The Witcher 3 Remastered Smashes Steam Concurrent Player Record

The Witcher 3 Remastered has only been out for a few hours, but it's already surpassed its previous concurrent player record on Steam.

Before the remaster launched, the 11-year-old The Witcher 3 hit its previous peak on Steam in January 2020, coinciding with the release of the Witcher TV series. At that time, 103,329 players were simultaneously playing the game on Valve's platform, according to SteamDB. With the remaster now available, The Witcher 3 has achieved a new peak of 114,696 players—a massive 258% increase from last month's 31,959 players. Keep in mind, though, that these numbers only reflect Steam players; countless others are likely playing on Xbox Series X and S, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and other PC platforms like GoG and Battle.net.

These figures are expected to climb even higher throughout the week. As the weekend approaches, more people will have time to dive in, and since it's a free update for anyone who already owns The Witcher 3, the barrier to entry is low—as long as you have a decent gaming PC. The game has also experienced some launch hiccups, such as not working properly on AMD graphics cards, but that issue has been resolved with an AMD graphics driver update.

It's easy to see why players are flocking to The Witcher 3 Remastered. CD Projekt Red has implemented a long list of improvements, from graphics to Roach's running animations. The game even supports path tracing, though you'll need a beast of a gaming PC to handle it.

To help you get started on Geralt's journey, 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 covers all the major quests and choices in the base game and expansions (now bundled 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 romance and all the opportunities to do so. And to make Geralt the strongest monster hunter possible, check out all the Witcher gear locations, Places of Power locations, and even Gwent card locations.