Baldur's Gate 3's "billion" mods can make it the next Skyrim – just as Larian intended

PATCH NOTES v05.08.2026 – Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios released some fresh game statistics, showing how modding has kept BG3's playerbase engaged and thriving to the tune of one billion mods downloaded in just three years – encroaching upon a position held fast by Skyrim for years.

What's going on this week with Baldur's Gate 3?

• Larian Studios released a series of infographics on X that give insight into player choice and actions
• Stats reveal 500 million game mods have been downloaded through the Baldur's Gate 3 internal modding client and 509.4 million more through Nexus Mods

Why is this happening now?

• Mods help players make games their own, keeping games like Baldur's Gate 3 relevant for longer
• The infographics were posted in keeping with Larian's trend, releasing statistics to mark milestones in the RPG's life cycle

Community Update

Baldur's Gate 3 has been blinding success since it launched out of Early Access, and after the last of its mammoth post-launch updates was deployed in April 2025, fans have turned to mods to inspire repeat playthroughs. The internal modding client – offering new classes, party size limit removal, and a higher level cap to experiment with – was added to the game as part of September 2024's Patch 7 as Larian started the process of leaving the game in players hands to pursue its next big project (later revealed as a new Divinity game).

According to the latest statistics released by Larian to celebrate BG3's birthday, the game has seen 500 million mods downloaded internally while 13,000 others have been uploaded to the mod library. It's safe to say that the developer's hopes that the community would carry the game's future on its own has paid off, with studio lead Swen Vinke responding with shock to a remark on X that the number of mods downloaded between the game's client and Nexus Mods put together brings us to over "one billion" in total.

Meta Shift

• Freedom to mod is the future of legacy RPGs, but it's also the genre's past

This is a funny one. Baldur's Gate 3 going from strength to strength with such a lively and active player base, evident by over a billion mods being downloaded since the client launched in 2024, sounds jawdropping. But it also echoes the journey of RPGs like The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (as well as The Sims and Minecraft) over the years.

Skyrim is still the most heavily-modded game of all time, having racked up six billion downloads on Nexus Mods by the time Larian launched its internal Baldur's Gate 3 modding client in 2024. That's to be expected, since Bethesda's RPG enjoyed a 13-year head start. But with BG3 being a more recent release, we're seeing those numbers stack up in real time – and now, we're actively paying attention to the game that might actually unseat Skyrim.

Games that not only permit community mods but embrace them have a proven track record of success over time. Seeing Baldur's Gate 3 achieving a cool one billion mod downloads in just three years, one of which went by without an internal modding client at all, crystallizes the power of passing the reins on to players. Which was, as it turns out, Swen Vincke's hope for it all along.

Patch Notes summary

Since leaving active development on Baldur's Gate 3, Larian's latest batch of statistics spotlights how popular mods have been and points to one of many reasons why the game has sustained a thriving playerbase. Steam player counts still point to healthy numbers being maintained long past its final major update, with mods being downloaded both internally and via platforms like Nexus Mods speaking to the continued excitement around the three-year-old RPG.

I've yet to see a single week without Baldur's Gate 3 making headlines for one reason or another since 2023, and useful as these stat drops are in keeping that momentum going, it's clear that BG3 fans are the ones keeping this fantasy alive.

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