A developer at Larian Studios has finally given an indication of sales figures for Baldur’s Gate 3, as they address ‘threats’ against the team over the upcoming addition of mod support.
As digital continues to make physical sales more of a niche, it’s become increasingly difficult to tell exactly how well a video game has done, because it’s on publishers to share figures and very rarely do.
This is especially difficult in cases like Baldur’s Gate 3, which has been digital-only since launch and will only see a limited physical release later this year.
It’s presumably done well, given its performance on Steam, but there’s no way to be sure on console, where it does seem to have made less of a splash. However, Larian Studio’s director of publishing, Michael Douse, has now given an indication of the overall sales figures.
In response to outcry regarding planned mod support, Douse explained how Baldur’s Gate 3’s player base had ballooned from ‘2 million players to way over 10 in a very short space of time’, which has made development ‘muddier and complex’.
‘In order to maintain the same level of dialogue, we need people to understand that these conversations take time,’ he added.
Earlier this month, Douse described plans for mod support as ‘robust’ but did not confirm when the update would be released.
In this latest update posted on February 25, he stated the team will be ‘talking in depth about what our mod support will look like soon’, adding: ‘Been working on it since launch. As always, we’ll discuss it in our way with our community.
‘Threats and toxicity against our devs and community teams will only harm the conversation. Please stop that.’
While it’s unclear if the ‘way over’ 10 million figure relates to the current active playerbase or how many copies have been sold, it’s the best (and only) indication we’ve had for sales of Baldur’s Gate 3 – with previous estimates based on Steam data ranging from 10 million to over 21 million.
Either that’s grossly inaccurate or Douse is severely underplaying exactly how well the game has sold, potentially to the tune of anything up to 20 million.
What’s also perplexing is why they, and other publishers, won’t just announce the figures openly. In some cases, larger companies may fear giving away helpful information to rivals but you’d think Larian would want to shout their success from every rooftop.
Although we may never get an official figure, this limited information does suggest Baldur’s Gate 3 perhaps hasn’t sold that well on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S, despite the console conversions being very good.
Regardless, based on these rough figures it’s easily Larian Studios’ biggest game to date. It was previously estimated that Divinity: Original Sin 2 had sold at least 7.5 million copies, as of July 2023, and until now that has been their biggest hit.
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