Baldur’s Gate 3 has sold more than 20 million copies and drawn an all-time peak of roughly 875,000 concurrent players on Steam, reached ten days after its August 2023 launch (Bloomberg News; SteamDB). The role-playing game swept The Game Awards 2023 with 6 wins from 9 nominations, then became the first title ever to win Game of the Year, or the equivalent category, at all five major industry ceremonies within a single awards season (GameSpot; GamesRadar+). Larian Studios has never shipped a single paid expansion for it, releasing eight free content patches instead while Steam-only sales alone topped 5.2 million units within three weeks of release (Wccftech, citing the Belgian Embassy). This analysis consolidates data from Larian Studios, SteamDB, and The Game Awards, and 20 other primary sources to map where Baldur’s Gate 3 stands in 2026.
TL;DR
- Baldur’s Gate 3 sold 20+ million copies by the end of 2025, up from 15 million in November 2024 and 2.5 million during early access (Bloomberg News; Irish Independent).
- Larian Studios posted a 249 million euro pre-tax profit in 2023, a twentyfold jump from a 214,000 euro loss the prior year (Irish Independent; PC Gamer).
- The game’s all-time Steam concurrent-player peak was about 875,000, set on August 13, 2023 (SteamDB; Steambase.io).
- It won 6 of 9 nominated categories at The Game Awards 2023, the most of any nominee, including Game of the Year (GameSpot).
- It is the first game to win Game of the Year, or the equivalent, at all five major ceremonies: Golden Joystick, D.I.C.E., BAFTA, Game Developers Choice, and The Game Awards (GamesRadar+).
- Larian’s writers logged an estimated 1.3 million lines of dialogue and 140+ hours of cutscenes, all 248 voice actors performed their own motion capture (IGN; VG247).
- The game has 170+ ending variations; one, Lae’zel’s self-sacrifice, had been seen by only 34 players as of August 2024 (GamesRadar+).
- Larian shipped 8 major patches between August 2023 and April 2025 and confirmed at GDC 2024 there would be no paid DLC or Baldur’s Gate 4 (Game Developer).
- Players had logged a combined 452,556,984 hours, about 51,662 years, by Larian’s four-month stats update in December 2023 (The Mary Sue).
- The modding community passed 350 million downloads across 10,000-plus mods by December 2025 (Gamepressure).
- Larian grew from about 140 employees in 2017 to 530 across 7 studios by 2025 (Bloomberg News; Wikipedia).
- Hasbro told investors the game earned the company 90 million dollars in its Q4 2023 earnings call (IGN).
1. Sales, Players, and Financial Performance
Larian’s own disclosures show a title that kept growing for years after release rather than front-loading its audience. Copies sold climbed from 2.5 million during the 2020-2023 early access period to more than 20 million by the end of 2025, according to a Bloomberg News report on the studio’s next project. Larian’s publishing director Michael Douse said in February 2024 that player numbers had already passed 10 million, and IGN later reported the count grew another 20 percent through 2024, a pace Larian credited partly to its modding scene.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Copies sold during early access (Oct 2020-Aug 2023) | 2.5 million | Bloomberg News, Aug 2023 |
| Steam-only units sold, per Belgian Embassy | 5.2 million (Aug 19, 2023) | Wccftech, Aug 2023 |
| Players reported by Larian’s Michael Douse | 10+ million (Feb 2024) | Push Square, Feb 2024 |
| Copies sold, reported with 2023 profit | 15 million (Nov 2024) | Irish Independent, Nov 2024 |
| Copies sold by end of 2025 | 20+ million | Bloomberg News, Dec 2025 |
| Player-count growth over 2024 | +20% year over year | IGN, Nov 2024 |
| Larian’s 2023 pre-tax profit | 249 million euros (20x prior year) | Irish Independent, Nov 2024 |
| Hasbro’s Q4 2023 earnings from the game | 90 million dollars | IGN, Feb 2024 |
Note: Larian is privately held and has never disclosed a precise, single, all-time sales total broken down by platform; the figures above are the specific, dated milestones the studio and its partners have confirmed publicly.
2. Steam Records and Platform Reach
Baldur’s Gate 3 arrived into a crowded 2023 release calendar and still became one of the year’s biggest Steam launches. Its all-time peak of roughly 875,000 concurrent Steam players, set on August 13, 2023, ranks among the highest peaks any single-player-focused RPG has reached on the platform, trailing only Hogwarts Legacy’s 879,000-plus figure among that year’s launches. Nearly three years later, the game still draws tens of thousands of concurrent players daily, an unusually long tail for a single-player-driven release.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| All-time peak concurrent Steam players | ~875,000 (Aug 13, 2023) | SteamDB; Steambase.io |
| Launch-week peak concurrent players | 418,000-472,000 | NME, Aug 2023 |
| Rank among 2023 Steam launches by peak | #2, behind Hogwarts Legacy (~879,000) | NME, Aug 2023 |
| Concurrent players, mid-2026 daily average | ~39,000-40,000 | Steambase.io, Jul 2026 |
| Concurrent players, June 2026 monthly peak | 69,227 | Steambase.io, Jul 2026 |
| Total Steam user reviews | 847,000+ (“Overwhelmingly Positive”) | Steambase.io / Steam |
| Metacritic score, PC / PS5 vs. Xbox Series X | 96/100 vs. 99/100 | Metacritic, via Wikipedia |
| OpenCritic critics recommending the game | 98% | OpenCritic, via Wikipedia |
Context: for how Baldur’s Gate 3’s concurrent-player numbers stack up against the rest of the platform, see our Steam statistics roundup.
3. An Unprecedented Awards Sweep
No RPG has swept industry awards seasons the way Baldur’s Gate 3 did across 2023 and 2024. In April 2024 it became the first game ever to win Game of the Year, or the equivalent top category, at all five major ceremonies in one season: Golden Joystick, D.I.C.E., BAFTA, Game Developers Choice, and The Game Awards, according to GamesRadar+. Recognition kept arriving well past its launch window: Larian says the volume of ceremony invitations began to affect development, forcing it to send rotating groups of staff rather than the full team.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| The Game Awards 2023, nominations / wins | 9 nominations, 6 wins | GameSpot, Dec 2023 |
| First game to sweep all 5 major GOTY ceremonies | Achieved April 2024 | GamesRadar+, Apr 2024 |
| Golden Joystick Awards 2023 wins | 7 (record at the time) | GamesRadar+, Nov 2023 |
| D.I.C.E. Awards 2024 wins | 4, incl. Role-Playing Game of the Year | IGN, Feb 2024 |
| BAFTA Games Awards 2024 wins | 5, incl. Best Narrative and Best Music | BBC News, Apr 2024 |
| Game Developers Choice Awards 2024 wins | 4, incl. Best Narrative and Best Design | Video Games Chronicle, Mar 2024 |
| Steam Awards wins, 2023 and 2025 combined | 3 (Game of the Year, Outstanding Story-Rich Game, plus a 2025 win) | GamesIndustry.biz, Jan 2024; Wikipedia accolades list |
| Cumulative Game Awards wins, 2023-2025 | 8 total (Best Community Support won 3 years running) | Wikipedia, The Game Awards 2025 coverage |
Outlier: tallying just the six named ceremony families above puts Baldur’s Gate 3 at 31 total wins between 2023 and 2025, before counting its Hugo Award, GLAAD Media Award, and two Gayming Awards wins on top.
4. The Script, the Cast, and the Branching Narrative
Baldur’s Gate 3’s scale shows up most clearly in its writing and recording numbers. Larian estimated in 2024 that the game’s script runs to roughly 1.3 million lines of dialogue and more than 140 hours of recorded cutscenes, about three times the word count of The Lord of the Rings, according to IGN, a figure that briefly made it the Guinness World Records holder for the longest video game script before Kingdom Come: Deliverance II’s 2.2-million-word script overtook it. All 248 voice actors performed their own motion capture, and the branching narrative produces more than 170 distinct ending variations.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Estimated lines of dialogue (2024 figure) | 1.3 million | IGN, Mar 2024 |
| Estimated hours of recorded cutscenes | 140+ hours | IGN, Mar 2024 |
| Script word count vs. The Lord of the Rings | ~3x (roughly 2 million words) | IGN, Mar 2024 |
| Pre-release cutscene estimate, per playthrough coverage | ~170 hours recorded, not all seen in one run | Eurogamer, Jul 2023 |
| Voice actors who performed their own motion capture | All 248 | VG247, Aug 2023 |
| Ending variations | 170+ | Bloomberg News, Aug 2023 |
| Rarest recorded ending, by player count (as of Aug 2024) | 34 players | GamesRadar+, Aug 2024 |
Context: for how that voice-cast size compares across the industry, see our voice acting industry statistics.
5. Player Choices, By the Numbers
Larian is unusually open about what its players actually do, publishing aggregate behavior data at the four-month mark and again at the one-year anniversary. Players had logged a combined 452,556,984 hours of playtime, the equivalent of 51,662 years, by Larian’s four-month update in December 2023, and by the one-year mark in August 2024 the studio said 75 million companion romance scenes had played out, with Shadowheart alone accounting for 27 million. The data also captures how differently players approach the hardest content: parties clearing permadeath Honour Mode grew from 464 in the first four months to 141,660 within a year, evidence that community-shared strategy, not just player count, drove completions upward.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Combined playtime, all players (4-month update) | 452,556,984 hours (~51,662 years) | The Mary Sue, Dec 2023 |
| Players who completed the campaign (4-month update) | 1.3 million | The Mary Sue, Dec 2023 |
| Players using a fully custom protagonist | 93-94% | The Mary Sue, Dec 2023; Game8, Aug 2024 |
| Companion romance scenes, year one | 75 million total; 27 million for Shadowheart | Game8, Aug 2024 |
| Honour Mode (permadeath) completions | 464 parties (4 months) to 141,660 players (1 year) | The Mary Sue, Dec 2023; Game8, Aug 2024 |
| Players who defeated the Netherbrain (main ending) | 3.3 million | Game8, Aug 2024 |
| Players who reached the Emperor’s true-form choice | 1.1 million (63% Dream Guardian, 37% mind flayer) | Game8, Aug 2024 |
| Times players petted the dog, Scratch | 48.5 million (4 months) to 120 million (1 year) | The Mary Sue, Dec 2023; Game8, Aug 2024 |
| Rarest documented playthrough choice | 34 players chose Lae’zel’s self-sacrifice ending | Game8, Aug 2024 |
| Players who earned the hidden “Mind Blown” achievement | 9.7% of Steam players | The Mary Sue, Dec 2023 |
6. Post-Launch Support Without a Single Paid DLC
Larian ran an unusually long, entirely free post-launch cycle instead of monetizing expansions. The studio shipped 8 major patches between August 2023 and April 2025, adding a permadeath mode, thousands of new epilogue dialogue lines, official mod support, and cross-platform play, without charging for any of it. At his GDC 2024 talk, “The Secrets of Baldur’s Gate 3,” CEO Swen Vincke told the audience Larian would not make expansions or a Baldur’s Gate 4, saying the story had “a beginning, middle, and end” and that the studio would move on to a new project instead.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total major patches, Aug 2023-Apr 2025 | 8, zero paid DLC | Wikipedia patch history, multiple outlets |
| Patch 1 (Aug 25, 2023) scope | 1,000+ bug fixes and balance changes | IGN, Aug 2023 |
| Patch 5 (Dec 2023) epilogue expansion | 3,589 new lines of dialogue, plus permadeath mode | IGN, Nov 2023 |
| Patch 7 (Sept 2024) modding support | Official in-game mod support, expanded evil-path endings | The Verge, Sept 2024 |
| Patch 8 (Apr 15, 2025, final) scope | 12 new subclasses, photo mode, cross-play, Xbox Series S split-screen co-op | GamesRadar+, Apr 2025 |
| GDC 2024 talk confirming no DLC or sequel | ”The Secrets of Baldur’s Gate 3” | Game Developer, Mar 2024 |
| Span of free post-launch support before final patch | ~20 months | Derived from patch dates above |
7. The Mod Scene and Studio Growth
Community modding turned into one of the game’s biggest ongoing engagement drivers, and Larian grew alongside it. The modding community had uploaded more than 10,000 mods generating over 350 million downloads across platforms by December 2025, a milestone CEO Swen Vincke called “way more than we ever expected” in a community update, according to Gamepressure. The studio itself scaled from roughly 140 employees in 2017 to 530 across 7 international studios by 2025, growth financed almost entirely by the game’s own success after a loss-making 2022.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Mod downloads across all platforms | 350+ million | Gamepressure, Dec 2025 |
| Mods uploaded across all platforms | 10,000+ | Gamepressure, Dec 2025 |
| Larian employees, 2017 | ~140 | Bloomberg News, Aug 2023 |
| Larian employees, 2023 | 450+ | Bloomberg News, Aug 2023 |
| Larian employees, 2025 | 530 | Wikipedia, Larian Studios |
| Larian studio locations, 2024 | 7 (Belgium HQ plus Canada, Ireland, Malaysia, UK, Spain, Poland) | Wikipedia, Larian Studios |
| Larian revenue and result, 2022 (pre-launch year) | 22.7 million euros revenue, 214,000 euro loss | PC Gamer, Nov 2024 |
Context: for how Larian’s headcount growth compares with other studios shipping ambitious RPGs, see our game development statistics and game engine statistics roundups.
Summary: Baldur’s Gate 3 by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Copies sold by end of 2025 | 20+ million | Bloomberg News, Dec 2025 |
| Copies sold, Nov 2024 | 15 million | Irish Independent, Nov 2024 |
| Copies sold during early access | 2.5 million | Bloomberg News, Aug 2023 |
| Larian’s 2023 pre-tax profit | 249 million euros | Irish Independent, Nov 2024 |
| Hasbro’s Q4 2023 earnings from the game | 90 million dollars | IGN, Feb 2024 |
| All-time peak concurrent Steam players | ~875,000 (Aug 13, 2023) | SteamDB; Steambase.io |
| Total Steam user reviews | 847,000+ | Steambase.io |
| Metacritic score, PC/PS5 vs. Xbox Series X | 96/100 vs. 99/100 | Metacritic |
| The Game Awards 2023, nominations / wins | 9 / 6 | GameSpot, Dec 2023 |
| First game to sweep all 5 major GOTY ceremonies | Apr 2024 | GamesRadar+, Apr 2024 |
| Golden Joystick Awards 2023 wins | 7 | GamesRadar+, Nov 2023 |
| Cumulative Game Awards wins, 2023-2025 | 8 | Wikipedia, TGA 2025 coverage |
| Estimated lines of dialogue | 1.3 million | IGN, Mar 2024 |
| Voice actors who did their own motion capture | 248 | VG247, Aug 2023 |
| Ending variations | 170+ | Bloomberg News, Aug 2023 |
| Combined playtime, all players (4-month update) | 452,556,984 hours | The Mary Sue, Dec 2023 |
| Companion romance scenes, year one | 75 million | Game8, Aug 2024 |
| Major post-launch patches, zero paid DLC | 8 | Wikipedia patch history |
| Mod downloads across all platforms | 350+ million | Gamepressure, Dec 2025 |
| Larian employees, 2017 to 2025 | ~140 to 530 | Bloomberg News; Wikipedia |
Methodology and Sources
Data was gathered from primary company disclosures, named journalist reporting, and official awards-body results published mainly in 2023-2026, with each figure attributed to the outlet and date that reported it and cross-checked against Wikipedia’s citation trail where multiple outlets covered the same event.
- Bloomberg News, ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Is A Huge Hit Thanks to Privately Owned Larian Studios (Aug 2023)
- Wccftech, Baldur’s Gate 3 Topped 5.2 Million Units Sold on Steam, Says Belgian Embassy (Aug 2023)
- Push Square, Baldur’s Gate 3 Sales Apparently Top 10 Million (Feb 2024)
- Irish Independent, Dublin firm behind Baldur’s Gate game posts EUR249m profit (Nov 2024)
- IGN, Baldur’s Gate 3 Has Made 90 Million Dollars for Hasbro (Feb 2024)
- IGN, Baldur’s Gate 3’s Collective Dialogue Has Triple the Word Count of The Lord of the Rings (Mar 2024)
- VG247, Baldur’s Gate 3’s performances are so good because all 248 voice actors also did the motion capture (Aug 2023)
- Eurogamer, Don’t worry, you won’t see 170 hours of Baldur’s Gate 3 cinematics in one playthrough (Jul 2023)
- SteamDB, Baldur’s Gate 3 concurrent player charts (app 1086940)
- Steambase.io, Baldur’s Gate 3 Steam charts (accessed Jul 2026)
- NME, Baldur’s Gate 3 overtakes Sons Of The Forest to become Steam’s second biggest launch of 2023 (Aug 2023)
- GameSpot, All The Game Awards 2023 Winners Revealed (Dec 2023)
- GamesRadar+, Baldur’s Gate 3 passes Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild to become first game to win all five major GOTY awards (Apr 2024)
- GamesRadar+, Golden Joystick Awards 2023 winners (Nov 2023)
- GamesRadar+, Baldur’s Gate 3’s least-popular Origin character ending stats (Aug 2024)
- GamesRadar+, Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 8 is finally here (Apr 2025)
- GamesIndustry.biz, Baldur’s Gate 3 leads 2023 Steam Awards (Jan 2024)
- BBC News, Bafta Games Awards 2024: Baldur’s Gate 3 wins game of the year (Apr 2024)
- Video Games Chronicle, Baldur’s Gate 3 wins Game of the Year at the Game Developers Choice Awards (Mar 2024)
- Game Developer, Larian is moving on from Baldur’s Gate 3, with no sequel or expansion in development (Mar 2024)
- The Mary Sue, Baldur’s Gate 3 four-month player stats (Dec 2023)
- Game8, Baldur’s Gate 3 anniversary player statistics (Aug 2024)
- Gamepressure, Baldur’s Gate 3 mod downloads pass 350 million (Dec 2025)
- Wikipedia, Baldur’s Gate 3 and List of accolades received by Baldur’s Gate 3 (citation trail to primary sources above, accessed Jul 2026)
- Wikipedia, Larian Studios (employee counts and studio locations, accessed Jul 2026)
- Additional figures: PC Gamer reporting on Larian’s 2022 and 2023 financial results (Nov 2024); The Verge and ScreenRant patch coverage (2023-2024).
Data watch: Larian’s community updates and modding-milestone posts arrive irregularly, typically tied to anniversaries; SteamDB and Steambase.io recompute concurrent-player figures continuously; awards tallies will grow if Baldur’s Gate 3 receives further nominations at future ceremonies given its unusual multi-year recognition streak.
Last updated: July 21, 2026. We review and update this page quarterly as new data is published.