Baldur's Gate 3 Devs Hope for Substantive Discussion. „Threats and Toxic Behavior Only Harms Conversation.”
Baldur's Gate 3 has a huge player base, but some of them have given the developers (and other fans) a hard time in recent days. That's why Larian Studios is preparing discussions on moderation (and mods).
The number of Baldur's Gate 3 players has exceeded 10 million. The news was shared by Michael Douse, the director of publishing at Larian Studios, in a series of posts on X. He didn't provide exact statistics or confirm how long it took to achieve this result.
In a normal case, this would be a reason for the developers to celebrate. Even considering that by August 20th, up to 5.2 million copies of BG 3 had reached players (via Dark Side of Gaming), around 5 million copies in half a year is still an impressive achievement for a turn-based RPG - a genre that until recently seemed to have its best times behind it.
It's not as if it was unexpected. Baldur's Gate 3 was the top-selling game on Steam in 2023, and there are strong indications that Larian Studio's game also made a big impact on consoles.
Discord, mods, and moderation
This accomplishment would typically be the focus of a separate announcement, providing a cause for celebration for the devs and players. However, in this case, it was only mentioned during a longer and not very pleasant discussion. Douse asked for conversations with developers and other fans to be "without toxicity and threats."
The publishing director didn't specify a particular instance of such behavior. Nevertheless, mentions of official mod support and moderation most likely refer to a few incidents that occurred last week on the Larian Studios Discord channel.
The details are not entirely clear, but the problems boiled down to a few issues.
- Script Extender and many other mods stopped working after the last patch for BG 3. This isn't a new thing - patches typically require modifications to be updated - but it seems that many Discord users have been bothering Norbyte (the creator of SE), as well as the server moderators and employees of Larian Studios because of this. As a result, the moderator had to leave the Discord channel.
- Modders, including Norbyte (via Reddit), criticized Larian studio for not communicating about official mod support since Baldur's Gate 3 came out of early access. This was supposed to appear after the game's launch on PS5. In response, some of the moderators temporarily "hid" their creations on the Nexus Mods service.
- Additionally, the moderation of the BG 3 Discord channel has been further weakened. Some moderators and admins reportedly left in protest over the ban of an administrator following a player's complaint (via Steam), which the majority of the community (if not all users) considered to be completely unjustified.
These three factors are just the tip of the iceberg, and the effect was to flood the BG 3 Discord channel with a wave of complaints and toxic "discussions" that the limited number of moderators couldn't handle. In the end, it was decided to implement the so-called free response mode, which involves restricting the number of messages sent.
"Giant web of noise"
Douse noted that the community around Baldur's Gate 3 has grown significantly in the "very short time" since its early access launch ("from about 2 million to over 10 million"). And although, we quote, "99.9% of our community are the absolute the best," with such a number of players there had to be a few "bad eggs."
This makes creators have to "untangle a giant web of noise" if they want to stay in "close" contact with fans and actually work on something for the "benefit of everyone." Therefore, Douse calls on players not to offend individuals who unite the entire Baldur's Gate 3 community, let alone developers or creators of fan-made modifications.
Don't get angry at mod authors, support teams, community or developers. Our focus is to patch the game while working on future mod support. I understand why it's frustrating, so what we all need to do is focus on that future.
The publishing director also announced that there will be a discussion this week about moderation while maintaining a "close relationship" with players ("depending on when and what we can say").
Devs listen, players apologize
Many players nodded in agreement to Douse's post. Many of them admit that Larian failed in terms of Discord moderation, but the behavior of Discord users (and others) exceeded all limits. Many internet users regret that the devs even had to publish such a statement.
Despite the quick response from the people in charge of community engagement and the promise of a hotfix to address numerous bugs (including Script Extender compatibility), some players continued to effectively harass both developers and mod makers. Some accused (unfairly, according to most fans) that the studio's announcements were empty "corporate apologies" (via Reddit).
Several fans point out that the absence of official mod support (let alone compromising their compatibility through updates) isn't a reason to threaten the developers, moderators, or social media admins of Larian Studios. And definitely not when the devs don't bury their heads in the sand and address critical feedback, even if it's delayed (again, understandable with a community of 10 million players).
Unfortunately, the post will probably only calm the mood for a short time, if at all. Toxic behaviors on social media are nothing new, and on many forums dedicated to games, it's an everyday occurrence.
