The Witcher 3 Revival on Steam Thanks to Netflix Show
The premiere of Season 2 of Netflix's The Witcher encouraged players to return to CD Projekt RED's trilogy. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt saw the biggest increase in popularity in the bunch.
The second season of Netflix's The Witcher debuted on December 17 and while it didn't appeal to all viewers, it was very popular over the past two weeks. It translated to CD Projekt RED's games, and specifically to the trilogy with Geralt in the lead role. In the case of Thronebreaker, Gwent and The Witcher Adventure Game, no noticeable increase in interest was noted.
We observed a similar situation two years ago, when the first season of Netflix's show debuted. The number of people playing The Witcher trilogy increased and grew, until the then a new activity record in The Witcher 3 was set - at one point, more than 103,000 users were playing the game. And how was it this time?
Source: SteamDB.
Not so good, but taking into account that the game is almost seven years old, it seems that it's not bad either. December 23, 2021 recorded over 78.5 thousand people simultaneously playing the the third Witcher on Steam. A much smaller increase can be observed in the case of the first part of the game series (around 6.5 thousand compared to 1-2 thousand), and the smallest increase was observed in the case of Assassins of Kings - over 4 thousand compared to the 1-1.5 thousand recorded before Christmas.
The ongoing Steam sale is also significant here, with The Witcher trilogy available for a very attractive price - Wild Hunt and its DLCs are available for less than $10, the second game for a bit over $1, and the first one for a token buck. However, it is hard to question the impact of the TV series, which boosted the third game's results, as well as sales of Andrzej Sapkowski's books (by 500% in the US), two years ago.
