Update: 8/18/2023 10:30 a.m. ET: Larian Studios has reissued hotfix 4 as of August 17. In an update detailing the second release of the patch, the developer stated that the problem was due to “compiler corruption, which caused certain exceptions that normally wouldn’t cause crashes to—you guessed it—cause crashes.”
Earlier:
If you’ve played any amount of Baldur’s Gate 3 lately, you might’ve noticed how frequently the game is getting updates. Well, it turns out that a recent one has caused a bit of an issue, prompting developer Larian Studios to roll back the patch and issue a temporary hotfix to fix the problems caused by the original one.
The most recent update, hotfix 4, sought to address a variety of issues to mitigate crashes, improve the overall stability of the game, and to solve issues like player resources not restoring correctly after a certain point in the game. Other issues plaguing the game saw players disappear when reconnecting in split-screen co-op, complications with servers on GOG, issues with players getting stuck in the middle of a Long Rest, and an apparent issue where Cruel Sting could result in infinite damage. The hotfix launched ahead of a much larger patch expected in the near future. But it turns out, the fix for these problems wasn’t as smooth as it should’ve been.
Your Baldur’s Gate 3 save might be broken right now, but don’t panic
As Larian stated in its tweet that while hotfix 4 was rolled back due to issues, folx who saved the game after it deployed on August 16, 6:40 p.m. ET, won’t be able to load their current save.
In a follow-up tweet, however, Larian stated that hope is around the corner.
We have a candidate for a build which is going through rigorous internal testing before it’s released. If all goes well, we aim to [re]release Hotfix 4 by the end of the day, EU. We’ll let you know if and when anything changes.
Baldur’s Gate 3’s overall size, scope, and impressive quality has drawn tremendous attention on the nature of AAA games and their development overall. But as the hotfix 4 hiccup has shown, everyone rolls a 1 from time to time.