Everyone’s Downloading Baldur’s Gate 3 and Steam Is Having a Wobble

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Baldur’s Gate 3’s launch is finally here and, as preloading wasn’t an option, Steam is having a bit of a wobble as players race to download it.

Developer Larian Studios’ founder and CEO Swen Vincke tweeted a screenshot of user-reported Steam problems (below), which spiked on August 3 at 8am Pacific / 11am Eastern / 4pm UK when Baldur’s Gate 3 launched. “Sorry”, Vincke posted alongside the screenshot.

Other users are reporting issues too, with Ollie Wood on Twitter showing his empty progress bar that simply said “Busy”, indicating they couldn’t download it yet. IGN’s own download of the game is also taking its time.

Sorry https://t.co/m2PxYBNNsl

— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) August 3, 2023

The highly anticipated role-playing game has been in Early Access on Steam since October 2020 but is now finally available proper, though Larian confirmed earlier in August that the hefty 122GB file size could not be downloaded ahead of time.

The developer also recommended players delete the Early Access version alongside any save files and mods and do a fresh install of the full version to make sure things go smoothly.

In our review in progress, which is so far around 22 hours into the game, IGN said we “more or less love Larian’s latest high-fantasy behemoth”.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.