Baldur’s Gate 3 forces custom firmware update on Xbox to fix bugged saves

Baldur’s Gate 3’s Xbox save bugs look to finally be at an end thanks to a purpose-built firmware update from Microsoft.

2023’s Game of the Year made a big splash when it was accidentally shadow-dropped after The Game Awards. Baldur’s Gate 3 lead Swen Vincke revealed he forgot to mention that the game was launching for Xbox that day.

Unfortunately, Xbox players have had to deal with some growing pains since launch. Chief among them was a nasty bug that deleted entire save files, which in a game as massive as Baldur’s Gate 3 is a big problem.

Those playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox can breathe a sigh of relief as it looks like a fix is finally on the Horizon. Larian Studios took to Twitter to announce that a firmware update is coming to Xbox consoles designed specifically to rectify the issue.

Microsoft have identified the cause of the save bug on Xbox, and will be issuing a firmware update to fix it!

You'll be able to update your console manually on the 16th of January, or wait a week longer for the update to roll out globally 🌍

— Larian Studios (@larianstudios) January 9, 2024

“Microsoft have identified the cause of the save bug on Xbox, and will be issuing a firmware update to fix it!” Larian revealed. Baldur’s Gate 3’s development team had previously reported they were confident a solution could be found.

The studio did qualify that they had not been able to test the update but expressed a great deal of faith in Microsoft. “Although we haven’t been able to independently verify this fix, we’re optimistic that Microsoft have gotten to the bottom of it,” Larian said.

According to earlier digging from Larian, this particular issue was caused by saves not being properly written to the console’s disk. They offered a workaround involving the company’s cross-save service but this is the first proper solution.

“You’ll be able to update your console manually on the 16th of January, or wait a week longer for the update to roll out globally,” Larian explained. This comes more than a month after the issue was initially reported.

Hopefully, this is the end of Xbox players losing their Baldur’s Gate 3 save files and they can enjoy the game properly. Just be extra careful not to record any of the game’s raunchier scenes on the console, Microsoft has been issuing suspensions for that.

Of course, now that you can play without fear of having your progress wiped, you might also want to check out our guides for the game.

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