Baldur’s Gate 3 PS5 preload will already include the first patch

Larian Studios is taking a different approach from Bethesda

The inevitable comparisons between Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield are in full swing and one particularly silly statement by a social media poster has seen an official response by Larian Studios’ Director of Publishing, Michael Douse. The user in question compared the preload times for Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3’s PS5 version, which are both set to be released on September 6, 2023, and took them as a sign of Larian’s title not getting ready in time for its release.

Starfield can already be preloaded on consoles, while Baldur’s Gate 3 opens its preload on August 31 for Digital Deluxe Edition owners and September 4 for the Standard Edition.

They stated: “It seems Starfield is more ready than Baldur’s Gate 3 on PS5. You can already preload Starfield on Xbox while you have to wait until August 31st to preload BG3 on PS5. Both have the same release date. Is Baldur’s Gate 3 PS5 version having trouble? It seems so.”

Of course, the user has been pulling that information out of their back orifice and was shut down by Douse, who responded: “We want people to have the latest patches, because that seems like the consumer friendly thing to do. It’s not very complicated.”

We want people to have the latest patches, because that seems like the consumer friendly thing to do. It’s not very complicated.

— Very AFK (@Cromwelp) August 19, 2023

Baldur’s Gate 3’s first patch will contain over a thousand fixes and improvements to the game and the developers have already released several hotfixes to tackle urgent issues – the PS5 version will include all of that right from the start, hence the later preload date. If the preload had already started, players would still need to download a huge patch on launch day, which kind of negates the whole purpose of the preload – and that’s likely going to be the case for Starfield.

This argument was apparently not enough to convince the user in question, who seems to be either dense or simply a troll trying to rile up public opinion against Larian due to the delay of Baldur’s Gate 3’s Xbox Series X|S version. The studio is still working on that, but problems with getting the split-screen mode to run on the Series S have hindered its progress.

Of course, Baldur’s Gate 3 is already out on PC and became a critical hit, which generated a lot of hype among PlayStation owners as well, who saw to it that the CRPG reached the top spot on PSN.