Baldur’s Gate 3 Community Update #23 – Let’s Look at the Numbers

Larian Studios just put out Community Update #23, their first Community Update since the full release of the game, and it’s filled with the thing that RPG nerds like the most: statistics! The entire post is filled with tons of interesting details, infographics, and tons of other little pieces of information. It really is fascinating to see just how things are going now that the game is fully released and has been a smash hit, so let’s take a look at some of the most intriguing things revealed in this Community Update.

The most immediately revealing information is, naturally, how races and classes have been distributed so far. And, oh boy, there are some big discrepancies. The most popular class has been the Paladin, having nearly 50,000 more players than the second most popular class, the Sorcerer. This makes sense, as those two classes (often multiclassed together) have long been thought to be the strongest classes in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, which Baldur’s gate 3 is based on. It does imply that a huge chunk of players are aware of the power balance of those classes, however, which is interesting! The least played class, meanwhile, is Cleric, by nearly 50,000 less than the second least popular class, the Druid. I guess no one wants to play a healer this time around!

When we turn to races, the distribution is just as stark. Half-elves just barely eke out the top spot over humans, and when combined with Half-Orcs, that means that Humans and Half-Humans total up to about 600,000 characters (consider that the peak player count was 800,000, meaning roughly 75% of players are playing a Human or Human descendent). On the other end of the scale is Githyanki, which saw the lowest amount of players (despite having some very unique story opportunities and connections). My poor Gith!

But there is more than Race and Class distributions to pour over. One of the other infographics that Larian has compiled reveals quite a bit about what kinds of choices players are making. And, suffice to say, we are glad to see that roughly two thirds of players opted to save the Grove rather than assault it. And we are even happier to see that Scratch has got his fair share of scritches, getting three-quarters of a million pets over the weekend. What a good boy.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about the released statistics isn’t about choice at all, but about quantity. That is to say, just how much people have been playing. In just a single weekend, players clocked over 10,000,000 hours (combined, of course) in the game, amounting to over 1200 years of game time. Given the size of the game and the amount of players on launch, we shouldn’t be surprised, and yet, somehow, we still are.

Not at the interesting info came in the form of the infographics, either. At the beginning of the community post, Larian also dug deeper into the ground-breaking 800,000 player-count opening weekend, and what that entails. Namely, that it puts Baldur’s Gate 3 in a top-ten spot for concurrent players on Steam, with the game amounting to an incredibly 28% of Steams users at the time. Now that’s what I call a success.

And that is just scratching the surface, as the community post itself is also a warmly-worded love letter to the fans and newcomers, and really demonstrated the care and passion Larian has for Dungeons & Dragons, for their game, and for their community. You can (and should) check out the community post yourself here. Before jumping back in to Faerûn, that is.