The Witcher Series Has Sold Over 40 Million Copies

CD Projekt Red has revealed that, to date, The Witcher series has sold over 40 million copies, half of which have been The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which has now surpassed 20 million copies sold. For those that don’t know: The Witcher spans three games, but it wasn’t until the third game that the series really found mainstream success. In other words, it’s quite incredible to see the series at over 40 million copies, and the third game at over 20 million. Not many games sell over 20 million copies, let alone hardcore single-player open-world RPGs.

The Witcher series is a role-playing game series developed by Polish developer CD Projekt Red, and initially published by Atari. It’s based on the novel series of The Witcher by Polish author Andrjez Sapkowski, which is getting a TV adaptation by Netflix later this year. The story takes place in a medieval fantasy world inspired by Eastern-European folklore. It follows Geralt of Rivia, one of a few traveling monster hunters who have supernatural powers, known as Witchers. Set in third-person, the series’ combat has always been pretty standard stuff and nothing to write home about. However, it was the storytelling which blended in player choice that drew players into the original, which hit PCs in 2007. It was a cult-classic that not many people knew about it.

Then in 2011, a sequel for both consoles and PC released, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. While bigger than the first game, the critically-acclaimed RPG adventure still failed to crack the mainstream, but it did widen the series’ fanbase. And then in 2015, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt released, and it put the series and CD Projekt Red on the map. It took a little bit, but word caught on how great the game is, and over the course of 2015 it became one of the biggest talking points in video games, winning many Game of the Year awards. Further, it’s widely considered one of the best games of all-time.

Since 2015, the game has been steadily selling and growing in popularity. And now CD Projekt Red is getting ready to release its next major game: Cyberpunk 2077, which has insane levels of hype, not only because it’s CD Projekt Red, but because it looks wildly ambitious and looks like it will set the bar for open-world and role-playing games like The Witcher 3 previously did. Barring any delay, it will release worldwide on April 16, 2020 via the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.