Baldur's Gate 3 hard drive requirement more than doubles ahead of Early Access launch

A friendly FYI for everyone looking forward to the Early Access release of Baldur's Gate 3 on October 6: The minimum hard drive requirement, which was originally listed at 70GB, has more than doubled to 150GB.

It's not clear what spurred the change, but it may be to ensure that there's room to expand in the future: A rep said the current build is actually about 80GB in size, but the Early Access release includes only the first of three acts and is missing other planned content including additional races, playable premade characters, and non-English languages.

The system requirements were first posted on Steam in August and are otherwise unchanged, and as we noted at the time they're fairly gentle on the low end. Larian said that they might be reduced even further over the course of Early Access, as optimization continues to improve. 

(Update: Larian director of publishing Michael Douse said on Twitter that the install size of Baldur's Gate 3 is around 80GB, but having 150GB free is "good for u." Not everyone is satisfied with that explanation, but it's all we've got for now.)

If you haven't seen them yet, the full (and updated) requirements are below, and we've also got a guide to all the races and classes that will be available in the Early Access release, as well as confirmation (because let's be honest, we all wanted to know) that yes, you can have sex in Baldur's Gate 3.

Minimum:

• OS: Windows 7 SP1 64-bit
• Processor: Intel i5-4690 / AMD FX 4350
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GTX 780 / AMD Radeon R9 280X
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 150 GB available space

Recommended:

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel i7 4770k / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB / AMD RX580
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 150 GB available space

Thanks, PCGamesN.