The Witcher 3’s resurgence proves that games have changed

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the most-played games on Steam this week. The role-playing adventure debuted May 1, 2015, but it is actually more popular than ever. While it had 92,268 simultaneous Steam players on its 2015 launch day, it surpassed that concurrent-player figure with 94,601 players yesterday, December 29, 2019. This comes as a result of the megapopular new Netflix show The Witcher, which premiered December 20. But more important, it reveals how games like The Witcher 3 are lasting longer than ever.

Back in 2010, I was writing about games “freelance” (I was getting paid $200 a month to write news stories while also delivering sandwiches for Jimmy John’s). And I did an interview with then Netflix VP of communications Steve Swasey. That original story is lost to the internet Langoliers, but here’s an archived version of a G4TV story about the interview. One of the questions I asked Swasey was if Netflix would ever begin renting games.