Baldur's Gate 3 hits 800,000 concurrent players on Steam

There’s been plenty of talk about Baldur’s Gate 3 since its launch earlier in the month. The game has been in the works for years and on Steam Early Access for a long time to help refine things, and now that it’s out, people are enjoying the fruits of everyone’s labors. That includes the work of Larian Studios, who went all in to deliver a D&D-style experience while also making it great for casual video gamers to jump in and play. Even with the game’s launch, Larian has been working hard on refining the game even more, which led to the title’s first significant patch being dropped today.

It’s no secret that Baldur’s Gate 3 is overflowing with content. Every corner is filled with a secret side quest that’s pretty easy to miss. After all, platinum-ing the game would take no less than 200 hours. Still, with the excitement of all the new mechanics, characters, and world, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and start skipping content.

A large content update & round of bug fixes are coming to Baldur’s Gate 3, as a new patch is in development that will add requested features and address glitches that have been reported to the developer Larian Studios. While Baldur’s Gate 3 is very much playable in its retail form, there are still many issues that need addressing with the game.

Baldur’s Gate 3 has come within touching distance of Hogwarts Legacy‘s peak concurrent player record on Steam.

In the second week since its 1.0 launch, Baldur's Gate 3 was the biggest-grossing game on Steam.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is currently this year’s top-rated RPG game on Metacritic, and it’s not hard to discern why. Larian Studios spent years working to get the game out of early access, and its launch has proved more successful than anyone could have predicted. Baldur’s Gate 3 has not only taken over ratings and scores, though, as it’s absolutely soaring on Steam in terms of player count. Over the past weekend, the Dungeons & Dragons-like game accounted for almost a third of all Steam players.

As the video game community knows very well, there are times when video game developers and publishers set unrealistic expectations for their titles. They’ll set basic expectations about what they “need to sell,” which is usually fair. But then, some teams have “high expectations,” and when the game doesn’t reach them, they’ll say it “underperformed” even though it really didn’t. For the team at Larian Studios, they spent years with Baldur’s Gate 3 in Steam Early Access and had players helping them figure out what to fix and how to make the game better for when it finally launched.

Baldur's Gate III is dominating the Steam charts with record-breaking numbers, surpassing the 800,000 concurrent player mark on August 6. To be precise, the peak count was 814,666, perching it as the ninth-highest ranking PC game, when sorted by all-time peak variable — right below Hogwarts Legacy. It's an impressive feat, considering the game had been out for nearly three years now, albeit in early access, which allowed developer Larian Studios to slow-cook it to perfection based on player feedback. The completed version of the game dropped August 3 on PC and has shown no signs of slowing down.

Newly-released RPG Baldur's Gate 3 was the biggest selling title by revenue last week on Steam.

Larian Studios boss Swen Vincke didn't anticipate Baldur's Gate 3 to be even a fraction as successful as it has proven to be.

On Saturday, Larian founder Swen Vincke watched Baldur's Gate 3's concurrent player count on Steam break 800,000, earning it a spot among Steam's all-time most-played games. His reaction? 

The new game from Larian is off to a hot start.