Steam’s two most played video games of 2023 were both brand new

Baldur’s Gate 3 – massive on PC (Picture: Larian Studios)

Baldur’s Gate 3 almost boasted the biggest peak player count of the whole year on PC, as Valve reveal new data on 2023’s most popular games.

There can often be a disconnect between critically acclaimed titles and the games people actually play – after all, it’s never usually FIFA and Call Of Duty which get the highest review scores each year – but in 2023 there was a pretty solid consensus about which were the best games.

On Metacritic, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom are both on a score of 96, although the former is just ahead on decimal points. We gave the Zelda the top spot in our Top 20 of the year but many others have named Baldur’s Gate 3 as the best game of 2023.

Obviously, Zelda isn’t an option on PC platform Steam and so instead it’s Baldur’s Gate 3 which has earned the highest number of peak players for any new game last year… depending on how you define new.

Although Valve has released its list of the most played games of 2023 they’re not in order and are just grouped into Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum tiers – which isn’t terribly helpful.

However, according to Valve the category is decided by the number of peak players and in that respect Baldur’s Gate 3 has been hugely popular, with a total of 875,343.

That’s well ahead of fellow newcomers Hogwarts Legacy at 527,652 and Starfield on 330,597. It also beats evergreen live service titles like Apex Legends and PUBG, at around 624,000 each.

Baldur’s Gate 3 even beat Valve mainstay Dota 2, at 855,495, but had no chance against the launch of Counter-Strike 2, which had a peak total of 1,802,853.

It’s been a matter of great debate, amongst fans, as to whether Counter-Strike 2 counts as a new game at all, as it’s certainly not a sequel in the traditional sense.

It is technically a new release though and so, depending on how you look at it, Baldur’s Gate 3 can’t necessarily claim to be the most played new PC title of 2023. Although given Counter-Strike 2 is free, it’s not a fair comparison anyway.

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Despite its critical acclaim, and success on PC, it’s been much harder to tell how well Baldur’s Gate 3 has done on consoles. It doesn’t have a physical release yet and its digital sales aren’t tracked in the US, so it’s impossible to tell how the PlayStation 5 version has sold.

The Xbox Series X/S edition only launched in December, but apart from continued problems with its save system, there’s been no indication of how that has done either.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 almost boasted the biggest peak player count of the whole year on PC, as Valve reveal new data on 2023’s most popular games.