Following the September 29 release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition, Steam user reviews showed a significant negative fluctuation for two consecutive days. According to statistics cited by Playground, the game's overall positive rating reportedly dropped from 96% to 95%.
Statistical data shows that on the launch day, there were approximately 3,500 reviews, with over 1,100 being negative, resulting in a positive rating of 68% for the day; the positive rating further dropped to 64% on September 30. These figures and related historical comparisons are based on the statistical methodology used by Playground.
Issues reported by players include save file corruption, visual artifacts, blurry and ghosting effects, overly bright or washed-out lighting, and performance drops. Visual artifacts were particularly problematic on some AMD devices prior to the release of new drivers. Some players also felt that the Complete Edition altered the atmosphere of the 2022 next-gen version.
Meanwhile, this update brought a new Steam concurrent player record of over 120,000, and the game achieved a score of 94 on Metacritic. The article also mentions that after CD Projekt RED stopped selling games in Russia and Belarus in 2022, the game experienced another wave of concentrated negative reviews, which Steam filtered out from the main rating at the time. In response to the current player feedback, CD Projekt RED has issued driver recommendations and stated that patches will be released.