The folks at Larian Studios have reason to celebrate as Baldur’s Gate 3 has managed to sell over 5.3 units in a short span of time. The notable achievement was revealed in an unusual roundabout by way of the Belgian Embassy which congratulated Larian Studios via the Chinese social media platform Weibo. In its post, the Embassy provided a brief history of Larian Studios, which was founded in Ghent in 1996, along with some background on how Baldur’s Gate and its roots in tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons.
From Weibo (machine translated):
“Belgian game developer rolls the dice… BIG SUCCESS!
If you pay attention to video games, you should have heard of “one of the best fantasy role-playing games of this decade” – “Baldur’s Gate 3” that has been buzzing online in recent weeks.
But many people may not know that Larian Studio, which develops the game, is from Belgium. Founded in Ghent in 1996, the company was originally known for its role-playing game series Divinity, the last two of which Divinity: Original Sin and Divinity: Original Sin 2 received positive reviews from critics and players alike.
Larian Studios surprised fans by announcing the development of the third installment in the Baldur’s Gate series. However, the production process also faced a lot of challenges: this game series was originally developed by the Canadian RPG giant BioWare. It has been more than 20 years since the last generation of the main series game “Baldur’s Gate 2” was launched, but it is still the most successful game in history. One of the popular game series.
Let’s briefly introduce this game. Baldur’s Gate is a video game based on the famous tabletop fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons. In the game, players must first create their own characters, giving them abilities, flaws, and background stories. It’s up to the players to work together to meet the dangers the game master has in store for them.
Baldur’s Gate running on a computer is like the board game Dungeons and Dragons, where the player chooses what to do next, but the success of the action is determined by rolling a 20-sided die (aka “D20”). Luck is an important factor that affects the progress of the game. For example, a character tries to shoot an arrow at a monster. If the player is unlucky and rolls a 1, the arrow will bounce and hit his foot. If you’re lucky and roll a 20, the arrow will hit the bull’s eye. Additionally, the outcome of the dice roll is affected by the character’s abilities and experience.
So, can we say that Baldur’s Gate 3 rolled a “natural 20”? Let’s take a look at the numbers as of August 16th when this article was written:
- The game has sold 5.2 million copies on the PC game platform Steam, with more than 870,000 concurrent online users and a 94.3% positive rating.
- On Metacritic, a site that collects reviews, Baldur’s Gate 3 is already the eighth highest-rated game of all time, with an average rating of 97%, and the highest-rated game since 2010.
Clearly, the new generation of games has not disappointed fans of the series and is comparable to its predecessors. Such success is not all due to luck, and Larian Studios deserves credit for putting in a lot of effort into developing the new game. We hope that the success of Larian Studios will draw more attention to the Belgian company’s efforts in game development and multimedia.”
Total sales numbers could become much higher
Just as Baldur’s Gate 3 has managed to be a hit on Steam, where it currently sits at #9 for all-time peak players, only slightly behind this year’s other blockbuster Hogwarts Legacy, total sales numbers could get much higher. The game which launched on August 3 for PC on Steam, GOG, and GeForce Now, will release for PlayStation 5 on September 6.