Baldur’s Gate 3
Larian
Baldur’s Gate 3 was the runaway GOTY winner in 2023, and halfway through 2024, it is still putting up 80,000 concurrent players a night, sometimes peaking at over 100K.
As such, you may expect the game’s average playtime to be high. But this high? Larian has just announced (referencing Steam numbers) that average playtime for Baldur’s Gate 3 is 100 hours. For the genre, for a single-player game, that’s absolutely wild, and I’m having trouble finding anything to compare it to.
Yes, I know there’s co-op in the game, which technically makes it more than just single-player, but the vast majority of players are playing solo, and there are so few games that are even 100 hours long to start with, much less ones that have an average playtime of 100 hours. A few references:
Starfield’s average playtime was 40 hours.
Elden Ring’s average playtime on Steam was 47 hours.
Skyrim’s average playtime was 75 hours.
So, to rocket all the way to 100 hours for Baldur’s Gate 3 is really like nothing we’ve seen. Something like GTA 5 doesn’t count given that we know those high averages are from GTA Online. Most other games simply do not even have the content to make it to 100 hours at all.
Now, I know what people will say, that 100 hours may even be short for Baldur’s Gate 3, and you can easily sink double or triple that into the game. I’ve seen playtimes up to 1,000 hours thanks to multiple playthroughs given the infinite amount of different decisions you can make in the game and alternate and creative ways to approach quests and fights. But you have to realize that this number includes those who didn’t finish or may have purchased and bounced right off. Again, we’re talking about some of the most famous single-player games of all time when it comes to the likes of Skyrim and Elden Ring, and Baldur’s Gate 3 is out here blowing them all away.
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I admittedly brought down the average. I only (“only”) made it about 50 hours in when I decided the turn-based combat was simply not going to be for me over the longer run, however much I loved the characters and story. Though I do absolutely understand how if you can embrace its gameplay, that this is a game to sink 100, 300 or 500 hours into given all it has to offer.
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