Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General 72 hour Advanced Access to Full Game

The BG3 website says :

"All of the Digital Deluxe Edition DLC content is also included with the Collector’s Edition, which gives you 72 hours Early Access [...]"

The CU#20 : "petite précision : les sauvegardes de l'accès anticipé ne seront pas transférables dans le jeu ; en revanche, celles qui seront créées dans les 72 heures de jeu anticipé juste avant le lancement officiel, si" which means : "little precision : savegames from the EA won't be transfered in the game ; on the other hand, those created in the 72 hours of anticiped game before the official release will."

The CU#18 shows a board indicating '"Early access to act I" for the Deluxe and Collector editions.

It never refers to a date. They sold editions with early access of 72h so they must deliver it to customers who purchased these editions otherwise it's illegal. It might seems trivial (yeah we speek about 3 days of anticiped game) but this is just a legal question. This anticiped access is sold. So it is due. The modification of the official release date does not change the content of the editions already sold.

Buying something is the result of a sale contract : buyer must pay according to the rules of the contract and the seller must deliver what is in the contract. If not, the contract is broken and customers must be compensated.

Except thry then have every pc owner 4 week early access...

If you'd like to request a refund of a Collector's Edition as a result of this, then I'd recommend contacting Larian support.

I'm thinking that from a marketing perspective Larian should probably just have said they were moving the PC release date to 6 August and making the 72 hour early access to the full game rather than just act 1. That would have been functionally almost identical to just releasing on 3 August (except that people would probably have been able to continue to get free upgrades to Digital Deluxe up to 6 August rather than, presumably, 3 August) and some folk might have found it easier to swallow.

Its a good speculation, but its just that ... a speculation.

Yep, still just speculation here is the most up to date word on this:
https://twitter.com/228Airborn/status/1678717320909455360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1678718424342573056%7Ctwgr%5E3db24292d2f2f4150fa3ec68265004208f5ffd16%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redditmedia.com%2Fmediaembed%2F14wnyca%3Fresponsive%3Dtrueis_nightmode%3Dfalse

TLDR; they will make an official announcement in the next community update.

I don’t think many people would be particularly upset if the game releases to everyone on August3rd (aside from Elstinger). Just am interested which one it is. It seems all clues lead to August 3rd release. Not ideal for my schedule, but perfectly fine otherwise.

True. And while I got my info from Larian at the weekend, it's possible that all the confusion has changed plans, so I'll stop assuming I any longer have any sort of inside scoop. For all we know Larian have been desperately scrambling to see if they can release on 31 July after all and that's the cause of the delay in the update

Wait and see is good advice.

Let's just say, that sounds definitely a reasonable thing for them to do.
They HAD to have noticed all the confusion and even anger. They don't have to make it 31st, but they have to have internal talks about if or if not and then communicate what's going on.
That's nothing some poor social media person can say over a weekend and since the update on the matter is still not given, it seems like a definitive "we're looking into it, see if it's possible without crunch and tell you when we know".

And while I'd rather have BG3 yesterday, if on the other hand developers have to do crunch to make it happen on the 31st, I'll gladly take the 3rd.

I don't want a refund, i bought the game in EA in 2020 and spent more of 370 hours in... i am just happy that the game is most likely here. I played with mods so i will wait until these mods are updated to 1.0.

That i wanted to say is that is wrong to consider the modification of the official release on pc like a gift because the game will be available sooner and so Larian can suppress some content of specific editions. No, they sold 72 hours of anticiped game to some customers... so they have to deliver this to these customers. If they fixed the official PC release on august 3rd, owners of Deluxe an Collector editions should have access july 31th. On PS5 if they fix the official release date to september 6th, owners of Deluxe and Collector editions should have access september 3rd.
Look at that tweet : https://twitter.com/larianstudios/status/1677342100159885314 It says : "Baldur’s Gate 3 launches August 3rd for PC and September 6th for PS5." It does not say : "Anticiped game begins august 3rd before official launch august 31th".

Here is an interview of Sven : https://kotaku.com/baldurs-gate-3-pc-release-date-ps5-delay-starfield-1850588759
It's clear that they moved the date to avoid confrontation with some other games, not to offer 4 weeks of anticiped game...

I play Larian's games since DOS1 and i appreciate what they do : very good games, a lot of free stuff (like enhanced editions), passion. I trust Larian. This is just a legal question. I think Larian should have never gone into these things because it holds a lot of legal questions (what is "72 hours of anticiped game" ? if it is 72 hours of playing, then the game should be downloadable even before to guarantee the 72 hours of playing...). And communication is very bad.

My main concern is why 3 days would make a huge difference, especially after bumping it froward so much and since one would expect press to already have been playing the game prior to the 3 day head start. Don't mean to be negative, but if three days is so important is suggests that the bump forward was indeed a somewhat desperate attempt to avoid Starfield without falling into the huge spread of game releases coming after, meaning they'd basically have to release in January of next year to avoid the same problem with other games.

It almost sounds like they're scrambling to put finishing touches to hit that new sped up timetable and believe even 3 days would help.

Of course, I do still completely agree that wait and see is the best approach, but imo people are worrying about the wrong thing, it's the fact that this is even a contention that's baffling. Why is such a small amount of time important at all after a 30 day bump?

It would certainly have been nice to get the game downloaded before the 'General Release' floods the servers. It's gonna be a big and lengthy download (because of slow traffic from GOG).
I also am dying to play the full game....and the sooner the better. Of course I've been dying to play it for more than 3 years now ;(

And I do have to say, even with faster release, it seems like Larian took something away from us...by revoking the 3 day EA. I am glad it's releasing earlier, but I still feel like I lost something by them backpedaling.

Totally agreed. Cancelling the 72 hour early access is highly unethical. It's called bait and switch and many countries have laws to protect consumers against it.

If this proves to be the case I will be very disappointed in Larian. Lots of trust will have been lost.

Respectfully, this is nonsense. They said it was launching 8/31, and EA players would get act 1 on 8/28.

Then they moved it up to 8/3 for everybody. To complain about the 72 hour thing disappearing when you're getting the game 3 weeks earlier than you otherwise would makes no sense.

It comes across as "I need my special shiny that other people don't get."

You're getting the game much earlier than anticipated, there is nothing logical to complain about

Guys, calm down. I want that extra three days too but the early access was only one part of what was promised. They promised the entire digital delux edition, of which three day early access was only one feature. A major feature sure but it's not like they're leaving us with nothing. This isn't escalating to the point of legal action. Think about it this way, if they had taken away any other one feature of the Digital Deluxe edition, would there be this level of furor and "lost trust"? Everyone is getting the game a month earlier, it's not as though we're actually losing anything, substantively speaking. Even the folks who bought EA for the three day early access are still getting value for their purchase in the form of stuff they would otherwise have had to pay extra for.

normally what you get from 3 days is the bugs and i mean the main ones that stop the game from booting like in the last patch but this isn't as helpful when Larian changes so much all at once so its just a marketing issue now... they said you will get 72 hours and if thats not the case anymore then its a promise broken but the [if , when, maybe] is going to hurt them more

I wanted to say that I hope we still get 72 hour Early Access...

But I find anyone cancelling their order over the idea that we don't have the game was moved up like a month to be very odd.

Its pretty hilarious people are trying to make this a false advertising thing

Imagine telling a judge "my icecream cone got turned into a Sunday, nut not there people have Sundays, thats illegal!"

I completely agree with you, but in the USA (yes, they're in Belgium, I know), stupider cases have won bigger payouts lol. I wish Larian would just clarify this so we can put it to rest though and move on with our lives. It's not even a full week's difference, lol. Yet again, more concerned about the entire shift overall, but we'll see what happens at release.

I think it's more like:

before purchase:

"You'll be able to access Act 1 72 hours before the release date if you purchase Early Access"

right before release:

"You cannot access Act 1 72 hours before the release date, but now the release date is moved up a month for everyone"

Do you see the difference? If people purchased the game with the understanding that a 72 hour early access before the release date (those dates that change all the time), then they could be understandably expecting that 72 hour to hold, even if the release date is moved up. If EA was advertised as including 72-hour early access before the normal buyers, then yes, it is false advertising if they changed it. Now, if they never mentioned 72 hour early access as part of the deal, then it's not false advertising, but just moving the release date doesn't make them exempt from promises.

Yep, I agree the Sale Contract argument is insanely petty and stupid, but there will 100% be people that make a fuss about it and that is universally bad for Larian. IMO they made a major misplay not stating 6th August release with 3rd for Digital Deluxe owners if they are truly constrained to 3rd August for some reason. And I'd be very surprised if that isn't the reason we haven't had clarification yet. They probably have a legal team, marketing team, community team, publishing team and development team plus Swen all trying to sort out the mess in a way that isn't a greater liability going forward.