The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt players on PC are frustrated regarding Valve's review-protection system on Steam, which is preventing new reviews from being shared after the recent next-gen update. Valve has, in recent years, taken an aggressive approach to dealing with review bombs and other irregular behavior regarding Steam games' review scores. Unfortunately, like in The Witcher 3's case, that sometimes leads to situations that deny players important information.
The Witcher 3 is an extremely popular and well-received game, particularly on PC. As of its last accounting, which was in March, The Witcher 3 had a 97% rate of positive reviews with well over 500,000 ratings submitted. In March, Valve activated its review-protection system for The Witcher 3 due to review bombs following CD Projekt Red's public statement supporting Ukraine. The system has remained active ever since, now going on 9 full months.
What players are taking issue with is that The Witcher 3's recent update, the so-called update for next-gen releases, has led to some performance issues on PC. It's a big enough issue that many PC players, particularly those with weaker hardware, are having to roll back to an older version of The Witcher 3 to receive the update. There are a good number of negative reviews coming in, as a result, but new buyers won't be made aware of that due to the ongoing Steam restrictions.
It's a tough situation for Valve to be in, to be sure. Protecting CD Projekt Red from inauthentic, politically-driven review bombs is worth embracing. Preventing potential The Witcher 3 buyers from having an accurate view of the game's current state of quality is worth decrying. If there was a simple solution addressing both issues, Valve very likely would have done it. Unfortunately, it's just not that simple.
What The Witcher 3 players are hoping for is that the game actually isn't at risk of review bombing anymore and that Valve has left up its protections either by accident or overdue precaution. That would allow Valve to turn off the protections and for new reviews to be shared once more. But it seems more likely Valve has them in place for a reason, and new reviews will continue to be excluded.
It's possible for Steam users to see The Witcher 3's updated reviews by changing their settings. But it's fair to say the vast majority of Steam users won't be changing anything, and won't realize The Witcher 3's Steam reviews may be more negative than presented, as a result.
The Witcher 3 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.