Elden Ring becomes Steam's sixth most played game of all time, surpassing New World

What you need to know

• Elden Ring has become Steam's sixth most played game of all time with a new concurrent player record of 952,523.
• This beats Amazon Games' New World MMO, which previously held this position with 913,027 players.
• Elden Ring is generally more approachable and forgiving than FromSoftware's previous games, likely resulting in more players giving it a try and sticking with it despite its difficulty.

While FromSoftware's action RPGs have always been loved and enjoyed by many, games like Dark Souls and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice were still fairly niche compared to other more popular gaming franchises. Due to the opaque nature of their systems and the difficult nature of FromSoftware's titles, the studio's titles never went mainstream. However, that has changed with Elden Ring, FromSoftware's latest dark fantasy RPG.

Released on Feb. 25, 2022, Elden Ring's player count has swelled to a shocking size in just over a week after its launch. The game has become the sixth most played game of all time on Steam according to Steam Charts (Cyberpunk 2077's record isn't displayed properly), kicking Amazon Games' New World MMO out of the position with a peak player count of 952,523 at the time of writing (New World's record is 913,027). In terms of concurrent players, Elden Ring is also only a mere 22,000 players away from rivaling Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's player count of 974,592, and is just 50,000 away from reaching over 1 million.

As someone who has been a huge fan of FromSoftware's games for several years, it's incredible to see Elden Ring succeed as much as it has. Compared to the developer's previous games like Dark Souls, it seems that the more forgiving nature of Elden Ring's open world systems is encouraging more players to give FromSoftware's unique style of gameplay a shot. And considering that the game reached its new peak player count a week after launch, it's clear that players are sticking around despite the game's difficulty.

Ultimately, Elden Ring's explosive success is a big, but welcome, surprise. Hopefully the developers are able to continue successfully fixing the issues with the PC version of Elden Ring so that the hundreds of thousands of people playing it can enjoy the game without dealing with bugs and glitches.

Elden Ring is finally here, and it's available for $60 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, and PC. It's one of the best Xbox games you can play right now if you're a fan of challenging RPGs, and we strongly recommend it.