 concurrent players, rising to 137,724 by 5 October, according to SteamDB. The old record, 103,329, was set in January 2020, after Netflix's The Witcher series premiered. Steam is the only platform with public player counts, so the real total is higher.

Patch 5.01 and the fixes still coming

Launch was not smooth for everyone. On 5 October CD Projekt's Witcher account listed five fixes in progress, led by more PS5 performance work, Pure Xbox reported. Patch 5.01 followed on 8 October:

  • Consoles can now adjust bloom, light shafts and depth of field. Kotaku notes players had complained that bloom made the game look washed out.
  • PS5 settings no longer reset at launch, and frame-rate limits are corrected on the base console.
  • Gameplay fixes for automatic blade oils, runaway boats, dodge timing and stamina drain.
  • PC fixes for GPU detection and upscaler options; Dynamic Resolution Scaling is now off by default.

Kotaku puts the download at about 5.5GB on console and 8.5GB on PC. A separate Switch 2 update, meant to bring that version closer to the others and sharpen the image, is in development.

What it costs on GCG

If you already own The Witcher 3 on one of the stores above, you do not need to buy anything. For new buyers, these are prices in Ireland, on 12 October 2026. They change daily, so check again before you buy.

The cheapest key that works in Ireland is €31.11 under the Steam and GOG price. Kinguin lists a 5% coupon code on its offers, which is not included in these prices, and marketplace prices exclude the store's checkout fee. Cheaper keys locked to other regions exist; we have left them out. We do not list PS5 prices for this game. See how we rank offers.

What to watch next

  • More patches: the Switch 2 update, and the rest of CD Projekt's list.
  • Songs of the Past, a third expansion set in a new region, Letten. CD Projekt says it is coming in 2027 to PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch 2, without a date yet.

Sources

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