Baldur's Gate 3's slowdown bug is the result of all the stealing you've been doing
The game's upcoming fifth patch should have that fixed though.
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Turns out that Baldur's Gate 3's slowdown bug occurs because you all just love thieving and vandalism so much.
Earlier this month, Baldur's Gate 3 received its fourth patch, which brought about a whole heap of changes, fixes, and additions. However, players also began to notice some performance issues once they started hitting Act 3 in the game, some of which found it to be unplayable. As explained by developer Larian Studios in a statement provided to IGN, this all comes down to a strange situation where the game wouldn't forget any acts of theft or vandalism.
"In Patch 4 we introduced a fix that would prevent the Scrying Eyes in Moonrise Towers from immediately calling the guards on you when stealing, even if you were sneaking, or invisible for example," Larian told IGN. "This fix had the unintended consequence of causing unnoticed thefts and acts of vandalism to remain stuck forever within the ‘did anyone see me’ pipeline, rather than timing out and moving on, as is intended. Essentially, your dungeon master - in a real-world sense - constantly thinks about the acts of theft and violence the player keeps doing, without ever moving on or verbalising them. Mulling on it ad infinitum."
According to Larian, it would end up being a case where the "more a player commits those acts, the more the game is trying to keep that all up to date and in memory, and so the more slowdowns start happening. Essentially, the dungeon master becomes unable to operate. By Act 3 this caused slowdown issues, which after some sleuthing we’re extremely happy to say we’ve solved in Patch 5, which is in testing and scheduled to release this week."
As mentioned by Larian, the fifth patch is set to arrive sometime this week, though a specific day hasn't been set just yet. Earlier this month, Larian also announced a physical Deluxe Edition of the game, which is planned to release in the first quarter of 2024. It looks like a pretty nice set, including various bits of DLC, a digital copy of the OST, artbook, and character sheets, as well as a physical copy of the soundtrack, a map, stickers, a couple of patches, as well as a Mind Flayer poster. You'll be able to pick that up on either PC, PS5, or Xbox Series X/S.