Baldur’s Gate 3 Mods Help Player Numbers Grow, And Someone In The Vatican Just Bought A Copy

More than a year after Baldur’s Gate 3 originally launched in August 2023, the game is still putting up impressive numbers, and has even sold one additional copy to someone who may know Pope Francis.

Larian publishing director Michael Douse shared some new Baldur’s Gate 3 stats on social media recently, beginning with how the game’s average daily peak concurrent players are up 3% this year compared to last year. That likely has to do with the introduction of mods earlier this year, Douse said. Mods have proven to be extremely popular in Baldur’s Gate 3, as players have downloaded more than 50 million of them.

Daily active users, meanwhile, are up more than 20% over last year’s numbers, while average daily Steam Deck users have increased 61% year-over-year. It’s not clear if Douse is talking about Steam numbers specifically with all of these stats, or if they also include data from the Xbox and PlayStation versions.

These statistics are all well and good and speak to the ongoing and growing popularity of one of 2023’s best games. But the real standout statistic is that Larian sold precisely one more copy in The Holy See, and specifically the Vatican itself. “Thank you Mr. Pope and enjoy the game,” Douse said.

Earlier in November, Douse revealed that Larian had sold two copies of Baldur’s Gate 3 in The Vatican, and that the game was on one other wishlist. Perhaps that person has now decided to buy the game.

According to the CIA, about 1,000 people lived in Vatican City in 2022. The safest bet is that a regular person bought Baldur’s Gate 3, not the Pope himself. But imagine if he did?

Pope Francis met with popular YouTubers, and one person gave him a copy of the indie RPG Undertale. Pope Francis is not the first world leader to have been gifted a video game. In 2011, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk gave United States president Barack Obama a copy of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

Following the smashing success of Baldur’s Gate 3, some might have expected Larian to make Baldur’s Gate 4, but the studio is making something else next instead. “We’re working on it. If we’re brutally honest, we’re trying to figure out what the hell it is,” Larian boss Swen Vincke said in May. “We have ideas. We have lots of little fragments.”

Beyond Larian’s next game, Vincke is thinking even further out and has grand plans to create a “very big RPG” that will “dwarf” any of Larian’s previous releases. “It’s an inspirational goal. That’s it. I cannot say more, because it needs to stay in that dream-reality,” he said.

While Larian will not make Baldur’s Gate 4, Hasbro has said it is keen to expand the Baldur’s Gate series with other teams. “We’re going to take our time and find the right partner, the right approach, and the right product,” Hasbro previously said about the future of Baldur’s Gate.