Show/Hide Show/Hide

Players Return to The Witcher 3 for Blood & Wine

Second and Final Expansion Brings Geralt Back to the Top of Steam

May 31, 2016 by

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was one of 2015’s top games, however, most players said goodbye to Geralt shortly after the game’s release. Whether beating the game and/or moving on to other adventures, the world of the Witcher’s population couldn’t hold up when compared to other popular RPGs such as Skyrim and Fallout 4 — both of which have maintained 4-8x more players per day over the course of the past year.

At its peak, The Witcher 3 brought in 1.5 million players in one day on Steam during its May 2015 launch week. But only two months after its release, The Witcher‘s player count quickly dropped to an average of around 150k players per day — enough to keep The Witcher 3 as one of the most played games on Steam, but far from the 500k+ players that Skyrim and Fallout 4 continue to bring in.

While CDProjektRed has continued to release updates and patches, it hasn’t been enough to reignite the player base anywhere close to its high launch numbers. The game’s first expansion pack, Hearts of Stone, was able to double The Witcher‘s daily player count value with 416k players in October, but shortly after its release the numbers again dropped back down to the same daily average as before the expansion.

The player count again rose even higher at the end of 2015 as the game racked up numerous Game of the Year awards and sold well during the Holiday season. Yet, even after another spike, the Wild Hunt still could not manage to retain more than half of its player base as gamers slowly lost interest with the single-player game over time.

Now, to celebrate the anniversary of the game’s launch, CDPR has released Blood & Wine as the second and final expansion pack that will conclude Geralt’s story. As a result, the player base has spiked up to the highest its been since the game’s launch one year ago. Currently sitting at #7 on Steam with 783k players yesterday, Blood & Wine has helped Geralt return as the current king of the RPGs on Steam… we’ll see how long his reign lasts this time as players take one last ride as the White Wolf.

The-Witcher-Blood-and-Wine-Player-Count-graph