‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ overtakes ‘Sons Of The Forest’ to become Steam’s second biggest launch of 2023

4 August, 2023

Baldur’s Gate 3 is the second most successful Steam launch of 2023, eclipsing Sons Of The Forest with a peak of 472,000 players.

Anticipation for Baldur’s Gate 3 was already running away with itself thanks to the game’s three year early access period. As well as collecting data on bugs and glitches, it also allowed Larian Studios to listen to what fans wanted in the fantasy role-playing game.

Industry analyst Benji Sales took to X to post about how much of a hit Baldur’s Gate 3 has been, comparing it to the concurrent player count on launch day for Sons Of The Forest and for Hogwarts Legacy. Expectedly, the Harry Potter prequel still reigned supreme with almost 900,000 concurrent players on release.

However, Baldur’s Gate 3 has surpassed survival horror Sons Of The Forest by a whisker. Endnight Games‘ Sons Of The Forest saw 414,000 concurrent players take on the island whereas Baldur’s Gate 3 recorded 418,000 players exploring Faerûn on August 3.

Critical scores for the RPG are predominantly positive, but there are a fair few “reviews-in-progress” from publications owing to the lateness of review copies and the size of Baldur’s Gate 3.

One of the lead writers shared that there are 17,000 variations of the game’s ending, and that isn’t a surprise when considering that Baldur’s Gate 3 has triple the cinematic dialogue than the all three of the Lord of the Rings books.

Also, while the romance scenes were “under construction” in the early access period, the arcs of the various Baldur’s Gate 3 companions have been described as both “affecting, funny, gripping” and “mainstream, big-budget horny in a way [that] went extinct in the mid-90s in movies”.

In other gaming news, a secret code in Street Fighter 6 changes the commentators into animals as a reference to the series’ arcade roots.

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