Baldur’s Gate 3 How To Fix The ‘Incompatible Version’ Error

Baldur’s Gate 3 has released to rather universal praise, but that doesn’t mean the game is devoid of issues. In fact, there have been a number of small bugs a glitches that have caused players some strife over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, in an attempt to fix them, Larian Studios have caused the much maligned ‘Incompatible Version’ error. 

This has caused thousands of players to be unable to load their saves, which is far from ideal when people could be pumping hundreds of hours into Baldur’s Gate 3 for just one playthrough. We are going to go over the cause of the issue, and what you can do to fix it. 

UPDATE August 18, 2023 – Larian Studios redeployed Hot Fix 4, this time the crashing error fixed. This has also resulted in ‘incompatible’ save data being usable again. For all intents and purposes, the error has been resolved and the game is once again playable. If any further news on Hot Fix 4 and this error arises, we will be sure to update this article.

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Cause Of The Incompatible Version Error In Baldur’s Gate 3

It all stems from Larian Studio pushing out Hot Fix 4. This was intended to fix some bugs in Baldur’s Gate 3, however, it wreaked havoc in the game causing it to become far more unstable. Basically, the game developed quite a severe crashing problem. 

To combat this, Larian rolled back the Hot Fix which fixed the crashing issue immediately, however, this caused more issues. Enter the Incompatible Version Error. Players who played during Hot Fix 4 and then proceeded to save their game now have save files that are no longer compatible with Baldur’s Gate 3’s current version. This basically means they won’t load. 

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How To Fix The Incompatible Version Error In Baldur’s Gate 3

Sadly, there is no way to fix it – yet. You can load a previous save that wasn’t effected by the Hot Fix and this will work. Of course, you may have lost hours of progress, which doesn’t make it ideal.

Other than that, players have been advised by Larian to hold tight as they are working on a solution to fix the issue for players. Once that is rolled out, afflicted saves should be ready to use once more. 

Some people have reported that restarting your game can help resolve this issue, however, we have not seen any success trying this method. Feel free to give it a go, but don’t expect any miracles. 

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Can You Still Play Baldur’s Gate 3?

Despite all of the issues surrounding this error, nothing is preventing you from playing Baldur’s Gate 3, you are just restricted on what saves you can load. This is of course irritating for fans of the game, but fixes do appear to be on the way. Hopefully they arrive sooner rather than later. 

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That’s all we have for Baldur’s Gate 3 for now. Be sure to check out our other guides and lists for more Baldur’s Gate content.