Baldur's Gate 3 requires 8 GB RAM and 150 GB SSD. lol? How is that even possible? What would prevent the game from running on a computer with 16 GB RAM and a normal drive? Is this hard coded?
WHEN not on ssd, do NOT launch?
???
If anyone knows, please enlighten me. Thank you.

Sounds like total BS to me for them to be saying an SSD is required, if they did in fact actually do that.

I played an older build on a hard drive and it had the absolute worst texture pop-in issue I've ever seen. Yes, you can sometimes launch games on a computer that doesn't meet the system requirements, but be prepared for garbage performance.

Edit: I should clarify that I launched that same build after I got my first SSD, and the problem was gone.

I did a quick research (I just typed "ssd requirement" into google and the first article caught my eye) and it seems BG3 isn't the only game that's gonna require SSD, soon.

Apparently the companies are gonna stop testing their games on HDDs, so they gonna slap SSD requirement on them. And by companies I mean CDP with their newest Cyberpunk 2077 expansion...

It's probably not hard-coded at all. What it usually means is "With a 70GB install size that's 35x larger than Baldur's Gate 1-2, you're looking at long load times + texture pop-in issues with a mechanical HDD and since we don't want to deal with such support tickets we'll say an SSD is required".

If I had to guess, the coding paradigm used by BG3 and other games just doesn't really jive with spinning rust, and...at this point, I would honestly say it's on you if you don't have at least 1 SSD by now. They're cheap, come in many form factors, are fairly long lived, and can even be formatted in many partitions thanks to that neat Linux Subsystem for Windows.

There was another game here, that just got recently released, that also had SSD as a requirement listed. I'll see if I can dig it up.

Cyberpunk 2077 latest version. Again, most likely due to load times and texture streaming. HDD speeds are just too marginal now and increase the risk of in-game loading pauses and streaming issues - especially if users aren't keeping them in good condition.

I actually was mistaken. It was another game; yet to be released.
Shadow gambit the cursed crew
Cyberpunk has SSD still ''only'' listed as ''advised'', not required.

Starfield too.

SSDs are "normal drives". Not sure where you've been the last decade.

Even with me having 1TB SSD with my OS it, I use 4TB black HDD for most my games. Only few games I really notice big difference in load times

If you say so, but that's not really relevant. While spinning drives are still cheaper per GB and are useful for storage/backup, SSDs are the default "normal" drives and have been for some years now. It's pretty hard to find a computer that doesn't come with a SSD these days, so complaining about SSD requirements for games seems kinda pointless.

Required as in they don't guarantee stable performance on a normal drive. You can of course still install and play it on a normal drive, but when the game stutters constantly because the drive can't keep up with texture streaming and loading times take 60+ seconds, you know why. It's just there to tell you the game isn't optimized for normal drives.

Pretty much the norm with modern giant games that take tens of GBs at the least. Normal drives are still perfectly fine for older and non-demanding games.

1TB HDD is more expensive to buy new than an SSD with that size.