Larian says Baldur's Gate 3 is performing "way beyond" expectations

gamedeveloper.com:

Baldur's Gate 3 is already performing "way beyond" the expectations of developer Larian.

The sprawling RPG, which is set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons, launched for PC on August 3 and attracted over 800,000 concurrent players in a matter of days.

Speaking to PC Gamer about that dizzying concurrent player peak, Larian founder Swen Vincke suggested the title's debut performance was nothing short of unprecedented.

"This was not in the books at all. This was way, way beyond what we expected. There's also no precedent for it–for our type of game to have that many people playing concurrently," said Vincke.

"You see a lot of smiling faces. At the same time, [there's also] a lot of focus. We have reports coming in from people having issues, so we're focused on fixing those issues. That's very much on everyone's minds."

For context, Vincke told the IT team at Larian to expect around 100,000 concurrent users at launch, meaning Baldur's Gate 3 has blown those estimates out of the water.

As for why Larian failed to predict just how popular Baldur's Gate 3 would be at launch, Vincke explains the studio was concerned the title's early access success would actually hold it back.

"We've seen that in the past, other games were very successful in early access and then on the day of release they didn't sell much more because they saturated already. That was my biggest fear," he explained.

Looking ahead, Vincke said Larian is keeping its feet on the ground despite the initial success of Baldur's Gate 3. "We're on the road that we wanted to be on," he explained, noting that the studio won't be changing its future plans, but rather hopes to continue building "multiplayer systems-driven RPGS" that offer players an immersive escape.

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