Baldur’s Gate 3 Dev Recommends Deleting Early Access, Save Files, and Mods Before Full Launch

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The developer of Baldur’s Gate 3 has told fans to delete the Early Access version, any save files and mods, and do a fresh install when the hotly-anticipated role-playing game launches proper on August 3.

Baldur’s Gate 3 has been in Early Access on Steam since October 2020 and developer Larian has already warned players they face a 122GB install for Baldur’s Gate 3’s launch build, which cannot be preloaded.

In a follow-up tweet explaining this (below), Larian told Early Access players to delete their save files and mods and do a fresh install. This is to reduce the risk of file conflicts when the final game downloads, and “should mean more playing, and no troubleshooting!”

We still recommend deleting your save files/mods and doing a fresh install of Baldur’s Gate 3 in preparation for August 3!

— Baldur’s Gate 3 re-rolled the D8 🐙 (@baldursgate3) August 1, 2023

For many fans who are excited to jump straight into Baldur’s Gate 3, this means downloading and installing the game as soon as it’s available at 8am Pacific / 11am Eastern / 4pm UK.

Larian said Early Access players should launch the game first, delete all save files and remove any mods to ensure they do not automatically re-download, then delete the game. According to Larian director of publishing, Michael Douse, the best way to delete your Baldur’s Gate 3 saves is in-game, so Steam Cloud and Larian Cloud (if you’ve signed up) are updated server-side to reflect those deletions. If you deleted Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access before deleting save files, Douse said you should re-download the Early Access version, go in-game to delete your saves, then uninstall “for avoidance of doubt”.

Larian brought the release date of the PC version of Baldur’s Gate 3 forward from August 31 to August 3 in order to avoid a clash with the likes of Bethesda’s upcoming behemoth Starfield in early September. The PlayStation 5 version, meanwhile, is delayed slightly to September 6, and the Xbox Series X and S versions are without a release window (more on Baldur’s Gate 3’s Xbox hold-up here).

Speaking to IGN, Vincke said the developer is seeing a standard playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 take 75 to 100 hours. However, players who want to “do everything” should expect to double that figure.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.