Larian Studios has published the official start time for Baldur’s Gate 3, which is a global release and will be available to players around the world at the same time. Release times can be seen below:
- 8am PDT (Los Angeles)
- 11am EDT (New York/Quebec)
- 12pm BRT (Rio De Janeiro)
- 4pm BST (London)
- 5pm CST (Berlin)
- 1am, Aug. 4 (Sydney)
- 3am, Aug. 4 (Auckland)
Developer Larian has recommended players who have taken part in early access uninstall their game and delete their save files to avoid issues at launch. Unfortunately, players will have to wait until the release time to start their download of the full game as a Baldur’s Gate 3 preload is not available. The game is also quite large, over 100 GB, so make sure you give yourself plenty of time to download it before you start playing.
I don't think its as mutually exclusive as you make it sound. Personally, I think showing that there's a bunch of Linux users interested in buying and running games in general is helping out the Linux gaming scene, regardless of whether its a native port or not. We need to shortcut the chicken-and-egg problem of not having enough marketshare and I think Proton and Steam Deck have been instrumental in doing that and getting developers to even be aware of Linux. It's a slow and steady march onwards, but I firmly believe one day we'll have enough marketshare to start demanding native ports from non-indie game devs.