Baldur's Gate 3: Despite over 15 million copies sold, only 23% of players actually played it to completion

It’s been more than two years since Baldur’s Gate 3’s successful debut in August 2023. The game has sold over 15 million copies globally as of November 2024. Despite the game’s enduring popularity as one of Steam’s top sellers, fewer than a quarter of PC players have actually played the game to its epic conclusion.

Steam achievement data for Baldur’s Gate 3 reveals that only 23.4% of players have managed to unlock the game’s completion trophy “All’s Well That Ends Well.” This data doesn’t even factor in reruns of the game, as the achievement pops up only once after a single playthrough. 

A huge chunk of Baldur’s Gate 3 players, around 76% of players, have supposedly spent most of their time lost in the Forgotten Realms. It’s pretty common for many Baldur’s Gate 3 players, as many gamers have barely made it through Act 3, given the overwhelming scope of the game and hundreds of hours of side content.

But this isn't a one-off incident. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which has been available since 2015, clocks in at around a 27 percent completion rate, with only 65% of players making it past White Orchard. Similarly, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition from 2016 sees a much more abysmal 11.1% completion rate possibly bolstered by users focusing on side quests over the primary questline.

Interestingly, Baldur’s Gate 3 fares a bit better in certain metrics: Only 10% of players have not yet managed to get the “Descent from Avernus” achievement by escaping the tutorial-like Nautiloid ship in the prologue, making for a marked improvement over The Witcher 3.

While Larian is done pushing out major updates for Baldur’s Gate 3, it's still releasing hotfixes. The game just introduced native Steam Deck support with Hotfix 34 and reduced framerate spikes in busy areas such as Act 3 across all platforms. 

Act 3 garnered infamy at launch for its extreme NPC count in the bustling city of Baldur’s Gate, which even put CPUs like the flagship Intel Core i9 12900K to their knees, with frame time spikes and FPS drops of around 20 percent, which also may have factored into some gamers not looking to finish the game thanks to performance issues.

Baldur’s Gate 3 celebrated its second anniversary earlier last month with Larian boss Swen Vincke briefly discussing how the game’s monumental success paved the way for the studio to shift its focus to its next projects in its pipeline. 

As per reports, Larian is working on two new projects. Speculation suggests that one of the games will be an entirely new IP while the other is reported to be a sequel to one of Larian’s existing franchises, possibly Divinity: Original Sin 3. According to Swen Vincke, Larian’s next game will release sometime between 2028 and 2029.

Buy the Baldur's Gate 3 PlayStation 5 Physical Deluxe Edition on Amazon