Baldur’s Gate 3 is, somehow, once again rising on Steam. Despite coming out around five months ago and being an RPG, not a live service multiplayer retention drain, Larian’s work continues to speak for itself as more and more players seem to be either coming back to or trying the game out for the first time.
Before I get into the numbers, there are a handful of factors contributing to the continued success of Baldur’s Gate 3. Beyond the incredible word of mouth and sheer quality of the RPG, it’s one of the year’s longest games and won multiple GOTY awards. It’s great and it’s long, and those two factors mean more people will play it for long periods. Even then, it’s been a lot longer than I expected.
As spotted by Forbes, the numbers for BG3 just don’t lie. On Steam alone the concurrent peak since the full launch in August has been 875,000 players, with the game still netting in around 100,000 players at any given time up to December 2023. This is where it gets interesting though, as since December we’ve seen a steady increase, with a new peak of 291,548 players that seems to be consistently climbing.
Why is this? Well, the first-ever Baldur’s Gate 3 sale on Steam knocked 10% off the asking price last month, and it’s still available until Thursday, January 4. With all the good word going around about BG3 there’s no doubt in my mind that even such a small saving has tipped plenty of players over the line, who had the chance to try out the game for themselves properly with all that free time over the holiday break.
When it launched Baldur’s Gate 3 took over 25% of Steam, and it’s still going incredibly strong. Larian has also been releasing consistent updates, from small quality-of-life fixes to entirely new mechanics and even an epilogue. BG3 started incredibly strong because it’s a truly immersive RPG that reacts to your choices with excellent writing, but it’s stuck around because Larian has put in the effort (and then some) to address community concerns.
If you’re jumping into the Sword Coast and want more we’ve put together all the best Baldur’s Gate 3 mods you can download right now, alongside some top-tier Baldur’s Gate 3 builds to shake up your play style.
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