BG3 Devs Banned on YouTube for Playing Their Own Game

"It was only a little bit of demon sex," Aoife Wilson told her audience, barely holding back laughter. "Everyone's so prudish these days, come on."

Wilson, Larian Studios' Senior Communications Director, had been hosting the studio's weekly Dark Urge playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 when YouTube and TikTok both pulled the plug on the broadcast. The offending content? A sex scene with Haarlep, an incubus found in the House of Hope, one of the RPG's most notoriously steamy encounters. The team had tried to cover the action with an oversized golden D20, but enough skin slipped through to trip the platforms' automated nudity filters. As reported by PCGamesN, YouTube hit them with a violation notice at 12:46pm on August 5 for "Body Exposure and Sexualized Behaviors," killing the stream on Larian's second channel, Larian: Channel From Hell. TikTok followed shortly after.

The Twitch broadcast, naturally, kept rolling. There's something deeply funny about a developer getting content-moderated for playing their own game, a game that shipped with these scenes fully intact and won roughly every Game of the Year award going in 2023. YouTube is happy to host the game's trailers and millions of player-uploaded clips, but an official studio stream showing the same content? Apparently that's where the line is.

"Baldur's Gate 3 is now cancelled"

Publishing Director Michael Douse leaned into the absurdity immediately, posting on X that "Baldur's Gate 3 is now cancelled" alongside a screenshot of the violation notice. He followed up by calling it a badge of honour: "Getting banned on your birthday is such a cool & edgy thing to do," referencing the game's third anniversary on August 3.

Larian's main account joined in too, posting a graphic listing the stream's platforms with YouTube and TikTok struck through, leaving only Twitch standing. Wilson, still live, announced the double ban to her chat with visible delight. "If you're just joining us, this is the official Larian stream, welcome. True to form we have just been banned on several platforms we're currently streaming to." A beat later: "Please don't fire us. We're doing our best."

The VOD has also been removed from YouTube, so if you missed it, you're out of luck on that platform. The streams run weekly every Wednesday, with the next episode scheduled for August 12.

I love how Larian handled this. A lot of studios would have issued a carefully worded statement about working with platform partners to resolve the situation. Larian turned it into a bit. And honestly, it's a better anniversary moment than any planned celebration could have been. The image of a developer getting banned for content they spent years designing, animating, and shipping to 100 million-plus players is comedy that writes itself.

This isn't even the first developer stream to get axed in recent weeks. Wardogs, an upcoming tactical FPS, had its debut broadcast killed on Twitch after a developer threw a bright yellow dildo at a colleague during the stream. Different energy, same outcome.

Three years of murder and statistics

The ban happened during a broader anniversary celebration that included Larian releasing a pile of player statistics from BG3's three years. Among the highlights: Gontr Mael, the legendary longbow, was the most popular weapon in the game's final battle, chosen by 33.4 million players. That's nearly 10 million more than the Balduran's Giantslayer greatsword, which came in second. And at least a few players apparently brought a charcuterie board to the fight against the Elder Brain, which is a power move I can respect.

The stats also revealed that more non-Dark Urge players have murdered the tiefling bard Alfira than Dark Urge players have. If you've played Dark Urge, you know Alfira's death is scripted and unavoidable. So a larger share of the 2.62 million Alfira kills coming from players who chose violence of their own free will says something about this community. Other gems: 114 players completed the game in a square 1:1 aspect ratio, and over 9,000 played in a vertical 9:16 ratio, which Larian correctly identified as people sneaking the game on a second monitor at work.

Larian has moved on from Baldur's Gate 3 to develop its next RPG, Divinity, which was revealed at The Game Awards 2025. The next Larian Dark Urge stream picks back up on August 12, presumably with the same amount of demon sex and hopefully another platform ban to go with it.