Baldur’s Gate 3’s concurrent player count peaks above 800,000 players on Steam
by Danny Craig
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Larian Studios
Larian Studios' latest CRPG has received universal acclaim, with it unexpectedly reaching a player count high enough to place it among the top ten highest concurrent player counts on Steam of all time.
The details:
- After a strong start in terms of player numbers, with just under 600,000 concurrent players on its first day of release, the game continues to rise in popularity. According to SteamDB, the game reached a peak of 814,666 concurrent players in-game on August 6 at 7 pm UTC, ranking ninth among the platform's highest-ever concurrent player counts. Although fans of the franchise's previous entries, Larian's Divinity series, and the RPG genre, in general, were excited about the release, it appears that word-of-mouth praise for the title, combined with some unusual marketing, has caused the game to sell like hotcakes.
- Baldur's Gate 3 has been a huge success among players and critics alike, with an average review score of 94 out of 100 on OpenCritic and 92% positive user reviews on Steam. The Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG has been praised for its openness, allowing players to do things like take weapons from skeletons before they resurrect, make different quest choices based on character stats, and even stack crates on top of each other to scale a castle's walls.
- Swen Vincke, the studio's CEO and founder, shared on Twitter that the game's popularity has taken Larian by surprise, with the IT team told to expect a maximum of 100,000 players to jump into the game. It's also worth noting that the game is still only available on PC, with a PlayStation 5 release scheduled for September 6. An Xbox Series X/S version is also in the works, but the studio previously stated that it needs to find a way to ensure solid performance on the Series S's weaker hardware.
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