Baldur’s Gate 3 dominates the holiday season, continues player growth in 2024

Baldur’s Gate 3 may have won the 2023 Game of the Year Award, but the player base for 2024 is still going strong with over 200,000 players enjoying all that Faerun has to offer this holiday season—the most players BG3 has seen since October 2023.

Since its launch nearly six months ago, BG3 has been one of the most popular games with a reasonably steady player base—for good reason. BG3 offers much more than just a role-playing journey; its combat is unique, the NPCs and companions are vivid, full of personality, and bring life to the game, and the sheer number of choices you have to make, from killing someone to your class or subclass can change the course of your journey, which means the replayability factor is high.

While these are only a few of the best features of BG3, they are some that helped Larian and BG3 win the 2023 game of the year award at numerous shows including The Game Awards. Whether players got this game for the holidays or because they have more time over the holiday season to play, BG3 has seen an enormous player spike today, Jan. 1, with 292,593 players according to SteamDB. 

Despite this strong start to 2024, it’s worth noting that this is the first time BG3 has seen numbers like this since October 2023 as the player base did fall off, and there may be a reason for this. BG3 does have a learning curve because of the dice roll combat system, specific combat aspects like positioning, the sheer length of the campaign, and because RNG plays a crucial role in determining whether you succeed or fail—and this can be frustrating to players to the point they no longer want to play because sometimes no amount of strategic planning can stop a failed roll.

BG3 may have its downsides, but it’s still a great game and one of the first CRPGs to truly dominate the gaming scene. Although it may not seem like much, it’s quite a significant feat for a game like BG3 to continue holding its position as one of the most-played games on Steam. It might not compete with Valve’s free titles Counter-Strike 2 or Dota 2, which often have over 500,000 peak players in a single day, but it’s still going strong. Only time will tell if it will remain popular or fall by the wayside.