Larian Studios
Not even the developers of Baldur’s Gate 3 were expecting the huge success of the game
The devs at Larian Studios weren’t really expecting Baldur’s Gate 3 to be such a huge success, thinking players would be tired after the early access period.
Not even the most optimistic person could have predicted the initial success Baldur’s Gate 3 is having, which in its early days was incredible not only in terms of sales figures, but in relation to the opinion of the players and the specialized press. In fact, it has reached completely wild concurrent player peaks on Steam, comparable to those of the games that always top the most played lists, such as CS: GO, DOTA 2, or GTA V. This reception has been so surprising that not even Larian Studios themselves expected it.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has spent no less than three years in Early Access, and after that period, the Belgian Studio did not expect the public to be so eager for adventure. “We’ve seen that in the past, other games were very successful in early access and then on the day of release they didn’t sell much more because they saturated already.That was my biggest fear, that that had happened,” confessed Swen Vincke, head of Larian Studios, in an interview with PC Gamer.
How many concurrent players does Baldur’s Gate 3 have?
“This was not in the books at all. This was way, way beyond what we expected”, Vincke continues. “There’s also no precedent for it, for our type of game to have that many people playing concurrently ... Everybody here is very happy. You see a lot of smiling faces. At the same time, a lot of focus. We have reports coming in from people having issues, so we’re focused on fixing those issues, that’s very much on everyone’s minds.”
And the numbers are absolutely overwhelming. To get an idea, the previous game from Larian Studios, Divinity: Original Sin II, reached a peak of 90,000 concurrent players. It is not bad, but Baldur’s Gate 3 has reached no less than 814,466 players, and it is yet to come to PlayStation 5 and Xbox consoles.
“I don’t think it changes a lot. We are on the road that we wanted to be on,” explains Wincke. “It’s a little bit slower than we expected, because the events of the last couple years have slowed down development for everybody, but this is what we want to do: Make these multiplayer systems-driven RPGs and bring them to you in an immersive manner, which means bringing them to you in a cinematic way. [With Baldur’s Gate 3] we took the next step on that road and we’ll continue building on that. That’s what we want to do.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 is now available on PC, while it will arrive on PlayStation 5 on September 6. To be able to play it on xbox everything indicates that we will have to wait until 2024.