We knew Baldur's Gate 3 was going to be big, but we didn't expect it to be this big: on its second day of release, Larian's epic D&D RPG has surpassed 500,000 concurrent players on Steam.

This is not enough to top the Steam charts, which are steadfastly dominated by Counter-Strike: Global offensive, a game played by over a million people at any given time. However, it is closing in on Dota 2, which has held the number two spot for many years and is far ahead of other powerhouses such as PUBG, Apex Legends, and Naraka:

It is worth noting that Baldur's Gate 3 is the only multiplayer game in the top five and the only one that is not free to play. It is also notable that Baldur's Gate 3 is the only game in the top five that is not a multiplayer game and the only one that is not free to play. More notably, it is not a mainstream game by conventional definitions; while the D&D name certainly carries weight, isometric party-based RPGs are not the kind of video games that people typically play side-by-side.

The same goes for Larian itself: the studio has been known to RPG fans for years, but is not particularly well known outside of that.

"Baldur's Gate 3" came close to breaking the 500,000 unit mark yesterday when it was first released, but was unable to crack the ceiling, probably due to the fact that it was a 122 GB download and had no preload period. Fortunately, the Steam servers were able to withstand the strain, but for some people that meant that the release date was the download date, not the play date. Therefore, it was reasonable to assume that the game would not start in earnest until the next day, i.e., today.

Larian boss Swen Vincke said on Twitter that the game's huge success "brought tears to many people's eyes" today, before Baldur's Gate 3 hit the 500,000 concurrent user mark. But as those numbers continue to climb, he also expressed that he is getting just a little nervous about the whole affair.

Also keep in mind that this is Steam only: Baldur's Gate 3 is also available on GOG. We do not have access to the number of players on that storefront, but whatever it is, it will push the total even higher. There are quite a few people playing digital D&D right now.

The first Baldur's Gate 3 hotfix will be released later today. We will let you know when it arrives and what it does.