August 5, 2026
Larian has published another round of Baldur's Gate 3 player data — 13.4 billion kills, 599 million deaths and 9,073 people playing on a sideways monitor. The worst part: 57.9% of Alfira's 33,443 killers weren't Dark Urge players at all. They just wanted to.
Three years after launch, Baldur's Gate 3 is still producing numbers — and not the kind you would put in a marketing deck. Larian Studios has published its latest batch of player statistics, and the picture that emerges is of a community that drinks before the final boss, swings a rock named the Nut-Buster in earnest, and murders an innocent bard for fun rather than because the plot demands it.
13.4 billion total kills across all platforms
599.3 million player deaths — most of them in Honour Mode
271.4 million companions recruited
500 million mod downloads from 13,000 uploaded mods
33,443 bards silenced: Alfira's song cut short
9,073 adventurers who played in portrait mode
An annual tradition in strange data
Larian has turned this into something of a yearly ritual. Rather than publishing the obvious sales and concurrent-player milestones, the studio digs through its telemetry for the numbers nobody asked for — how many times a specific NPC has died, which joke items have actually been swung in combat, and what percentage of players managed something almost nobody manages.
The modding figures come first, and they are the least surprising part of the set. Half a billion downloads across 13,000 uploaded mods says everything about how thoroughly players have taken the game apart and rebuilt it since 2023.
Deaths, kills and the Honour Mode tax
The headline totals are enormous even by live-service standards: 13,407,384,298 kills, 599,362,727 deaths and 271,443,910 companions recruited, compiled across Steam, GOG, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The single biggest source of player deaths is Honour Mode — the one-save, no-take-backs difficulty where a bad initiative roll ends the entire run — and the deadliest place on the map is the city of Baldur's Gate itself.
Individual NPCs fare no better. Zevlor, the Tiefling leader players meet early in Act 1, has died 12.3 million times across all playthroughs — a runaway first place. Rolan, the perpetually irritated wizard's apprentice, takes second with 8.6 million deaths.
| Stat | Leader | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Total kills | Most kills: Baldur's Gate | 13,407,384,298 |
| Total deaths | Most deaths: Honour Mode | 599,362,727 |
| Companions recruited | Most recruited: Shadowheart | 271,443,910 |
| Zevlor's deaths | Most-killed story NPC | 12,300,000 |
| Rolan's deaths | Runner-up | 8,600,000 |
| Portrait monitors | Played at 9:16 | 9,073 |
Shadowheart also tops the popularity contest, taking first place among favourite companions ahead of Astarion and Gale — which makes the recruitment number less a statistic than a personality profile of the entire player base.
Weapons nobody was supposed to use
The genuinely absurd entries concern two items most players never think about twice. The Nut-Buster — a rock, and nothing more — has been used in combat exactly twice, both times in the Creche. Its companion piece, the Poo-Scraper, a blade belonging to the quasit Shovel, has been swung four times in Act 3.
Drunk at the Netherbrain, and 9,073 portrait monitors
More than 30,000 players took on the game's final antagonist with the drunk condition active, which is either a roleplaying choice or an accurate depiction of a Friday night. Fewer than 1% of players ever accumulated 180,000 gold in one run, confirming that most people either spend freely or never bother selling the twelve hundred spoons they have been carrying since Act 1.
And then there is the stat that has caused the most confusion: exactly 9,073 players experienced Baldur's Gate 3 at a 9:16 aspect ratio. That is a monitor rotated into portrait orientation — a tall, narrow strip of Faerûn, played presumably on a spare display that was already turned sideways for code or documents. Nobody has explained why. Nobody needs to.
The stat that says the most about players
The most damning number is not a total at all, but a split. Alfira's song was cut short 33,443 times — and 57.9% of those killings were carried out by non-Dark Urge players, against 42.1% by Durge players.
For context: Alfira is the gentle tiefling bard players meet in the grove in Act 1, and she has done nothing to anyone. If you play as the Dark Urge, the game takes the decision out of your hands and kills her in a cutscene — a moment designed to be upsetting, and one players have spent three years trying to metagame their way around.
Everyone else had a choice. And the majority of her killers chose it anyway, despite only 5.8% of players ever committing to a full 'Evil' playthrough — with "Embrace Your Urge" logged as the single most popular evil choice in the game. Some of that is curiosity about what happens, some of it is a stray fireball, and some of it is simply the eternal truth of open-ended RPGs: give players a save file and a blameless NPC, and the save file will not be the thing that survives.
Figures as published by Larian Studios, compiled from all platforms (Steam, GOG, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S); totals are presented as released by the studio.
