The Witcher 3 Remastered costs nothing - but read the fine print first

An eleven-year-old game getting a full visual and systemic overhaul, and nobody is asked for a single euro. In an industry where a remaster usually means paying full price again for the same thing, that alone deserves a pause.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered arrives today, September 29, as a free upgrade for existing owners on PC (GOG, Steam, Epic), PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. It also launches natively on Nintendo Switch 2 and, through a new partnership with Blizzard, on Battle.net. CD Projekt Red lists better visuals, reworked combat and movement, new sign effects, revamped horse handling, smarter monsters, a rebuilt skill tree, transmog, an expanded photo mode and new finishers. Eurogamer's verdict is that it doesn't change the game, but it does make it feel new again.

The part I like most, though, isn't the graphics. All current owners now get Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine for free. Blood and Wine alone is better than most full-price RPGs of the last few years.

What it actually means for your wallet

If you've had the base game sitting in your library since some sale years ago, you just got dozens of hours of extra content and a visual refresh for zero. And a cheap copy - a discounted key, or a second-hand disc from a local classifieds site - is suddenly a much better buy than it was a week ago, since the expansions now come along with it.

There are catches, though. The upgrade covers "qualifying platforms", which in practice means current-gen consoles and PC. PS4 and Xbox One aren't mentioned anywhere, so if you're still on last-gen hardware, don't count on it. The good news for disc collectors: CD Projekt says any copy bought in the past, physical or digital, upgrades for free - but only within the same platform ecosystem. A PlayStation copy won't unlock anything on Xbox, and a Steam copy stays on Steam.

Battle.net is the other trap. It's a brand-new storefront for the game, so nobody owns it there yet and there's simply nothing to upgrade. Buy it on Blizzard's launcher and it's a regular paid purchase as a new customer. If you already have it on GOG, Steam or Epic, stay where you are.

Then there's the download itself. Reports put the PS5 patch at around 45 GB. That's no drama on fibre, but plenty of players here still live on mobile data plans or slower rural connections, so plan it before the weekend rather than on Friday night.

The real reason it's free

Let's not be naive. This isn't pure charity - it's the runway for Songs of the Past, the third expansion coming in 2027 and set in a new region called Letten. It's a paid expansion, the price hasn't been announced, and you need to finish the main campaign to play it. Getting millions of players back into the game a year early is smart marketing.

Still, if every publisher "marketed" like this, I wouldn't complain. Put it next to the usual remaster that asks you to buy the same game all over again, and it's hard to find a better deal this autumn. I'm reinstalling tonight - starting from White Orchard, like it's 2015 again.

Image: Dasha Ocean / CC BY-SA 2.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cosplay_of_Geralt_of_Rivia_at_AVAExpo_3.jpg