Elden Ring rivals Lost Ark as day one launch pushes Twitch, Steam records
FromSoftwareAllies are gold in Elden Ring rather than blue like in earlier versions.
Elden Ring released today, as if you didn’t know, and players have flocked to the Lands Between in numbers that are setting records for FromSoftware. Hitting peaks of 840,000 viewers on Twitch as well as 765,000 concurrent players on Steam, the hugely anticipated game more than tripled records set by Dark Souls 3.
The game, already being earmarked for GOTY on Steam’s community forum is not just setting From Software records. But Elden Ring is having one of the biggest Launch days ever seen by Valve. Hitting over 600,000 players within an hour of launch according to SteamDB.
This is exciting news for anyone who’s been following the tortuous journey of waiting for the game to finally release.
But it must be said that waiting for anything George R.R Martin related seems to be an inescapable part of the experience. He claimed the sixth book of the Song of Ice and Fire series would be released “next year” in 2020, and it’s still unreleased.
Elden Ring has almost 900k concurrent viewers on Twitch right now
for context, Dark Souls 3 only ever peaked at 276k pic.twitter.com/3TSlybWwH9
— Iron Pineapple (@IronPineapple_) February 25, 2022
Considering that the competition at the top of Steam’s concurrent players’ list is dominated by free-to-play multiplayer games – with Dota 2, CS:GO, PUBG, and Apex Legends consistently among the top 5 – a full-priced game cracking the list, and this soon after launch, is no feat to be sniffed at.
The biggest launches of other paid games on Steam have seen similarly huge numbers when setting ATHs.
Amazon’s New World, which reached 913,634 concurrent players on launch weekend, and Cyberpunk 2077 reached 1,054,388.
Elden Ring summarized in 3 seconds pic.twitter.com/IaAjZ3zNIq
— NiceWigg (@NiceWigg) February 25, 2022
There have only been five games in Steam’s history to crack the million mark, and with player numbers dipping down from the 764k high it remains to be seen whether a second wind will bring Elden Ring up to those lofty heights.
Fan response for Elden Ring so far seems to be well measured, with fears the game might lower the difficulty threshold to appeal to a larger audience seeming to be unfounded.
You can check out our own Elden Ring review for full impressions along with some early guides to get you started.
