Salvation may have arrived for Baldur’s Gate 3 players on Xbox Series X|S who have fallen foul of its destructive save bug. As promised by developer Larian earlier this month, a new firmware update that includes a fix for the console is now being rolled out. Xbox Insiders will be able to install the 2402.240111-2200 preview build right now, though it won’t become available to all players until next week.
According to the beta release notes, among the litany of changes is the one we appear to have been waiting for: “fixed an issue where syncing game saves would not complete.” Though Larian states that it hasn’t been able to verify the fix, the studio is “optimistic that Microsoft has gotten to the bottom of it.” By the looks of things, the bottom of it is BG3’s save data corrupting as it attempted to reach the cloud. Hopefully, we’ll now be able to hop back into one of the best games on the platform without fear of data corruption.
The Baldur’s Gate 3 save bug has been plaguing players since it stealth-dropped on Xbox after The Game Awards 2023. Countless thousands of hours of gameplay have been lost, as save files were evaporating into thin air. Shortly after the bug was reported, Larian pushed out a hotfix which went some ways to mitigate the issue, though it continued to persist. At that point, it was clear that this was something going on Microsoft’s end – Xbox Support even recommended players stop playing one of the best RPG games altogether as it sought to tackle the issue.
By the end of the year, Larian had confirmed that the bug was due to a “firmware issue”, providing a workaround that would store BG3 saves in its servers rather than Xbox’s. While this has soothed the issue for many, it’s great to see a more permanent fix is now in place.
If you’re not already an Xbox Insider and you want to access the fix sooner rather than later, there’s a whole FAQ here that explains the process of signing up. Just remember that this is a preview build, so be aware that there could be bugs and other issues that crop up until the final release deploys. If you’d rather play it safe and wait, then be sure to check out our list of some of the other best open world games to tide you over in the meantime.