Baldur’s Gate 3 Recent Success ‘Way Way Beyond Expectations’

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Abiyan

At Tech4gamers, I cover all sorts of gaming news. Whether it’s a leak of any upcoming game or an update, an announcement, or a rumour, I like to write about it all. Over the weekend, I sit and write features where I talk about games that I miss or want to see return.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 was released just a week ago, and the game accumulated over 250K concurrent players in the first few hours. Since then, the game has reached over 800K concurrent players, making it the second-biggest release of the year.

While the PlayStation release is still a month away, the game has already become the best-selling PSN title. This success is unprecedented for CRPGs and has even shocked the CEO of Larian Studios.

During a recent interview, the CEO stated that the game’s launch numbers are way higher than the team’s expectations.

Why it matters: Baldur’s Gate 3 is an extremely promising title in 2023. It has hundreds of hours of content, with the developer hoping to deliver a memorable experience for RPG fans.

The CEO of Larian Studios, Swen Vincke, recently spoke to PC Gamer. When asked about the game’s popularity at launch, he said:

“This was not in the books at all. This was way, way beyond what we expected.”

As stated above, Baldur’s Gate 3 belongs to a niche genre of CRPG games based on the Dungeons & Dragons universe. This led to the studio tempering expectations for its full release.

However, the game has shocked the entire industry. In a year with titles like Starfield and Spider-Man 2, Baldur’s Gate 3 holds the potential to go down as one of the best-selling and best-reviewed games of 2023.

The CEO further stated that the team is currently focused on fixing any reported issues to ensure the fans can enjoy the game without any hurdles.

Probably should stay away from the IT team for a while – told them they should expect like 100k or so at max https://t.co/TY0aSrmWEx

— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) August 4, 2023

Previously, the CEO claimed that he had expected a maximum of 100K concurrent players for the game on Steam. As stated earlier, the RPG managed to double this player count within a few hours.

During the interview, Swen Vincke also expressed concerns about the game potentially doing poorly after an impressive run in early access. It sold over 2.5 million copies over the last few years, but the CEO hoped this would not affect the full launch.

This became his biggest fear for Baldur’s Gate 3. Still, the studio’s incredible work has ensured that this was not the case.

At the time of writing, Baldur’s Gate 3 has over 400K players enjoying the RPG. The game is also set to release on PlayStation next month, and judging from the pre-orders, it will see a similarly large number of players at launch.

This release will be followed by the Xbox Series S|X versions in 2024. As such, there is still plenty of excitement for the game, and it might continue to reach new heights.

Abiyan

[News Reporter]

Abiyan is on track to complete his Computer Science bachelor’s degree. His enthusiasm for writing and gaming motivates him to keep readers and gamers updated with the latest information from the industry. In his free time, Abiyan enjoys playing Dota 2 and Rocket League. Abiyan has also been cited in reputed websites such as Kitguru, Comicbook, GamingBible, Eurogamer and Gamingbolt.