Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General So how many copies have been sold as of today

Title says it all. I want to know how successful BG is.

70k concurrent players peak on Steam, so at least that.

Steamspy also recorded a million copies sold. Just on Steam. So over that likely, too. Edit: For comparison reasons PoE 1 sold 700k within the first year. BG2 sold 1.5 million pieces in a similar timeframe.

The success isn't going to come from sales figures. A game like the Division SOLD a lot but many people STOPPED playing it for example. Went down by about three quarters on steam. All because the game gave a bad first impression. It got updated but by then it was too little too late. X4 pulled the same crap as well.

Here too we have that risk. Except BG3 is stated early access and doesn't pretend it's a finished game. That works in their favour. It's "honest". So it won't endanger their reputation. Everything will be determined based on what state the game is in when it finally hits full release. That will determine the games long term success.

This is also following up from one of the best RPG games of all time AND it's still in EARLY ACCESS. At this point anyone buying into early access is basically paying for a CHANCE to have a good game. But that does not mean the game itself will be good on a whole. Right now we got bugs up the wazoo. Though interesting character development. But buggy boss fights. But mindflayers and some other main plot race would have been nice. But dragon. But will they be talked too without being forced into fights? But so many dice rolls and dice rolling again just to pass what should be one check instead of three.

It's a bit of a mixed bag. A very buggy, messy mixed bag still being mixed in a blender because it's still being made. And you want to talk about the games "success" when it's trying to avoid failure to begin with? Sales figures doesn't cover any of that. Beyond "This may be a mixed bag". But WHAT is successful? And what's not panning out? You simply can't determine that just with sales figures. Well, that and you don't know who's still PLAYING what they brought (As I stated before). As it stands playing through the game can be a bit of a chore. You'll have a nice adventure but you're going to get a few headaches. Your immersion WILL be ruined when it's made clear animations are that janky.

There's pros and cons right now. The cons can put people off until official release (I'm personally not playing this until then. Spoiled myself on youtube though). So any sales figures now will NOT be accurate. Only once the game goes into full release will we know how "successful" the game is. Many people are interested but "waiting". And it's going to be a long wait with the amount this game has to still do. Let alone fix. Still, you know people want to get the game even if it's not brought yet. So that says something about the games success even when it's NOT brought. But will be later (provided it's not a buggy mess on release).

Worth noting the game can be "obtained" from less then legal sources. But that might be to the games benefit with as many bugs as it has currently. If people enjoy the game many will still buy the game (who would have never got it anyway otherwise most likely. Basically it adds to sales figures). But like anyone else they have to be impressed enough to do so. Seeing a body "stretch" across the screen leaves a bad example though. But it's early access (and stated as such even in the shady areas) so people will wait for full release before deciding if it's "worth it" or not. Unless otherwise impressed enough in the games current state. Which is quite possible. Just keep in mind we're seeing all this janky stuff and glitching out and buggy boss fights and such. That really needs to be addressed.

Suffice to say the game has a LOT of attention. From multiple places. It's built up a lot of hype. I'm confident it can deliver. And I'm hard to impress. They better let us have pleasant conversation with demons and dragons though! I so miss that.

Subsequent updates will garner diminishing attention in playtime and sales, people that did not like it enough will likely drop out and not return, even after EA. You could say it is a success in sales right now, but not a successful game. Depending on how the EA goes it might also increase or hur the company's reputation for potential DLCs or the next game.

DOS 2 saw the overwhelming majority of its sales after the year-long EA concluded and the game actually released.

I see absolutely no reason to expect something particularly different here. Except on a much bigger scale, given that it's already over a million now, which is a number DOS 2 couldn't even dream back then.

The nice thing about doing Early Access is that people will get to see how much the game has improved. So when it officially launches, instead of focusing only on whatever flaws it still has, people will be saying "Oh this is so much better than it was at the beginning of Early Access!"

sounds like a double edged sword. I do hope there would be many changes though

As far as I know, Larian does not often give exact numbers on their sales, getting an exact amount on DOS2 is impossible, it is all speculation at the end of the day unless I'm missing something. Even the 1million mark for BG3 was not a number mentioned by Larian.


Here are some rankings showing where dos2 was at.
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/2017_best_sellers/
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/winter2018bestof/
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/2019_top_sellers/

Saying a game is a top seller when it is free to play seems odd unless they are counting the microtransactions as purchases and then not looking at game sales but total income. Four of the games on the 2019 top seller list at Platinum are F2P.

Is that so? That is rather intriguing, definitely not something usual for an EA game. They usually generate a lot of hype and then slowly burn out.

I don't expect this trend to be quite as pronounced for BG3 given Larian made their name for real with DOS2 and benefit from that going into BG3. The fact this game is their, I believe, first non-kickstarter while also still being independent of any publisher says something about how things has changed. Turn-based RPG is relatively niche, so the market will be more quickly saturated and I don't foresee the exponential growth you kind of indicate here as very likely at all.

People are not buying BG3 because of Larian (some yes), they are buying it because it is Baldurs Gate. The original BG series has sold 4 times more copies than DOS1&2, not counting the enhanced edition or sales post 2000. Larian need to make it clear who there target audience is, BG and D&D fans or pewdiepie subscribers.

I am sure DOS3 will be cut and pasted soon after BG3 is released. People were promised "something special" for BG3, so far not seeing it.

1m+ in EA is absolutely amazing considering the total sales of DOS2 is between 1.2-.1.35m. Says to me a different type of fan is interested in BG3, I wonder who that would be?

I actually bought BG 1 & 2 after 100+ hours in BG 3 early access. That's all thanks to BG3.
Finished BG 1, and for sure I had far more fun in BG 3 EA than BG 1. Can't wait to play BG 3 EA again.
BG 2 has very good story (far better than BG 1), but I'm just about half through so far.

But then another Bioware title; The Mass Effect trilogy still remains my best Bioware game, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic a close second.
All I want is a good RPG, mostly a great story, but good graphics are helping a lot as well. And BG 3 it's already more than that.

Those who are unhappy have other expectations, like D&D rules, and they need a rework of current systems or an advanced mod editor early enough; so the community can create enough "fixes" to please an even larger player base. One-time commercial success is easier to achieve, than making a name in the long term. That means winning over more and more players, without losing the core audience.

I don't get it. If that's true, where were all these people when Poe, pathfinder etc came out? I seriously doubt it

doesn't change that the original BG trilogy is still regarded as the seminal RPG experience on PC against which ALL OTHER PC RPGs HAVE BEEN MEASURED ... even DOS 1 and 2.

BG3 might be "fun" because it is more modern, but that is precisely the "pewdiepie" audience that Soul Scar mentions.

The writing in BG3 is atrocious; I've read Choose Your Own Adventure novels with better characterization and structure. The combat is slow and non interactive; every fight is exactly the same. Dialogue is narrow and uninspired; every conversation ends either in absolute success, or combat.

By and large, the people happy with BG3 are DOS2 fans, or younger players who came to BG after DOS. With the odd exception, everyone else is put off by this game because it is neither a BG game, nor a D&D game.

The sales of BG3 won't be like DOS2. They've already sold the majority of the copies they will sell of this game because of the hype around it. IMO Larian shot themselves in the foot and have proven to be a one trick pony. They are so scared of failure that they aren't even TRYING to do something unique for BG3.

At work lol

I have to say I have the same feeling as Abits here. ^^
You know, I played both POE and tried to replay it but...just couldn't. Even some of the original creators couldn't figure out the recepy for success anymore for me. While i replayed DOS2 several times. To some extent people saying " it's not bg3" are chasing a unicorn

^ people have been playing BG and BG2 continuously since they released.

I have over 380 hours in Pillars of Eternity, absolutely adore it. Bought the source books and re-wrote my entire D&D campaign to be in the Eora setting with D&D races and Pillars theology/politics.

what's your point? to say that people have different tastes? or to suggest that people with tastes different from yours are wrong, because what they want is just a "unicorn" because you don't understand it?

More people currently like Kanye than Beethoven. I don't consider DOS1 or 2 to be anything more than easily consumed pop culture trash.

I'm no Larian fan. I haven't played DOS2, just DOS, but didn't like it. Was difficult to finish even with step by step walkthroughs. Haven't posted any feedback because the game was already done. I don't go crying to change it, maybe others like it as it is. But I never refund, it's still supporting future development, and was still an RPG, though unplayable without save game editor (to "skip" their "fight" system and so on).

I Still like BG 3, but not for anything DOS related, those are the bad parts actually (above all the user interface, the inventory, the constant area effects, etc), but because it's somehow close in looks and feel to the Dragon Age series (except the combat). BG 3 can still be a good or even great RPG, and great graphics alone create more sales than the great stories, though I wish for both. The fight system rarely are done well in these kind of games, so I care less about that part (will just mod it and forget that part, there are PvP games for fights).

BG3 can still sell far more than the the early access sale numbers, especially with mod support, similar to Skyrim. Mods can add or modify more features in less than 1 year, than the devs can in 5 years.

It's still early to write BG3 off. If they keep the the quality shown in EA, even improve on parts based on some of the more useful feedback, this will be a very fun game. Not for everyone, that's true for every game. Mods can add that icing on the cake that will be always missing for some of us.

I clearly mentioned "with the odd exception" ... because of course I wasn't speaking for everyone. I am glad you have a unique perspective, just don't make the mistake of thinking it represents the audience at large.

I seriously doubt that there will be a surge in sales after launch that surpasses the initial sales surge for BG3 EA. The entire audience of RPG players isn't as big as you think, and they've already sold to nearly half of them (itself a huge financial success already). The only people left to sell to are the "wait and see" crowd, whom either don't support EA out of principle, or whom want to judge the reviews of the final product. They aren't the largest demographic of sales - the hype adopters are.

For my part, I bought it for multiple reasons: I would anyway - regardless of outcome - because I am a collector; BG2 is the reason I've spent my career pursuing critical analysis and become an editor - because it was nearly perfect; I wanted to give Larian the benefit of the doubt because no matter how harshly I criticize them I still believe they want to deliver the best game they can.

I just think they've failed on many levels to deliver either a BG or a D&D experience. The game contains too little of either influence and too much Divinity.

I really doubt you are right on this, DOS2 is the most popular CRPG for a reason, and much more popular than the number you just threw out as a guess in that post. Unless you think several years of being pretty damn high up there in steam sales results to ''1.2-.1.35m'' and that is without even console sales or gog.

I personally know 6 people who have BG3 and I am the only one of those who has played bg1 or 2. Yes I know that is anecdotal and not proof. But check steam player numbers if you want too, dos2 has more daily players than every other crpg put together on steam.