Since its much-hyped release last week, Baldur’s Gate 3 has received praise from critics and players alike – and now, has become the ninth most-played game on Steam, according to SteamDB.
According to the website, the peak number of concurrent players diving into Faerun on Baldur’s Gate 3 in the last 24 hours (and all time) is a whopping 814,666 people. At the time of writing (past the weekend for most timezones, and a quiet Monday afternoon for Aussies), over 446,000 players are still in Baldur’s Gate 3 concurrently. That’s a lot of time spent breaking loose from the Nautiloid and rolling crits.
These staggering numbers place Baldur’s Gate 3 above games like Apex Legends, Call of Duty, and Fallout 4 on Steam alone for concurrent players. On the weekend, it surpassed a number of other titles, only beaten out by CS:GO at its 24hr peak – and this doesn’t even take into account that many were likely still downloading the 122GB file due to a lack of preload availability.
Larian Studios’ Swen Vincke joked about the major success on Twitter, sharing a screenshot of Baldur’s Gate 3 on the Steam charts and claiming that they had initially prepared for maximum 100k concurrent players on launch.
Given the three-year period Baldur’s Gate 3 sat in early access before the full launch, it’s no surprise that it’s doing major numbers currently, and is likely to continue to grow as more players jump into the expansive Dungeons & Dragons world for the first time.
While Kotaku Australia has yet to release our review of Baldur’s Gate 3 due to the sheer size (it’s coming soon, we promise!), and many other outlets opted for a review-in-progress at the time of release to fully get through the massive adventure, it’s already been praised for the worldbuilding, graphics, and overall gameplay.
Given the level of hype, we think the game is probably going to be nipping at the heels of releases like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (and possibly Starfield) for GOTY, but only time will tell as more players and critics get deeper into the story to confirm whether it holds up.
Console players (and Mac users) will get their turn to get stuck into the game soon, too, with the title set to launch for both on September 6. An Xbox version will likely follow suit in time, although no launch date has been locked in just yet due to “technical issues.”
If you’ve not yet had a chance to jump into the sprawling RPG world of Baldur’s Gate 3, we’ve got you covered with our top tips before getting started – including hiding all of your sex-scenes with NPCs from your friends while playing co-op. If you’ve already rolled your character, godspeed to you and the other 800k players who’ve been no-lifing it through the storyline over this last weekend.
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