Baldur's Gate 3 sales could exceed 7.5 million copies, given that its was completed by 1.3 million players

We still don’t know the official sales of Baldur’s Gate 3. But Larian Studios has now revealed how many players have completed the game, which opens up room for some napkin math and speculation.

With the release of Patch 5, Larian published a blog post on Steam stating that over 1.3 million players have completed Baldur’s Gate 3 since its global launch on August 3. Considering its scope and amount of content, it is an impressive feat by any means.

“We’re so thrilled to see so many of you are loving — and, you know, finishing — the game,” the post reads. “Even now, doctors are closely monitoring our [head of production] David Walgrave in case he begins to show signs of smiling.”

Larian CEO Swen Vincke previously revealed that BG3 sold 2.5 million units during its Early Access period, but the studio hasn’t updated the figures since the 1.0 release. However, the 1.3 million mark allows us to make some guesstimates.

• So let’s take a look at the “All’s Well That Ends Well” achievement, which is awarded for beating the game on any difficulty level, regardless of the ending and other details.
• According to Steam stats, 17.1% of people that own Baldur’s Gate 3 on PC have this trophy. And roughly 16.5% of its owners on PlayStation appear to have completed the game (via PSNProfiles).

• Given the early release on PC, Steam should have a higher share of BG3’s total sales, but it is fair to assume that around 16.8-17% of BG3 owners have seen at least one of its endings on both platforms.
• According to Larian, there are over 1.3 million such players across PC and PS5. A quick calculation would result in estimated sales of around 7.6-7.7 million copies.
• Here is a weird, slightly irrational thing: on both Steam and PlayStation, the share of people who received a good ending is even higher — 19% and 18%, respectively.

• This means platform data for achievements may not be 100% correct due to some bugs in the tracking process. But the trophy can also be obtained at the end of Act 2, which may explain the higher percentage of players getting it.
• So keep in mind that due to the lack of complete data, this is still a fairly rough guesstimate — the actual figure might be slightly lower (around 7 million) or even higher (8+ million). Anyway, it is a huge success for a complex RPG.

Even without the official sales figures, it is clear that Baldur’s Gate 3 is the biggest launch in Larian history. For comparison, Divinity: Original Sin had sold 2.5 million copies globally by 2019, and its much more commercially successful sequel performed at least three times better.

Although Vincke expected BG3 to reach 100k concurrent players at max, the game peaked at over 875k CCU on Steam — the second best result this year behind Hogwarts Legacy, and 9th among the top 10 Steam titles of all time.

Last month, Larian director of publishing Michael Douse said that Baldur’s Gate 3 sales were within expected projections, but “it’s very important to understand that these projections are foundationally defined by support from our core audience, and what we learn about who they are.”

Perhaps, the studio may want to wait for initial data for the Xbox Series X|S version, which is expected to come out before the end of 2023, to finally disclose the sales across all three platforms.