‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K
I am a bit shocked by how popular this game is. All the signs were there, though.<p>- Their previous game <i>Divinity: Original Sin 2</i> was critically acclaimed, very popular for a pretty hardcore CRPG, and had long legs.<p>- DnD has a lot of brand power and has been strongly in the zeitgeist for years.<p>- There's a big cohort of millennials who have strong nostalgia for Baldur's Gate and who have plenty of money to buy games (if not time to play them).<p>- The Early Access release for this game was wildly popular beyond the developer's expectations, and maintained interest for years.<p>I definitely underestimated the brand power of DnD and Baldur's Gate because they aren't very important to me, personally. But also there have been a load of really good CRPGs in recent years and there seemed to be a pretty low ceiling to how much interest they could get. Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and a few others were amazing and beloved CRPG games but were lucky to have a tenth of the success of BG3. But those games were generally less accessible, mostly not multiplayer, and again lacked the brand power.