The role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 has reached a rare milestone on Steam that every new MMORPG can only dream of, and only a few achieve: The player count has remained consistently high for a year, with only minor fluctuations. This was not actually planned at all. The last new MMORPGs, New World and Lost Ark, can only dream of such stability.
What has Baldur’s Gate 3 achieved on Steam? Baldur’s Gate 3 has managed to establish a stable player base on Steam over a period of one year, from February 2024 to 2025, and at a very high level:
- In February 2024, a good half a year after release, Baldur’s Gate 3 had an average of 104,000 concurrent players daily. This was where the huge hype began to wane, and the game shrank to a core player base.
- A year later, in February 2025, the game still had an average of 63,300 players.
- Throughout the calendar year from February 2024 to February 2025, Baldur’s Gate 3 never fell below 58,800 players. Player growth and decline were minimal in many months, around 5%.
Baldur’s Gate 3 reaches and maintains a remarkable player number plateau on Steam
Why is this so special? Like every game, Baldur’s Gate 3 had a “hype phase” at launch, with player numbers so high that it was impossible to sustain over a longer period. For Baldur’s Gate 3, that peak was 450,000 players.
The art lies in maintaining the highest possible plateau after this initial hype that one can find and stay on.
For Baldur’s Gate 3, this level is around 67,000 to 63,000, which is extremely high. The fluctuations are relatively low, only a few percentage points in most months.
With new MMORPGs, player numbers go up and down like a yo-yo
What about MMORPGs? In recent years, there have been two relevant new MMORPGs on Steam, both published by Amazon.
With the free-to-play MMORPG Lost Ark, the initial Steam release had an extremely high average of 700,000 players. However, the game never managed to establish such a level. Player numbers fluctuated greatly; it was a roller coaster. Player numbers changed by 40% or 60% from month to month in the last calendar year.
In June 2024, 65% of players vanished from New World compared to the previous month.
We see a similar phenomenon with New World: A massive influx at the beginning, followed by a free fall in player numbers. Here too, we see strong fluctuations over the last calendar year: In October 2024, player numbers even rose by 374%, after previously falling steadily for 11 months by 34% to 10%.
Here’s how the player counts of Baldur’s Gate 3, New World, and Lost Ark developed from February 2024 to February 2025 on Steam:
Baldur’s Gate 3 creates a world where players entertain themselves
What is the reason for this? Baldur’s Gate 3 has succeeded in creating such fascinating characters and such an exciting game world that players want to spend time in this created game universe.
This creates a community around such a game that keeps itself entertained:
- There are discussions about individual characters or the game world: Characters like Astarion or Shadowheart are constantly discussed. Even the voice actors have become minor stars of the community.
- The game is explored and examined in every corner.
- Through mods, players can engage with the game.
This is the ideal scenario for anyone developing a service game or an MMORPG: After reaching a critical mass, the game becomes self-sustaining and the community largely carries it while the developers only need to make external adjustments and provide expansions and patches.
In contrast, MMORPGs rely heavily on constantly new content that revitalizes the game. If this new content is missing, interest in the game drops significantly. To simplify:
- In Baldur’s Gate 3, players engage significantly with each other and themselves.
- In New World and Lost Ark, constant external input is needed to keep players entertained.
Examples of games that thrived greatly on community and characters in the past include Overwatch or Genshin Impact. Both games were significantly more successful during their peak than they would have been based solely on their gameplay.
The phenomenon of evergreen games on Steam
Are there other games that succeed in this? There are several such evergreen games that are played consistently throughout the year:
- The strategy games from Paradox, such as Crusader Kings 3 or Hearts of Iron, have a consistent player base on Steam, but they also continually receive new DLCs. Hearts of Iron managed to set a new player record on Steam with the Germany DLC after 8 years.
- Steam’s own evergreen games DOTA 2 and CS:GO consistently top the charts, with minor deviations. They are exceptions.
- Certain procedurally generated endless games like RimWorld are also evergreen.
But generally, a consistently high player base over the course of a year is a rare and valuable phenomenon. Especially for a classic single-player title like Baldur’s Gate 3, which is intended as a linear campaign, this is an extraordinary achievement.
What’s behind it: The immense success of Baldur’s Gate 3 will surely have an impact on new role-playing games that are released. Because they are appearing in a world where Baldur’s Gate 3 has set new standards for the quality and longevity of role-playing games, and they are appearing in a world where a large portion of role-players are still actively playing Baldur’s Gate 3.
For the gaming industry, it’s a major problem that their new games increasingly compete with well-established games that just don’t go away. For years, this was a problem mainly for new MMORPGs. However, it now also affects new games from other genres: The man behind Anthem explains why new MMOs fail miserably: Comparing WoW to Starbucks
