Now part of this is certainly that I like turn-based games and fantasy more than real-time games and science-fiction. But the other effect is that Baldur's Gate 3 is such a good game, way above the quality of other games, that it becomes hard for other games to compete. It is the black hole of role-playing games, likely to suck you back in if you get too close.

Baldur's Gate 3 is currently at patch 7, and the improvements, especially to the third act are noticeable. Mod support is great, even if those mods currently just change rules of the game, and don't add completely new, player-written scenarios to the game. Patch 8 has been announced for next year, hopefully early next year, and I am looking forward to trying one of the new subclasses, the hexblade Warlock. So I am not really close to escaping the clutches of Baldur's Gate 3.

And I am not alone. 15 months after release, Baldur's Gate 3 still gets 90,000 concurrent players. There have been a number of triple-A game releases this year that didn't even get that many players on release. Larian's pre-tax profit for 2023 was €249 million, on €427 million of revenue, and I am pretty certain that their financial year 2024 wasn't bad either. Still, from what I hear the game industry is more in a "this is impossible to reproduce" mood, rather than "we should make a game like that". Which is a pity, because Larian Studios, even with all that money, will need years to make their next big role-playing game.