The odds of Baldur’s Gate 3 being owned by the Pope have improved, as Larian’s publishing boss shouts out mods to help it surpass last year’s numbers.

We all know that Baldur’s Gate 3 mods have proven to be quite popular since Larian added official support for them with patch 7. The developer went out of its way to tell us just that, even letting us know who we should thank for contributing.

Anyway, now Larian’s Editorial Director has shared that embracing mods has actually led to Larian in 2024 being ahead of where it was in terms of some player stats this time last year, when BG3 was about to launch. going into a holiday season that would see it begin to absorb all the GOTY awards it ended up getting. Seriously, it even seems like there’s a chance the Pope bought it to see what the current fuss is about.

On Twitter, Michael Douse has shared some “fun facts” he dug up while reviewing Larian’s sales charts. “Our average maximum daily concurrents increased 3% this year compared to last year” is the first, “Our average daily active “users” increased 20% compared to last year” is the second, and “the average daily Steam Deck users increased 61% compared to last year.”

The exec cites the first two specifically as evidence that “mods are good”, something I’ve also been saying for a while now, as I try to figure out which of the 1000+ plugins is stopping my copy. of Skyrim since launch. In response, one user said they wish more developers would embrace modding like Larian has done by releasing their toolkit and introducing BG3 mods on both PC and console. “They are probably afraid that people will change the sex and therefore the classification boards will hunt them down and kill them in the night,” Douse responded.

Another interesting nugget that emerged through this new batch of weird tweets from Douse is that Baldur’s Gate 3 has sold one more copy in Vatican City. Yes, after revealing last week that two copies of BG3 had been sold at the Vatican, the place where the Pope lives, with an additional wish list, Douse is now reporting that another sale has been made.

Naturally, Larian’s editorial director immediately assumed that this final copy had been purchased by the Pope himself, because that’s funny. However, here at VG247 it’s all about the FACTS, as we have demonstrated above, so we have decided to try to calculate the odds that the Pope actually owns BG3.

In 2023, the population of the Vatican is 764 people. Three copies of BG3 have been sold there. So about 0.39% of the Vatican population are BG3 owners right now, meaning that’s the chance the Pope has of being one of the three. Unless my math is wrong, and right now it’s last Monday, so there’s a good chance that’s the case. Sure, there’s not much chance I’ll own it, but it’s better than nothing.

With what His Holiness has tweeted recently about the New Orleans Saints, I’m pretty sure he has a good shot at being a Madden player too, so here’s hoping he can find enough time for both of us between his papal duties.