Over 8 Million Copies of The Witcher 3 Sold on Steam, Sales Boosted by TV Show

The premiere of The Witcher series on Netflix, as well as the preceding promo campaign, had a very positive impact on sales of The Witcher 3 on Steam. In the last 6 months alone, CD Projekt RED's game has reached 2 million customers. In total, Wild Hunt was bought over 8 million times on Steam.

2 million copies in six months is an impressive result.

According to SteamSpy, 8.18 million copies of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt were already sold on Steam. Interestingly enough, almost 25% of the aforementioned game copies have been delivered to customers in the last six months. The hit from CD Projekt RED hasn't sold that fast even after its launch, it took the game seventeen months to cross the border of 2 million copies (and this including pre-orders, of course only on Steam).

It's not (just) discounts

Where does the increased popularity of The Witcher 3 come from? The analysis of this topic allows us to draw some interesting conclusions.

First of all, the imcrease in sales is not directly linked to large price reductions. Last year, the first promotion took place in February, when the game could be purchased for $11.99. In the week that followed the launch of this promotional campaign, no sudden sales jump was observed. A similar scenario has been repeated several times over the last 12 months.

Sale of The Witcher 3 in 2019. The price is shown by the yellow line - as we can see, even though it was really low in some periods, it was not always associated with a big increase in interest. Source: SteamSpy.

"Toss a Coin to Your Witcher..."

However, there is a striking correlation between the increased sales of The Witcher 3 and... the appearance of information about Netflix''s series on the web. Gradual growth of interest in the title from CD Projekt RED began almost simultaneously with the launch of the promotional campaign of the aforementioned streaming platform.

The last six months. Netflix's promotional campaign clearly influences the sales of The Witcher 3. Source: SteamSpy.

During the period in question, we can also see some clear, sudden leaps in the number of sales. For example, on July 1 we received the first pictures from Lauren S. Hissrich's (The Witcher's showrunner) work, and in the following week half a million customers bought CD Projekt RED's game on Steam.

July 2019 - a sudden jump in Wild Hunt's popularity on Steam. Source: SteamSpy.

We had a similar situation right after the premiere of the series, i.e. after December 20, last year. The increased interest has been visible since the end of October, when the release date was announced and the full trailer of the show was presented. On October 31, The Witcher 3 could boast of 6.84 million copies sold on Steam. Seven weeks later, this figure rose to 7.63 million copies.

Premiere of the series and sales of The Witcher 3. Source: SteamSpy.

Netflix helps CD Projekt RED beat records

The conclusion from the data analysis is that Netflix helped The Witcher 3 climb to an unprecedented level of popularity (it's worth remembering that SteamSpy data includes only one platform and store, and the title is also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch). The series, together with the accompanying promotional campaign, also influenced the popularity of the previous two installments of Projekt RED CD's series, although to a lesser extent. All this, in turn, results in the excellent performance of the Polish company on the Stock Exchange, where CDPR has recently broken historic records, becoming the fifth largest company in Poland.

Finally, it is worth noting that the Wild Hunt sales were probably also influenced by the interest surrounding the next game from the studio, Cyberpunk 2077, which in the past year often aroused great emotions (thanks to the involvement of Keanu Reeves in the production). All that remains is to hope that this synergy will work in the other direction and the increased popularity of The Witcher 3 will have a positive impact on the sales of CP2077.