Witcher 3 Price Jumps $10 on Steam Ahead of Free Remaster

A Quiet Upcharge Before a Big Upgrade

If you have been sitting on The Witcher 3 for years, waiting for some cosmic sign to finally pull the trigger, here is your update: that moment just got a little more expensive. According to IGN, CD Projekt Red has raised the price of The Witcher 3: Complete Edition on Steam from $39.99 to $49.99 in the days following the studio’s surprise remaster announcement earlier this week. That is a $10 jump on a game that originally launched back in May 2015.

The timing is deliberate. As reported by IGN, the new $49.99 price point will also be the price of the remaster itself when it arrives next month. So anyone who buys the existing version right now is essentially paying for the upgraded version upfront, since their copy will be automatically updated at no additional charge.

What the Remaster Actually Includes

CD Projekt Red’s announcement described the remaster as bringing visual enhancements, changes to combat, and quite a bit more beyond that. For players who already own the game, the upgrade is completely free. On top of that, existing owners who have not yet picked up the DLC expansions will receive those for free as well, which is a genuinely generous offer for a studio that could have easily sold the remaster as a separate product.

New buyers, though, are now looking at $49.99 rather than the sub-$40 price the game held for some time. On one hand, that is understandable given a substantial content update is incoming. On the other, the game is 11 years old, and plenty of prospective players have been eyeing it at sale prices for years.

The Sale Math Still Works in Your Favor

Here is where things get a bit more forgiving. As IGN writer Cade Onder noted from personal experience, CD Projekt Red runs deep discounts on The Witcher 3 with real regularity. He picked up the Complete Edition on Steam for $4 during last Christmas’s sale. Four dollars. For one of the most acclaimed RPGs ever made.

With a remaster dropping next month and a new DLC expansion planned for next year ahead of The Witcher 4’s expected 2028 release, there will be plenty of seasonal sale windows between now and then. Anyone who finds $49.99 hard to justify for an 11-year-old game, even a heavily upgraded one, has a reasonable case for waiting until the holiday season.

That said, the value case for The Witcher 3 at full price remains strong. The Complete Edition with all DLC and side content runs into the hundreds of hours, and the game is considered one of the best RPGs ever made by a wide swath of the industry. A $50 ask for that much content, now with a visual and mechanical overhaul baked in, is not an outrageous proposition compared to what a brand-new release costs in 2026.

What This Means for Fence-Sitters

For anyone who already owns The Witcher 3, none of this affects you. The free upgrade arrives automatically, and if you have been meaning to get around to the Blood and Wine or Hearts of Stone expansions, you will have them waiting when the remaster lands.

For newcomers, the choice is essentially whether $49.99 feels right today or whether you would rather wait for a sale and play the upgraded version at a steep discount a few months down the road. History suggests the discount will come. The only real question is your patience.