Highlights

  • Elden Ring hit nearly 175,000 concurrent Steam players on June 16.
  • The staggering figure is the highest concurrent player count on Valve's platform that the game has recorded in over two years.
  • Many Elden Ring players still haven't fulfilled the requirements to access Shadow of the Erdtree, which launches June 21.

Elden Ring is currently blowing up on Steam, having reached nearly 175,000 concurrent players on Valve's platform over the third weekend of June 2024. The last time that Elden Ring boasted such staggering PC player numbers was over two years ago, shortly following its launch.

The game's popularity surge is almost certainly the result of Shadow of the Erdtree being on the horizon. Originally announced in late February 2023, the first and only Elden Ring expansion will finally hit the market on June 21.

Elden Ring Tarnished on Torrent on Caelid beach
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Elden Ring Records Highest Concurrent Player Count Since April 2022

Ahead of that release, tens of thousands of players began flocking back to the hit soulslike since the turn of the month. The trend has so far culminated on Sunday, June 16, when Elden Ring recorded 174,463 concurrent players on Steam alone, according to third-party tracker SteamDB. The last time that the action RPG had that many simultaneous players on Valve's platform was on April 24, 2022, just ahead of its two-month anniversary. At the time, its popularity was on a downward spiral, as is customary for single-player games that have been out for a while.

Elden Ring Steam PC Concurrent Player Peak May 30 to June 16 2024 SteamDB chart

Two years later, the soulslike is very much blowing up again, and has been for a while now. Specifically, Elden Ring's player count more than doubled back in March 2024, shortly after publisher Bandai Namco shared the DLC's gameplay reveal. Since then, the game has consistently peaked at over 50,000 concurrent Steam players on a daily basis, often recording many more. As of June 7, that daily peak moved above the 100,000 threshold.

Since Elden Ring hasn't been seen on Steam's Top Sellers list in recent weeks, it stands to reason that this popularity surge is primarily attributable to returning players rather than newcomers. Part of that demographic may simply want to get in the groove again, sharpening their skills before the upcoming DLC inevitably puts them to their greatest test yet. Meanwhile, others may be scrambling to beat the game for the first time, or at least progress far enough so that they are actually able to access the upcoming expansion. There's no shortage of people who are yet to do so, as over half of Elden Ring players currently lack the requirements to access Shadow of the Erdtree.

As previously confirmed by FromSoftware President Hidetaka Miyazaki, the DLC area only becomes accessible after downing two of the game's Demigods, Starscourge Radahn and Mohg, Lord of Blood. The former is kind of hard to miss, as fighting him only requires participating in the Radahn Festival. The event can be triggered using a variety of means, the most straightforward of which is to simply rest at any Site of Grace on the Altus Plateau. On the other hand, reaching Mohg requires getting to Elden Ring's Mohgwyn Palace, which is so well-hidden that it's completely possible to beat the entire game without finding it.