Larian Studios officially ended major updates to Baldur"s Gate 3 earlier this year. While hotfixes have continued to land with bug fixes, its latest hotfix is a little heavier than usual. The studio announced today that Baldur’s Gate 3 is now running natively on the Steam Deck, offering a more stable experience than before. The work is even translating to other platforms for better performance.
Until now, players on Valve"s handheld gaming had been running Baldur"s Gate 3 using the Proton compatibility layer, like with most games on the Linux-powered platform. Larian says that the new native version of the RPG uses less CPU and memory compared to the Proton version.
Players without Steam Cloud Saves will need to do some file transfers on the Steam Deck to get back their saved campaigns. The same goes for modders who manually installed user-made modifications without being logged into a Larian Account and having it connected to mod.io. Find details on how to transfer the files and get all the data back over here on Larian"s new support page.
Moreover, for Linux users looking to get support from Larian regarding Baldur"s Gate 3 issues with this build though, the studio confirmed that it is only offering support for the Steam Deck.
Explaining the reason behind the sudden Steam Deck native version upgrade, Larian Studios" CEO Swen Vincke said on social media that this was thanks to the effort of an engineer that worked on the port in his own time. After seeing the progress and how smooth the game felt natively, the studio had put in the work to make it an official build for all players.
"This is not just good news for Steam Deck users either, the work the team has put into this build also means that everyone will get to enjoy overall improvements to the way game models are streamed on all platforms, which should reduce framerate spikes in busy areas, such as the Lower City in Act 3," added the studio.
Find the complete patch notes for Baldur"s Gate 3 Hotfix #32 over here, which also resolves some crashes on Xbox consoles, among other bugs.