Shadow of the Erdtree, the heavily anticipated expansion to Elden Ring, has already crossed five million sales worldwide. Maybe this milestone shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given the base game was one of the highest-selling releases in recent memory, but it’s an impressive figure all the same. The game’s official Twitter account shared the news this morning:
To the many who tread the path left by Kindly Miquella, we extend our heartfelt gratitude.#ELDENRING pic.twitter.com/0dXflKgmXB
— ELDEN RING (@ELDENRING) June 27, 2024
This accomplishment is even more impressive considering that you have to jump through some hoops to be able to play the add-on in the first place: you have to defeat two major bosses, including Mohg, an optional foe tucked away in an obscure late-game region of the map. As of two weeks before the expansion came out, only 37.8% of players on Steam had defeated the Lord of Blood, although that number is now up to 40.2%.
As for how the expansion has been received beyond sales figures, the critical reception has generally been quite positive, while Steam reviews were somewhat mixed at first, mostly due to performance issues and complaints of the add-on being too difficult. FromSoftware put out a patch fairly quickly to address both of these concerns, upping how much Scadutree Blessings boost your character early on so that you hit harder and take less damage, while also disabling ray tracing by default on PC to help with frame rate drops.
Elden Ring has sold around 25 million copies, making it one of the highest-selling games ever. It’s a particularly notable feat given that FromSoftware was once viewed as a maker of niche releases for masochistic sickos. While a more thorough look at their output shows the studio’s work has been selling well for quite a while now, with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice clearing over 10 million, for instance, Elden Ring hit on a different scale.
And to put into context how well Shadow of the Erdtree is doing, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, another expansion for a high-selling game, took around three months to hit what this add-on did in a few days. It seems people can’t get enough of this dark fantasy world where nearly everyone wants to kill you, including its array of imposing bosses. Suffice to say that all eyes are on what FromSoftware has in store for us next.