Stay winning: Baldur's Gate 3 patched out a popular trade exploit while simultaneously being crowned GOTY

Baldur's gate 3 Shadowheart romance — (Image credit: Larian Studios)

As you might've heard, Baldur's Gate 3 took home GOTY Thursday night at The Game Awards 2023, but what you might not have seen amid the celebrations is a new patch for the RPG that dropped right in the middle of the show.

Hotfix #13 is mostly tuned to fix bugs and crashes, but the biggest highlight is a fix for a popular exploit that players were using to "buy out a trader with only 1 gold and a container."

In a tweet, Larian says the patch makes "traders across Faerûn wise to your little schemes," which is a funnier way to say: this here little loophole's been closed for good.

The update also fixes a crash that was happening when leaving Act 2, issues with the price of tooltips not showing correctly and balancing offers in trading, a mixup that was making empty bags sold to vendors cost the same as their combined contents, and some performance problems on PS5 related to "the Knights of the Shield situation."

Notably, and as many were quick to point out, this patch arrived right as Baldur's Gate 3 was taking home awards for best RPG, best multiplayer game, best community support, and player's voice - not to mention casually announcing its launch on Xbox.

I'd say the whole team deserves a nice long nap, especially Larian founder Swen Vincke, who accepted the GOTY award clad in a suit of shining armor. That stuff's gotta be heavy.

Under 1% of Baldur's Gate 3 players reached the end with no companions, but this route still has unique dialogue: "We are chasing that feeling of absolute freedom."

After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.