Elden Ring had a gigantic opening day on PC

By Otto Kratky February 25, 2022

FromSoftware’s latest game, Elden Ring, was obviously going to be popular at launch, but the numbers from its first day on PC are staggering. According to Steam, the game has been flooded with players, and at times has topped the concurrent players chart with over 700,000 active users.

At the time of writing, Elden Ring‘s concurrent player count is second only to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. However, even taking that second-place spot is no small task. Elden Ring currently has more players than a number of well-established games on the platform, including Player Unknown’s: Battlegrounds, Dota 2, and even Lost Ark. Beating out that last title is especially impressive, considering how quickly Lost Ark itself dominated Steam.

While Elden Ring is sure to be popular on Steam for some time, don’t expect the game to retain its massive player base. Other games that make up the platform’s top 10 concurrent player list are either live-service games or MMOs, all with repeatable content or frequent content updates. Players always have a reason to go back to these games and sink more time into them. Elden Ring on the other hand may have a ton of content for players to explore, but won’t be updated the same way as, say, Grand Theft Auto V.

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Elden Ring may also be getting more players in the coming days now that the Steam Deck has officially launched. Valve recently announced that the game, along with a few of FromSoftware’s Dark Souls games, is verified for Steam Deck, meaning players can hop right into The Lands Between without a single problem on the mobile console.

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Otto Kratky is a freelance writer with many homes. You can find his work at Digital Trends, GameSpot, and Gamepur. If he's…

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