The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt remastered version launched on September 29, offering a free upgrade for owners of the original game. While the remaster received universal acclaim from critics, many players reported severe performance issues.
The remastered version was announced at the Opening Night Live event of Gamescom in August 2026. The development team previously stated they would improve the game's visuals, gameplay, interface, and user experience, along with adding accessibility enhancements.
Upon the release of the remastered version, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt reached a peak concurrent player count of 120,975 on Steam, breaking the record set during the game's initial launch in 2015.
Nevertheless, some players have reacted negatively to the remaster, primarily highlighting overall performance issues.
On Reddit, one player pointed out: "This is definitely one of the worst performance drops I've seen in any remastered game. I'm talking about at least a 60-70% performance loss, not just with path tracing, but even 'standard' ray tracing is affected. Where I used to get over 130 FPS, I now struggle to reach even 50 FPS."
Another player also called the remaster "absolutely terrible... constantly stuttering on [PS5], even in Performance Mode." He also listed issues with combat, the new skill tree, and dialogue audio, adding that "some basic [quality-of-life] features aren't enough to make up for the poor implementation of Everythinggj else."
Other players expressed similar audio issues, with one stating that the audio mixing was "simply terrible for me, with voices almost completely drowned out."
On the Steam community page for The Witcher 3, most discussion threads since the release of the remastered version have expressed similar criticism. Some posts report persistent bugs, claiming the game is "completely unplayable" on certain platforms, accusing CDPR of ruining the original game's "atmosphere and artistic vision," and questioning whether it's possible to roll back to a previous version of The Witcher 3.
Although The Witcher 3 still maintains an "Overwhelmingly Positive" lifetime user rating of 96% on Steam, its 30-day average rating has dropped to 82% as of writing, due to negative reviews stemming from the remaster's performance problems.
Despite the poor player reception, as of writing, this remastered version has received a high score of 94 on Metacritic, based on reviews from 10 media outlets. Eurogamer Germany commented: "The question isn't whether The Witcher 3: Remastered can remain competitive in 2026, but rather which games in the same genre over the past decade can rival it—and there are very few such games."
Some players online posted similar positive reviews about the remaster, with one Reddit user noting that although he had "mixed feelings" about the game, "the graphics are very clear, the frame rate is generally smooth, and the overall image quality has been improved."
One player stated that his experience was completely opposite to all these complaints, saying, "I spent the whole morning thinking 'wow, this looks amazing,'" while another player commented that it's "still the classic Witcher."