The Witcher 3’s next-gen update is borked, so here’s how to roll it back

Today is the day The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s much touted free next-gen update arrives on PC and consoles, but it’s not been going so well for some players. People have already taken to Twitter, Redditand Steam with their tales of performance woe since the update landed. Steam reviews are also claiming the next-gen update has caused everything from reduced frame rates to issues with the HUD. Some of the RPS team have been having trouble since installing the 4.0 update too, getting very inconsistent frame rates on the new max settings even with a 3080 unless they turn off ray tracing and other new graphical features.

Anyone with any version of The Witcher 3 should be able to download the next-gen 4.0 update from today. It just might be a good idea not to accept that update for now, and stick to whatever version you have installed. If you haven’t already updated the game then it’s possible to run your last updated version of The Witcher 3 without any issues. I started up my copy on GOG and avoided the update, and had no problems running the game. That seems to be the best option right now, because trying to roll back the game after you’ve installed the update could very well make things a wee bit more awkward.

It is possible to roll the game back to a previous version on both Steam and GOG. On GOG, head to Settings and select Manage Installation. Then choose Configure, and select the version to roll back to from the beta branches dropdown. There should be an option labeled Classic. On Steam, go to Properties, then Beta, and select the branch from the dropdown menu. That should let you roll the game back to version 1.32. The only problem with that is that the 1.3 update for The Witcher 3 was released all the way back in 2016, while the next-gen update is version 4.0. You’ll be winding back years of updates if you choose to do this. Patch 1.32 was the final patch for PC though, so it should be pretty stable to run.

With the 4.0 update installed for the PC version, some players were experiencing hugely reduced frame rates. One player posting on The Witcher subreddit described the game as “unplayable”, and said they’d been getting 100-120 FPS when walking around Novograd in 4K yesterday. Post update, that had dropped to 45 FPS even with updated drivers. “RTX 3080 here. I went to Novigrad with RT on. I was probably below 30 FPS no matter the resolution,” a commenter on the post said. “It’s unbelievable.” Players on Twitter are also concerned that the update might cause save incompatibility.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition is out now on Steam, GOGand the Epic Game Store. You can download the next-gen update now, but it might be worth holding fire for a little while, unless you’re happy to let Geralt take you on a trip back to 2016. I’ll keep you updated if CD Projekt push out any fixes for the update.