Summary
- The Witcher 3 saw its highest concurrent player count in two years, with 46,370 players on Dec 22
- Concerns over Ciri as protagonist in The Witcher 4 addressed by CD Projekt Red
The Witcher 4 was one of this year’s biggest, most surprising Game Awards reveals. Opening the show, a six-minute cinematic trailer introduced the game’s world and protagonist to a captivated audience. Unfortunately, the game is likely years (and years) away.
Related
The Witcher 4’s Map Will Be “More Or Less” The Same Size As The Witcher 3
CDPR is also introducing new regions we haven’t visited before.
To tide them over until the next game launches, players have come flooding back to the previous title, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, with the game seeing its highest concurrent player count on Steam in just under two years.
More Players Are Playing The Witcher 3 Now Than At Any Time In The Past Two Years
According to SteamDB, on Sunday, December 22, 46,370 concurrent players jumped into The Witcher 3. The last time the player count was this high was back in January 2023, when the game peaked at around 79,000 players.
The high player count in January last year coincided with the game’s troubled next-gen update, which launched in December 2022. Should the game continue on this track, its average player count should also be the highest since The Witcher 3 next-gen update was released.
The reveal of The Witcher 4 was mired in controversy, at least by a select few, over the choice of having Ciri as the game’s protagonist. Despite being one of the canon endings of The Witcher 3, some players have decided that Ciri’s design is enough to irk them.
While some players have chosen to be concerned with Ciri’s looks, others have, more reasonably, chosen to worry about the fact she could theoretically be incredibly overpowered. Thankfully, CD Projekt Red moved to quell these concerns, saying, “The gap between her being totally overpowered at the end of the previous game and now, with the skill set we showed off in the trailer… something totally happened in-between. We had to delve deep to consider how we would address this – we have huge respect for the lore, for both the books and for what made it into our previous games. But this was one of the first questions we found the answer for.”
One of the most critically acclaimed RPGs in recent history, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt sees Geralt searching for Ciri of Cintra. However, he’s not the only one looking — the pair must also contend with the Wild Hunt, supernatural beings of great power. CD Projekt added two expansion packs, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, and brought an enhanced version of the game to modern consoles in late 2022.