Baldur’s Gate 3 is named Game of the Year at The 10th annual Game Awards year 2023. The ceremony took place in downtown Los Angeles’ L.A. LIVE district at The Peacock Theater. In addition to awards, the video game showcase highlighted previews of upcoming games and new information for previously announced titles. As both a vote-by-jury and players’ choice event, Baldur’s Gate 3 receiving this award tonight was years in the making. For Larian Studios, despite all appearances, the prize was not always anticipated.
The privately-owned game studio released Baldur’s Gate 3 on August 3rd while expecting a standard reception of 100,000 players at best. The fantasy-CRPG ended up rallying five times the amount of the estimated turnout online. Attributing bug tracking tools they built specifically for Baldur’s Gate 3, they were able to quickly address player-reported issues and save their servers from crashing.
Probably should stay away from the IT team for a while – told them they should expect like 100k or so at max https://t.co/TY0aSrmWEx
— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) August 4, 2023
August 13th, 2023, 10 days after it’s official release Baldur’s Gate 3 peaked at 875,343 online players on Steam. Entering the top 10 most played games of all time by concurrent players; between Hogwarts Legacy (2023) and Goose, Goose, Duck (2021), the 9th spot at the time of this writing. Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke told PC Gamer “[The response] was not in the books at all, this is way, way beyond what we expected,”.
Larian Studios also added Best Performance, Best Community Support, Best RPG, Best Multiplayer, and Players’ Voice to their list of achievements tonight.
Tonight is Baldur’s Gate 3’s third win for ‘Game of the Year’ in 2023
Since the debut of Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios won the honor of PC Game of the Year and Ultimate Game of the Year at The Golden Joystick Awards in October. Baldur’s Gate 3 was aptly recognized as a serious contender for Game of the Year in August by receiving a rare Perfect 10 rating for PC on KeenGamer. Baldur’s Gate 3 was also praised for it’s excellence in narrative design by being dubbed a “near perfect Larian masterpiece” with an Amazing 9.5 rating for PS5 on KeenGamer in September.
Steam, Game Developer’s Choice, BAFTA, and D.I.C.E all will honor this year’s achievements in gaming at the beginning of 2024.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is available on PC, PlayStation 5, macOS, and newly released to Xbox Series X/S.
