Baldur’s Gate 3 Lead Designer Claims Infamous Bear Scene Boosted Game’s Sales

Larian has released some Baldur's Gate 3 stats to celebrate its first week of release and some of them are remarkable.

Larian boss Swen Vincke has suggested Baldur's Gate 3 players ignore the game's companions when playing multiplayer.

In every genre of video games, there are the “standard bearers.” These are the titles that everyone holds in the highest esteem because they “changed the game” or redefined how the genre, or the video game space as a whole, should think about things. In our modern era, there are fewer opportunities for titles to “change the game,” so when one appears to come around, people praise it. The arrival of Baldur’s Gate 3 is one such example. It might look or feel like an “old-school RPG but with modern updates,” but it’s so much more than that, as many have noted.

Those of us lucky enough to play on PC have been enjoying Baldur’s Gate 3 to no end, and PlayStation owners will soon be able to join in all the fun — but that begs the question, will Baldur’s Gate 3 come to Xbox?

It's been weeks since the news surfaced that Baldur's Gate 3 lets you hook up with a bear - really, it's a Druid who can shapeshift into a bear. Larian's highly-anticipated RPG has seen unprecedented success in several categories on Steam, we've been experimenting with mods and party compositions, and we're still working on our Baldur's Gate 3 review-in-progress. And yet, as much as I try to escape it, I'm still writing about bear sex.

Baldur's Gate 3 is a game of grand adventure, a game of nuanced character choices, a game of creative problem solving, a game full of literally hundreds of spells. It's also a game where you can have sex with a bear. Guess which of the above rocketed Baldur's Gate 3 to viral mainstream attention just a few weeks before release? I expected Baldur's Gate 3 to be big, but I did not expect a marketing campaign highlighting a sex scene with a bear (okay, to be clear, it's a sex scene with a druid who can transform into a bear) to help Baldur's Gate 3 pull in 800,000 concurrent players over the weekend.

Baldur's Gate 3 is already performing "way beyond" the expectations of developer Larian.

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.

Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke addressed the question of new expansions or DLC for Baldur’s Gate 3. Depending on where you stand, you might be happy or not so happy about it.

Baldur's Gate 3 reached over 800,000 concurrent players on Steam on Sunday, a peak reached within a few days of its launch.

If you’re loving Baldur’s Gate 3 and hopeful for some DLC down the line, you’d better reign in those expectations for now, as developer Larian has clarified that it has no plans for the colossal RPG game to get an expansion. While our Baldur’s Gate 3 review evaluates what you can expect with the game right now, with over 100 hours of content to satisfy you, it’s only natural for hits like Baldur’s Gate 3 to raise questions as to what’s next.

Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian has explained why the rules of Dungeons and Dragons make any potential expansion to its hit PC role-player «very hard» to make.