Interview: Even Twitch was surprised by Baldur’s Gate 3’s staggering success

While its near-unanimous critical acclaim is one thing, Baldur’s Gate 3 has also been a shockingly popular title for content creators. So much so, in fact, it caught even Twitch staff off-guard as one of the biggest surprises of 2023.

There’s no two ways about it, Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the biggest success stories in recent gaming history. After its lengthy early access period, the game released in full on August 3 and instantly became Larian Studios’ biggest smash hit to date.

Millions of players have since been captivated by its whimsical cast, ceaseless creativity, and immense replay value. To this day, just shy of 200,000 players on PC alone are still jumping in on a daily basis, placing it in elite company among the biggest live-service titles like Counter-Strike 2.

With such an explosion in popularity, we naturally saw a wide range of Twitch streamers looking to get in on the fun as well. Though its success on the platform took even Twitch staff by surprise, as seemingly no one was anticipating a turn-based RPG to catch on with viewers quite the way it did.

Over the past 90 days, Baldur’s Gate 3 streams have drawn over 58 million hours of total watch time, according to SullyGnome, making it the 15th biggest title on the platform. Similarly, it also managed to crack into the top 10 in terms of peak viewership, with just shy of half a million viewers all watching at the same time earlier this year.

This degree of success wasn’t expected by Twitch, Dexerto found out in a recent interview at PAX Australia with APAC Content Director Lewis Mitchell.

“Heavy, lore-based RPGs… There’s a subset of creators that are really strong in it,” he explained. “You know [they’re] going to go into every piece of lore, every item. The community resonates with that.

“But having an RPG that’s also a turn-based game take off the way it did… In terms of surprises, that’s the one that really got me. I’m a big fan of Baldur’s Gate and Divinity, but I’ve never seen it resonate like [that] with so many massive streamers.

“Did not expect that in terms of what was going to take off this year.”

Dozens of prolific content creators seemingly fell in love with the title near its release, streaming for hours on end to see and do as much as they could. The likes of shroud, CohnCarnage, AnnieFuchsia, and plenty others all made it a priority. For some, it’s even become their go-to streaming title thanks to its role-playing offerings letting their personality shine through.

Moving forward, no doubt Twitch will be keeping a close eye on any similar RPGs after the unexpected boom of Baldur’s Gate 3.