The Witcher 3 Remastered Tops 2026 on Metacritic With a 94 as Steam Players Pass 73,000

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered went live on 29 September with a Metascore of 94, the highest of any game released in 2026 so far, according to VGC. On Steam, where CD Projekt Red confirmed the free upgrade was live at 10:04 UTC, the game had 73,111 people playing at 11:40 UTC, more than ten times the count we logged the day before.

This piece is built on Metacritic's and OpenCritic's own pages, Steam's public player-count and review APIs and the official Steam announcement, all read on 29 September 2026, plus reporting from VGC and Nintendo Life. We have not played the Remastered update.

Why is the 94 Metascore a big deal?

A 94 puts the Remastered update above the original game's 92 on Metacritic. VGC reports that it now tops Metacritic's chart for 2026, just ahead of Sektori, which also sits on 94, and that the score ranks 63rd on the site's all-time list, just behind Metroid Prime Remastered and Batman: Arkham City.

The number rests on a very small sample. When we checked, the Metacritic score was based on just 8 critic reviews, and the OpenCritic page listed 6 reviews, only 1 of them from a top critic, so OpenCritic had not yet calculated a Top Critic Average. All 6 recommended the game. Expect the score to move as more reviews, especially Switch 2 reviews, arrive.

What are critics saying?

The early reviews collected by Nintendo Life agree on the basics: the update makes a much-loved game look and play better without changing what it is. Push Square's review in progress calls it better-looking and better-playing "than ever" but warns against expecting game-changing additions. GamingBolt gave it 9/10 and called it "the definitive way to play". Polygon was cooler on how much the update changes, arguing it does "not enough to change the fundamental nature of the game", and framed that as a good thing.

How many people are playing on Steam?

Steam's player count for the Complete Edition (app 292030) has climbed quickly since the unlock. That is a big jump for a game released in 2015, but it is not a record yet: Steam Charts lists the game's all-time peak at 103,329, set in January 2020 after Netflix's The Witcher series launched, and a monthly peak of 89,259 in December 2022, when the previous next-gen update arrived.

Are Steam reviews holding up?

Mostly, with a small dip. The game's overall rating was still Overwhelmingly Positive, at 96.8% of 890,439 reviews, when we checked. Steam's daily breakdown of English-language reviews shows the update day running cooler: 700 positive and 57 negative on 29 September so far (about 92.5%), against 438 and 15 (about 96.7%) on 28 September. One partial day is not a trend, but it is worth watching as more players reach the new skill tree.

What should you do now?

If you already own The Witcher 3 on any platform, the Remastered update is free. CD Projekt Red's announcement also says the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions are now available to all owners of the game. If you do not own it, the Steam Complete Edition was 50% off at $24.99 (£19.99) when we checked; our earlier report says the sale runs until 1 October.

Before you start, read our guide to what the Remastered update changed, including the skill point reset and the new PC requirements, and the Witcher 3 hub for everything else we have published on the game.