Crusader Kings III
Love, fight, scheme, and claim greatness. Determine your noble house’s legacy in the sprawling grand strategy of Crusader Kings III. Death is only the beginning as you guide your dynasty’s bloodline in the rich and larger-than-life simulation of the Middle Ages.
Role-PlayingSandboxSimulationStrategy
Your like matters. Every heart nudges this game's GamingPickz Score and where it ranks (a small 5% of the score), so the lists get better for everyone.
- Released
- 2020
- Developer
- Development Studio
- Platforms
- 4 systems
- Critics
- 91
- Steam Deck
- playable
- Download
- 20 GB
What is Crusader Kings III?
Love, fight, scheme, and claim greatness. Determine your noble house’s legacy in the sprawling grand strategy of Crusader Kings III. Death is only the beginning as you guide your dynasty’s bloodline in the rich and larger-than-life simulation of the Middle Ages.
Description as published by the developer on its own store page, read 30 August 2026. It is marketing copy, not our assessment.
The record
| First released | 1 September 2020 |
|---|---|
| Developer | Development Studio, Lab42 |
| Publisher | Paradox Interactive |
| Platforms | PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Steam Deck |
| Genres | Role-Playing, Sandbox, Simulation, Strategy |
| Languages | 9 supported |
Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata Q71701894, seeded 30 August 2026. Store data from Steam, read 30 August 2026.
How was Crusader Kings III received?
Method. Player figures are Steam's own totals for the PC version, read 30 August 2026. The Metacritic score is the one Steam publishes on its store page and can lag the site itself. Metacritic page. Neither is our opinion. We have not published a review of this game.
Accessibility
Seeing
- Camera Comfort
Hearing
- Custom Volume Controls
Input
- Mouse Only Option
- Playable without Timed Input
Difficulty
- Adjustable Difficulty
- Save Anytime
Method. Features the publisher declared on its own store page. A declaration is a floor, not a review.
What does it support?
| Capability | Support |
|---|---|
| Controller | Not stated |
| Cloud saves | Yes |
| Cross-platform play | No |
| Mod support | Steam Workshop |
| Online play | Yes |
| In-game purchases | No |
| Steam Deck | playable |
| Download size | 20 GB |
| Add-on content | 33 DLC listed |
| Age gate | None |
Content descriptors
- Some nudity or sexual content
- General mature content
Method. Read from the publisher's Steam listing on 30 August 2026. Describes the PC version. Console versions differ.
What does it cost?
Steam price in US dollars, read 30 August 2026. Prices move hourly and vary by region. Check the current price.
Is Crusader Kings III worth it?
90% of 143,235 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Very Positive. It costs $49.99 on Steam, and critics score it 91/100.
That is the data, not a verdict for sale: whether it is worth it depends on the price you pay and what you want. Players do report problems — see the reported-problems section below before buying. We have not published our own review of this game.
How long is Crusader Kings III? How long to beat it
Total play time for Crusader Kings III is about 592.7 hours to do everything, and around 72.6 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.
| How you play | Hours | Players logged |
|---|---|---|
| Just the main story: straight through the critical path | 72.6h | 53 |
| Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do | 159.5h | 42 |
| Completionist: everything: 100% the game | 592.7h | 10 |
At its current price of $49.99, beating the main story works out to about $0.69 per hour. That is the price divided by the hours, a value read and not a verdict: a longer game costs less per hour, which is not the same as being the better game.
Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.
Crusader Kings III system requirements
The minimum requirements from Crusader Kings III's Steam page. These are what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings.
| Memory | 8 GB RAM (other games at this level) |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core i5-750 |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 · runs on a low-end GPU |
| Storage | 20 GB (more games this size) |
| System | 64-bit OS required |
Can your PC run it? Check Crusader Kings III against your exact GPU, CPU and RAM.
Where Crusader Kings III sits on the grid
Compare the whole catalogueCrusader Kings III plotted on the axes the GamingPickz Score is built from, on the full 0 to 100 scale so its position is its real one. Change either axis to see where it lands.
1 games have both
Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.
Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.
- Multi-platform
Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.
How positions are decided
No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
- Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
- Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
- No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
- A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
- Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.
Estimated sales for Crusader Kings III
These are estimates, not reported figures. Development Studio has not published unit sales for Crusader Kings III, and nobody outside the company can measure them. What follows is arithmetic on the review count, with the method printed below so you can check it or reject it.
How this was calculated
Steam sales track review counts closely enough that dividing one by the other across games with published figures gives a usable multiplier. This is the standard method for estimating sales from outside a publisher.
| Reviews on Steam | 143,235 |
|---|---|
| Sales per review | 30 to 60 |
| List price | $49.99 |
| Assumed average selling price | 33% to 66% of list |
What this cannot tell you
Steam only. Console, Epic, GOG and retail sales are not in here. For a game that sold heavily on PlayStation this is a fraction of the real number.
The band is wide because the method is imprecise. Review rates vary with price, genre, launch era and how insistently a game asks. Published analyses put the ratio between 30 and 60 for paid games, and we show the whole range rather than picking a point in it.
The owner estimate above measures something else. SteamSpy counts accounts that have the game, which includes free weekends, bundles, giveaways and gifts. It sits higher than a sales figure for that reason, and the two are not alternative answers to the same question.
Revenue is the shakiest line. It assumes an average selling price well below list because most copies move in sales, and it ignores regional pricing, refunds, key resellers and whatever deal the publisher actually has with Valve. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a figure.
If Development Studio publishes a real number we will use that instead and say where it came from. Our editorial policy covers how we handle figures we cannot verify.
Crusader Kings III price & deals: is it on sale?
We have one reading so far: $49.99 on 30 August 2026. Prices are checked daily from here, and this becomes a chart once there is more than one point to join. A single observation is a price, not a history.
Latest Crusader Kings III updates & patch notes
Pulled from Crusader Kings III's own Steam feed on 5 September 2026. Posts marked as from the studio were written by the developer; the rest are articles Steam syndicated from elsewhere. Every one links to its source.
- "Silk & Silver" Dev Diary #5 - Iteration
- "By God Alone" Dev Diary #5 - Investiture Controversy
- Dragon Age: Thedas at War is a BioWare RPG-inspired Crusader Kings 3 total conversion mod that's here to keep the series alive while it sits in EA limbo
- PDX ModCon: July 24-26
- PC Game Pass takes a fresh blow with eight big losses, including Crusader Kings 3
- Faith, Power, and the Medieval Church - A Crusader Kings III Documentary
What readers say about Crusader Kings III
Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.
Loading reviews…
Problems players report
We read the 300 most recent negative Steam reviews of Crusader Kings III on 30 August 2026 and counted what they mention. These are complaints, not confirmed defects: we have not reproduced any of them, and a review describes one person's machine. What the counts tell you is which problems more than one person ran into.
- Crashes and freezes40 of 300 (13%)
The technical state is still unacceptable — late-game lag and crashes remain a persistent problem that should have been addressed long ago.
Steam review, 26 May 2026 · 1,170 hours played · 16 readers marked it helpfulTitle: Broken installation process and constant crashes – unplayable.
Steam review, 17 June 2026 · 40 hours played · 7 readers marked it helpful
A further 7 reviews call the game buggy or broken without saying how, which is why they are counted separately rather than assigned to a theme. Counted by keyword across review text, so a review discussing two problems is counted under both. Read the reviews yourself.
Did it run on your PC?
Tell other players how it ran on your machine. One tap, from your saved PC if you have one.
Where Crusader Kings III appears
The ranked lists and finder pages Crusader Kings III qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.
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Games like Crusader Kings III
24 games overlap with Crusader Kings III on the tags Steam players applied to it, on genre, and on theme. The closest are Imperator: Rome, Europa Universalis III and Victoria II.
Part of the Crusader Kings series
Crusader Kings III is one of 2 Crusader Kings games we track. See the whole series ranked by the GamingPickz Score, plotted on the grid, and listed in release order:
Crusader Kings III head to head
See Crusader Kings III compared side by side, on score, price, specs and more:
More Crusader Kings III comparisons: vs Sands of Salzaar, vs Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword, vs Battle Brothers, vs Blood of Steel, vs Kingdom Heroes 8, vs Anno 1800, vs Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator, vs Total War: WARHAMMER II, vs Fallout: New Vegas, vs Tropico 4, vs Beholder, vs Dungeons 3, vs ENDLESS Space 2, vs Graveyard Keeper, vs Hearts of Iron IV, vs Jurassic World Evolution 2, vs Men of War: Assault Squad 2, vs Soda Dungeon, vs Stronghold Crusader HD (2012), vs The Escapists 2, vs The Sims 3, vs Transport Fever 2, vs Universe Sandbox
Common questions about Crusader Kings III
What platforms is Crusader Kings III on?
Crusader Kings III is available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Steam Deck. It first released in 2020.
How much does Crusader Kings III cost?
$49.99 on Steam in the United States, read on 30 August 2026. Prices move often and vary by region, so check the store before buying.
Do players recommend Crusader Kings III?
90% of 143,235 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Very Positive. That is players rating it, not our review. We have not published a review of this game.
What is the Metacritic score for Crusader Kings III?
91 out of 100 for the PC version, as published on the game's own Steam store page. Steam can lag Metacritic by a few points.
Does Crusader Kings III work on Steam Deck?
Valve rates Crusader Kings III as playable on the Steam Deck, from its own testing.
How big is the Crusader Kings III download?
20 GB on PC, from the storage requirement on its Steam listing. Console versions differ.
Who made Crusader Kings III?
Crusader Kings III was developed by Development Studio, Lab42 and published by Paradox Interactive.
Is Crusader Kings III worth it in 2026?
90% of 143,235 Steam reviews are positive (Very Positive), and it is $49.99 on steam. That is the strongest signal we hold; "worth it" depends on the price you pay and what you want, so weigh the sentiment against the current price above.
Is Crusader Kings III on sale?
Not at the moment. Crusader Kings III is at its $49.99 list price on Steam, read on 30 August 2026. It has been cheaper before; the price history above shows when.
What are the system requirements for Crusader Kings III?
At minimum, Crusader Kings III needs 8 GB RAM, a Intel Core i5-750, a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660, 20 GB of storage, from its Steam listing. That is what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings. Check it against your own PC on the can-I-run page.