Video Games

Baldur’s Gate 3 sales estimated to be around 15 million copies

Plenty of profit to go around for Larian

Marco Wutz

Larian Studios

Baldur’s Gate 3 being a massive success in all metrics is hardly anything new to anyone in the games industry, but Larian Studios has been surprisingly coy about details such as how many units of the game have been sold. The Irish Independent, however, now reported that around 15 million copies of Baldur’s Gate 3 have been sold in total so far. That estimation is based on the latest financial report from the Dublin-based holding company for Larian – evidently, the studio has joined tech giants such as Apple and Google in exploiting Ireland’s lower corporate taxes while operating in the European Union, which is more on the lawful evil scale of morality than most things the Belgian developer does.

According to the newspaper, the company posted a pre-tax profit of €249 million EUR, which is around $261 million USD, for 2023. As a result, the company was able to pay out a dividend of €28m (around $29m) this year.

Previously, our most detailed information on Baldur’s Gate 3’s sales came from Larian’s Michael Douse, the studio’s director of publishing, who stated that BG3 reached “way over” ten million players since leaving Early Access, during which the game sold 2.5 million times. Incidentally, that is the only precise sales number we’ve gotten for the CRPG juggernaut so far.

Dungeons & Dragons IP holder Hasbro alone made around $90m from licensing thanks to BG3 in 2023, reinforcing plans for more D&D-based video games to be made – though not by Larian. 

The Belgium-based developer already stated that it won’t make BG3 DLC or Baldur’s Gate 4, even though it already had a playable piece of the sequel. It has already begun working on two games based on its own IP instead. Plus, the studio appears to be working on bringing its pre-BG3 CRPG hit, Divinity: Original Sin 2, to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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