Don’t forget to do one essential thing before booting up Baldur’s Gate 3 for the first time

The developer of Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios, has taken to Twitter to explain why players cannot preload the gargantuan RPG ahead of release. In addition, it has also recommended that players delete the Early Access version of the game, their save files, and any mods before the RPG launches on August 3 (which is later today, for those of you keeping track).

Keen players have been able to dive into Baldur’s Gate 3 since it was released in Early Access on Steam, way back in October 2022. The full launch of the game, coming in hot in just a few hours’ time, will be a whopping 122GB. And it cannot be preloaded.

“Unfortunately we’re unable to make Baldur’s Gate 3 available for pre-load — Steam doesn’t support pre-load for Early Access titles because switching to pre-load would break the game for people currently playing Early Access,” said developer, Larian Studios, over on Twitter.

In addition to the explanation as to why players can’t pre-load Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios also advised that those who have had Early Access delete their game, save files, and any mods they had installed in advance of the full launch. This is, again, aimed at preventing any file conflicts or data issues that could prevent your game from working as inteded when the final version launches.

The follow-up tweet reads: “We still recommend deleting your save files/mods and doing a fresh install of Baldur’s Gate 3 in preparation for August 3!”

This is something that I actually had completely forgotten about, so make sure you remember to do this ahead of launch!

For more on Baldur’s Gate 3, we have a whole host of build guides and more for you to peruse at launch. If you’re on Xbox, you’re going to have to wait a bit longer for the game to arrive on your platform of choice, but hey – at least you can do a bit of preparation before BG3 finally lands on Microsofot’s console.