SINCE 2020, Baldur’s Gate III has existed in an early access form until its full release on Aug 3, early this month, when it broke all kinds of records, as well as accrued critical acclaim.
On Aug 6, Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate III hit a peak of 814,666 concurrent players on Steam.
According to SteamDB’s figures, the game stormed the all-time Steam charts over the weekend, displacing Apex Legends from the top 10.
The scale of the classic role-playing game’s success has even surprised Larian Studios.
After Baldur’s Gate III broke past 500,000 concurrent players on Steam, Larian Studios founder and CEO Swen Vincke exclaimed on Twitter that the reception of the game is not going unnoticed.
“Probably should stay away from the IT team for a while; told them they should expect like 100k or so at max,” he tweeted.
The previous Baldur’s Gate games were developed by different studios, and this is Larian Studios’ first foray into the series. The studio’s renown was built upon the Divinity series, which saw a spill-over of fans from the latter into this game.
Baldur’s Gate III’s reception is also due to the effective manoeuvring of its release.
Initially announced to be releasing simultaneously across all platforms on Aug 31, Larian Studios brought Baldur’s Gate 3’s Steam launch forward a month, as they sought to avoid a clash with Bethesda’s sci-fi epic, Starfield.
The PlayStation 5 version was then delayed a week to Sep 6, so that it would be available for PS5 players that would not be able to jump into Bethesda’s Xbox exclusive.
As of Aug 7, the critical acclaim garnered by the Steam version has led to Baldur’s Gate III landing on the #1 best-selling pre-order list on the North American PlayStation Network.
On the other hand, Xbox players may have to wait until 2024, as that version of the game is seemingly delayed until split-screen co-op is made functional on the lower-spec Series S console.
Larian Studios director of publishing, Michael Douse, has called it a “huge technical hurdle” on Twitter.
