Baldur’s Gate 3, a single-player RPG with no microtransactions, is beating just about every game on Steam
Baldur’s Gate 3 is having one hell of a Steam launch, something you wouldn't expect given the sort of game that it is.
Baldur's Gate 3 is officially out of Early Access, and it's blowing up on Steam. The latest from Larian Studios is not only currently Steam's top-selling game, it's also ranked near the top of the platform's most played games.
Baldur's Gate 3's concurrent player count on Steam peaked at a massive 472,136 players, a figure that's likely to grow further over the weekend, given how often the game has been breaking its launch numbers. This is enough to make it effectively Steam's most played game, if you don't count Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 - two games that always occupy the top two slots.
For reference, this is more than all of Larian Studio's Divinity: Original Sin players put together, and certainly well above Divinity: Original Sin 2's 93,701 peak concurrent - which looks quite meagre by comparison.
The launch was so big, in fact, that it may have caused some issues with Steam's servers. Baldur's Gate 3 is a 122GB game that did not offer a pre-load option, so you can imagine the strain it put on the bandwidth of Steam's servers.
Larian's boss, Swen Vincke, actually tweeted about the server load, apologising for any outage the launch may have caused.
This makes Baldur's Gate 3 Steam's second-biggest release of 2023, in terms of concurrent players. The top release, of course, remains Hogwarts Legacy, which peaked at a staggering 879,308 players when it released in February.
It's always good to see a complex, single-player RPG do this well in a sea of free-to-play, microtransaction-heavy games. The popularity of D&D, and Larian's legacy in the genre have certainly helped, but these numbers are typically the domain of free-to-play shooters.
If you've played Baldur's Gate 3 during Early Access, you should delete your save before starting a new character on the launch build. Whether you're just beginning your journey or have already put dozens of hours into the game, our Baldur's Gate 3 guide has a wealth of tips, walkthroughs, builds and more.