Update: Baldur's Gate III has 525,601 concurrent players on Steam at the time of writing. This is the 11th highest amount in history by beating giants like Valheim, Call of Duty: Warzone and Fallout 4, but we'll see if it manages to join the top 10 by going past Apex Legends' peak of 624,473.
The excitement for Baldur's Gate III has been high for years, as the early access version showed incredible promise from the get-go and Marko was far from the only one calling Divinity: Original Sin II, Larian Studios' previous game, a masterpiece. Combine that with Baldur's Gate III leaping up the Steam charts after showing a bewildering amount of sex scenes and romance options (including the bear/druid part that was banned from TikTok), and it was clear the game's launch on PC would get a lot of attention. Turns out, a lot might be an understatement.
Valve's overview shows that Baldur's Gate III had 472,136 concurrent players on Steam a few minutes ago. That is very impressive, but it's worth remembering it's a Thursday and not even evening on the American west coast yet, so I wouldn't be surprised if the game has a peak of more than half a million concurrent players by the time I wake up tomorrow. This weekend at the very latest.
Are you one of these players? If so, what do you think so far? And for those who forgot or didn't know: Baldur's Gate III was delayed to September on PS5.