Baldur's Gate 3's eagerly awaited Patch 7 has been released, and the response from the player community has been nothing short of spectacular, especially in terms of modding.
BG3 Modding Is “Pretty Big” Says CEO Swen Vincke
mod.io Founder Says Mods Surpassed 3 Million Installs
Baldur's Gate 3's Patch 7, which rolled out in the past few days, has sparked an overwhelming response from the player community. Following the launch on September 5, over one million mods were installed, as reported by Larian Studios' CEO, Swen Vincke. "Modding is pretty big - we had more than a million mods installed in less than 24 hours," Vincke shared on Twitter (X). Building on this, Scott Reismanis, the founder of ModDB and mod.io, revealed that the number of installs had surpassed 3 million and was still growing. "Just ticked over 3m installs and accelerating," Reismanis stated in response to Vincke's post.
Patch 7 introduced a variety of new content, including new evil endings, enhanced split-screen gameplay, and the much-anticipated release of Larian’s own Mod Manager. This in-game tool enables players to seamlessly browse, install, and manage community-created mods without needing to exit the game.
The current modding tools are accessible as a separate app on Steam, allowing modders to craft their own stories using Larian's proprietary scripting language, Osiris. Mod authors can also load custom scripts and conduct basic debugging, with the ability to publish mods directly from the toolkit.
BG3 Cross-Platform Modding in the Cards
Additionally, a community-created "BG3 Toolkit Unlocked," uploaded by modder Siegfre on Nexus, includes a comprehensive level editor and reactivates previously disabled features in Larian's editor, as reported by PC Gamer. Larian had initially been cautious about granting players full access to all their development tools. "We are a game development company, we're not a tools company," Vincke told PC Gamer, indicating that while players enjoy considerable creative freedom, not all development tools would be supported for public use.
Vincke also mentioned that Larian Studios is working on supporting cross-platform modding, a feature that poses significant challenges. "It's not the easiest thing in the world because we have to make it work on consoles and on PC," he explained. "We'll start with the PC version. The console version will come a bit later because it has to go through a bunch of submission processes. It also gives us the time to see whatever goes wrong and fix it."
Beyond modding, Patch 7 for BG3 brought numerous other enhancements to the game. Players can enjoy a more refined experience with improved UI elements, new animations, additional dialogue options, and a plethora of bug fixes and performance optimizations. With more updates expected from Larian, we can anticipate further details on their plans for cross-platform modding.
