Especially when compared to the Dark Souls games that came before it, Elder Ring is a huge success. With Game of the Year as its starting point, it produced an industry moment that lasted for more than a month. Veterans and newbies to the Soulslike genre swarmed social media with posts about their battles with the genre’s numerous bosses. At its height, it had about a million active players on Steam, which is approximately 10 times more than the previous record held by Dark Souls III.
According to data aggregator SteamDB, the PC player population stabilised at roughly 35,000 gamers in the months that followed, almost ever falling above or below that figure. Elden Ring’s player count has surged to more than double its previous threshold thanks to the Steam Winter Sale, which has altered that calculation. The number of participants in the game has already surpassed 70,000, and it is very close to 80,000.
The 30% discount the game now has across all of its platforms is certainly what caused the spike. Elden Ring’s $41.99 price tag is a fantastic bargain given its easily 100+ hour completion time and the countless additional hours of co-op or PvP gameplay.
Even while Elden Ring is unlikely to have the same level of success that dominated the news in February and March, the game will benefit from the fresh flood of players. Since the free Colosseum update elevated arena PvP to the fore, there have been persistent rumours of a hefty DLC. Fans may have been upset that there was no Elden Ring news during the Game Awards, but any new material would need to scale well given the enormity of Elden Ring.
The current DLC time compares to earlier games in From Software’s portfolio while taking Elden Ring’s perspective into consideration. Large DLC releases often don’t happen for around a year following the release of the basic game, in an effort to reignite interest and entice lapsed players to come back. Publisher Bandai Namco may not push the developers to release anything as rapidly given Elden Ring’s largely successful resurgence during its Christmas sale and overall success. What comes next, though, may be right around the corner given that Hidetaka Miyazaki, the director of Elden Ring and president of From Software, has stated he wants to do more with the game.