Baldur’s Gate 3 players wish ending of early access had been planned better

While many RPG fans have their sights firmly set on the release of Starfield in September, Baldur’s Gate 3 has also been earning a lot of attention ahead of its imminent full release.

Promising plenty of cool quests and battles, the game is bound to attract a legion of loyal PC players upon arrival, many of whom have been busy planning out the builds they’ll be using for their first playthroughs.

In addition to making these decisions more difficult by revealing more details about the game’s Illithid powers, Larian has also been guiding players through the complex process required to get it working as intended. Unfortunately, some have concluded that this could have been planned better.

Do you wish you could have pre-loaded Baldur’s Gate 3?

As Larian has confirmed in a Tweet, pre-loading isn’t available for Baldur’s Gate 3, with the studio citing the fact that “Steam doesn’t support pre-load for Early Access titles, because switching to pre-load would break the game for people currently playing Early Access,” as the reason behind it.

With many players hoping to get straight into the full version of the game on launch day, a goal that the ability to pre-load the game would help them achieve, its absence has caused some frustration among those on the game’s Reddit page.

Though many have concluded that the decision not to go ahead and compromise the early access version in order to prioritise the full release could well be a product of legal ramifications, others have suggested that sunsetting that version earlier could have potentially have led to a smoother transition.

“Too late for [it] to happen now, but I would rather make the Early Access unavailable for everyone a couple days ahead of the official full release, than have everyone wait to download on day one,” argued user Sylassian. “It's bound to wreak havoc on the servers, tens of thousands of people downloading [it] all at the exact same time.”

“Honestly, it'd stop all the people thinking they're playing the final game right now,” added user Cerulean_Shaman. “Steam has a lot of them constantly posting about that after having already played like all day or something, and we're getting a decent few here too.”

Adding fuel to this sentiment is the fact that many players have already followed Larian’s guidance to delete their early access saves and uninstall that version of the game prior to downloading the full release, in order to “reduce the risk of file conflicts.”

Thankfully, some players have still found a way to see things positively, with user Material_Ad_2970 suggesting: “Let’s all just pretend we can pre-load starting August 3, and the release date is August 4.”

Regardless of whether you’re still hoping to be able to enjoy some Baldur’s Gate 3 tomorrow, rather than spending all day staring at a download, make sure to follow us for plenty of guides to its quests, mechanics, and characters.