Baldur's Gate 3 Sets New Steam Record, Surpassing Hogwarts Legacy

Highlights

Baldur's Gate 3 is quickly approaching the record number of concurrent players on Steam set by Hogwarts Legacy, indicating its strong popularity among gamers since its release.

Baldur's Gate 3, available solely on Steam and GOG unlike Hogwarts Legacy on various platforms, truly demonstrates its popularity among players based on its numbers. This success signals a promising revival of high-budget CRPGs, a genre that has been largely overlooked by mainstream publishers in recent times.

Baldur's Gate 3 is rapidly approaching the record for the highest number of concurrent players on Steam, which was set by Hogwarts Legacy. This demonstrates the enthusiastic response from fans to Larian Studios' new game, which received excellent reviews upon its release on August 3.

Despite Hogwarts Legacy's continued success in Steam sales, with the game dominating the platform in 2023, Avalanche Software's popular Harry Potter RPG still holds the title for the largest launch on Valve's platform. Shortly after its release, Hogwarts Legacy reached its peak with 879,000 Steam players simultaneously, making it WB Games' most successful PC launch to date.

Baldur's Gate 3 is closing in on an impressive record with 814,666 concurrent Steam players during its launch weekend. However, it remains uncertain if the game will surpass Hogwarts Legacy in the days to come, as AAA games tend to reach their player peaks soon after release. Hogwarts Legacy experienced a significant drop in player count after 72 hours. A notable difference between the two launches is that Baldur's Gate 3 was only available on Steam and GOG, while Hogwarts Legacy was available on multiple platforms. This means that the popularity of Baldur's Gate 3 can be better represented by its current numbers.

Baldur's Gate 3's achievement of being in the same league as one of the year's most universally appealing games is remarkable, especially considering that classic CRPGs have a smaller niche compared to open-world role-playing games focused on action. The success of Baldur's Gate 3 has also sparked hope among fans of the genre that high-budget CRPGs, which have been largely overlooked by mainstream publishers since the early 2000s, will make a comeback.

Considering the game's current commercial success, it may persuade Larian to consider creating DLC for its highly acclaimed RPG, assuming they haven't already been working on post-launch content. So far, no expansion has been announced for Baldur's Gate 3, and the studio's boss recently disclosed that they haven't yet determined their next project. In the past, the first two Baldur's Gate games each received a major expansion about a year after their release. However, that history may not hold much significance two decades later, especially since Larian has typically focused on delivering complete experiences, occasionally followed by definitive editions, but without extensive post-launch content support.

Baldur's Gate 3 is available now on PC and launches September 6 on PS5, with an Xbox Series X/S port also being in development.

Source: SteamDB