Witcher 3 PC Hotfix Should Help Stop It From Crashing So Much

The Witcher 3’s next-gen upgrade has been delightful…when the game works. While there haven’t been any huge issues on Xbox Series X/S and PS5, PC is another story. CD Projekt Red now says a new hotfix released on Monday should help reduce at least some of the issues players have encountered with frame rate stuttering and crashes.

“We’ve just released a hotfix for The Witcher 3 on PC, which should improve the overall stability and performance, and fix GOG & Steam overlays,” the studio tweeted this morning. “The game version won’t change. Our teams are working on further improving the experience on all platforms.”

When the free 4.0 update rolled out for The Witcher 3 on December 14, PC players immediately began reporting performance problems. Hardware that had previously run the game on high settings at 60fps was now struggling to run it on low settings at 30fps, some claimed. The new ray-tracing feature was especially taxing, leading to frame rate dips and stuttering even on the new generation of Nvidia RTX 4080 graphics cards.

Players also reported issues with Steam Deck compatibility, and more frequent crashes and freezes on desktop. As a result, some tried to find a way to disable the update altogether and revert to an earlier version of the game. Although ray-tracing has also been busted on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, the game has otherwise been running mostly problem-free there.

So far, results for PC players following today’s hotfix appear to range from good to mixed. We’ll have a better idea of how it’s shaking out in the days ahead, but hopefully it’s not long before CD Projekt Red is able to release a full-blown fix that addresses the current issues and delivers on the promise of the ray-tracing addition.