The Witcher 3 Remastered broke the online record on Steam and received a wave of negative reviews

The remastered version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt simultaneously set an online record and, it seems, a critical record on Steam.Last weekend, the peak of concurrent players exceeded 137 thousand people, and the number of negative reviews in the first days after the release was unusually high.

Online record

The remaster was released at the end of September on consoles and PC, and CD Projekt RED released it as a free update for all current owners of the game.It includes graphical and gameplay improvements.For a game that's over ten years old, 137,000 concurrent players is a good indication of the strength of the brand and interest in the updated edition.

Peak online does not equal sales: it includes owners of older versions who returned from an existing library, so the figure shows interest, but does not allow one to evaluate the commercial result.

Anti-record reviews

Many players were not satisfied with the quality of the picture in the remaster, and they went to complain on the forums and Steam reviews.On launch day alone, September 29, the game received more than 1,000 negative reviews, and over the next few days, more than 1,700 were left. This seems to be a record for the number of negative reviews in such a short period of time, except for the spring of 2022, when CD Projekt RED stopped selling games in Russia.For comparison: after the release of the update for new consoles in December 2022, a little more than 2,700 negative reviews were collected in a month.

The studio is already working on patches for the remaster and reported that the support service is receiving a lot of requests.

Price and Russia

The remaster is not sold separately: it was given to game owners for free.On American Steam, the main game is now $24.99 instead of $49.99 because of the fall sale.The game is not sold in Russia on Steam: CD Projekt RED stopped sales in Russia in 2022, and the game page in the Russian region does not have a price.

Before the launch, we sorted out changes to combat, skills and mods, so the current reaction of the players is especially significant.