‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared For 100,000 Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700,000

I am running out of ways to describe not just what a success Baldur’s Gate 3 is, but on a scale that no one, not even its developer Larian, predicted.

Larian’s Swen Vincke posted a tweet yesterday showing the game hitting 500,000 concurrent players, making it the third most played game on all of Steam behind only CSGO and DOTA 2. He said that he told IT to only expect 100,000 concurrents at max.

That gap has widened even further. The peak yesterday was 712,281 players, surpassing games like DOTA 2, Rust, Apex Legends, GTA 5 and PUBG. Mind you, this is a single player, hardcore RPG.

Past that, Baldur’s Gate has now broken into the top 10 peak playercounts in Steam history. It’s currently #9, getting dangerously close to Hogwarts Legacy’s 879,308, a high water mark from earlier this year. Above those two are New World, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, Dota 2, Lost Ark, CSGO and PUBG. There are only four single players games out of the top 10, as others are MMOs or PvP games.

I think that Baldur’s Gate might push even higher later today, as I’ve seen playercounts peak for many games on Sundays. While it’s not impossible the following weekend is higher, that’s a bit unlikely, as these all-time peaks often happen early on. But anything can happen, and Baldur’s Gate has already defied all kinds of odds.