Witcher 3 was released on 19th May 2015, exactly 10 years ago today. That’s a long way to say: I’m friggin’ old.

In a couple of hours, exactly a decade ago, many of you would be getting ready to hit the New Game button in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. ⚔️ Thank you to everyone who made this launch a wildly happy memory that will stay with us forever. ❤️

Now tell us, what’s your fondest The Witcher 3 memory? 🤔💭

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— The Witcher (@thewitcher.com) May 19, 2025 at 12:30 AM

In my books, Witcher 3 remains the greatest video game of all time. Full stop. To this day, I haven’t finished another game and stepped away from the controller feeling as satisfied and fulfilled as I did completing this beautiful game.

The reasons are simple in retrospect. CD Projekt RED, the developers behind this masterpiece, poured a lot of love, blood, sweat and tears to get almost all of the core video game elements perfect: the story, characters, environment, visuals, music and mechanics. I could go on and on about each of those and I’m really fighting the urge to not do that. Okay maybe just one — the fucking soundtrack? THE FUCKING SOUNDTRACK?! The side quests alone were praise-worthy. The choices were meaningful and had consequences — something seemingly forgotten lately.

The base game was truly a masterpiece and if that wasn’t enough, the fine people at CDPR followed it up with a slew of free DLCs and not one, but two jawdropping paid expansions — Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine — both exceeding the high bar set by the base game. The latter even goes further to brighten the bleak world, filling it with a lot of new auditory and sensory bliss. Each of those DLCs fare a thousand times better than most of the rushed, slopfest, namesake AAA games from recent times. To put it another way, in the hands of greedy corps like EA, Ubisoft or Activision, each would have costed $100.

But guess what? $9.99 and $19.99.

Now onto a confession: I shamelessly pirated the game back when it came out¹. It was the norm back then and to be honest, amongst a lot of Indian folks. Partly because games are outlandishly expensive, partly because of our ignorance to hard work that goes into making great experiences even if they consist of bits and bytes. I remember seeing the comment left by someone from CDPR on a torrenting site back then, notifying the pirates of a day one update that’ll fix their problems and also pleading with us to consider buying the game. I was quite amused.

Witcher 3 made me recognize and appreciate the hard work. When I finally finished the hours-long campaign and DLCs all those years ago, sitting in my college dorm on a sweaty summer afternoon, I had tears rolling down my face. Both due to whatever I just experienced and due to this feeling of intense guilt for ripping off the hard work of hundreds and thousands of talented folks. I went straight to Steam and made the purchase, even though it was discounted quite heavily for a game of its calibre. I gifted a copy to a dear friend. I bought the game on multiple platforms later on. And finally, I pre-ordered Cyberpunk 2077 so I guess we’ll call that even, eh?² Just kidding. I owe the fine folks at CDPR an apology and a thanks for making me start appreciating beautiful things.

I’m optimistic for Witcher 4. I hope it continues from where Witcher 3 left off and raises the bar even higher. I hope the fine folks at CDPR will keep chipping away at it patiently and launch it when it’s truly ready. In the meantime, I’ll make do with the serendipity of riding along the slopes of Toussaint listening to Wind in the Caroberta Woods.