Larian Framed the Article About BG3 Breaking Steam

Somewhere in Larian Studios' office, mounted on a wall, is a framed news article. The headline reads: "Steam briefly broke when Baldur's Gate 3 hit Early Access." Most studios hang awards or concept art. Larian hung a trophy for crashing someone else's infrastructure.

Publishing director Michael Douse shared a photo of the frame on X earlier today, writing: "Walked past this in the office. Forgot this happened. At the time we even fact checked it with Valve. I hope we absolutely demolish it next time. You remember so little when doing so much."

That casual "next time" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Douse is talking about Divinity, Larian's next RPG, which the studio has described as even larger than Baldur's Gate 3 with deeper consequence chains and more complex NPC relationships. When a studio that just shipped one of the highest-rated RPGs in history frames a story about breaking Steam and then openly says it wants to hit harder, that's not bravado for the sake of it. That's a studio telling you exactly where the bar is.

73K to 875K

The numbers back up why Douse thinks Divinity can do real damage. When BG3 entered early access in October 2020, it peaked at 73,980 concurrent players on Steam. By the time the full 1.0 launch arrived in August 2023, that number had ballooned to 875,343. Per SteamDB, no month since full launch has dipped below the early access peak. The game was still sitting at number three on Steam's charts as recently as February. Larian's audience didn't just grow between early access and launch; it multiplied by a factor of nearly twelve.

So when Douse says he wants to "absolutely demolish" Steam's servers with Divinity, the math isn't unreasonable. Larian is a bigger name now than it was in 2020 by an enormous margin. BG3 swept every major Game of the Year award, sold over eight million copies, and turned characters like Astarion into cultural fixtures. If BG3's early access rattled Steam with 74,000 players, imagine what Divinity's early access looks like with the full weight of that fanbase behind it.

I love that Larian treats this as a badge of honor rather than an embarrassment. Most publishers would quietly move past the fact that their game contributed to platform instability. Larian framed the article and put it on the wall. Studio head Swen Vincke actually apologized to Valve at the time, though the tone was clearly tongue-in-cheek. Douse's post carries that same energy: we're sorry, but also, we're coming back for more.

There's no release window for Divinity yet. The game was revealed with a cinematic trailer at the end of 2025, and Larian has confirmed it will follow the same early access model that worked so well for BG3. Given that BG3 went from announcement to early access in roughly 16 months, a 2027 early access window seems plausible, but nothing is confirmed. Valve, for its part, has had to deal with this before; Silksong reportedly caused similar server issues when it finally launched last year. Whether Steam's infrastructure can handle the next Larian launch is a question Valve's engineers are probably already thinking about.

Douse's post also landed on the same day that Larian announced a partnership with Random House Worlds for four Baldur's Gate 3 tie-in books, including an Astarion prequel novel written by T. Kingfisher and narrated as an audiobook by Neil Newbon. The first book hits shelves on September 2, with three more titles spanning into 2027. Larian isn't just riding BG3's momentum into Divinity; it's actively expanding the universe across media while building toward its next game. The framed article on the wall isn't nostalgia. It's a benchmark.