What you need to know
- Elden Ring's DLC section on Steam got updated with a new unknown app, visible via the SteamDB website.
- This is the first update it's gotten in two years, and is thought to be a listing for the upcoming Shadow of the Erdtree expansion announced last year.
- Last month, a leak of a collaboration between Bandai Namco and controller maker Thrustmaster suggested the expansion would launch in February 2024 on Elden Ring's anniversary.
- The appearance of this new DLC app so close to February suggests that that leak may have been accurate, though nothing has been confirmed at the time of writing.
Elden Ring blew everyone away with its gargantuan multilayered open world and its rich skill-driven ARPG combat systems when it launched in 2022, dominating industry conversation for months and taking home Game of the Year from 2022's The Game Awards. Developer FromSoftware then announced a DLC for the landmark title was in the oven in February of last year, and ever since, its players have been eagerly awaiting an official release date reveal. Sadly, one hasn't come yet — but thanks to a new development, there's reason to think the expansion might be just around the corner.
That development is the addition of a new application to Elden Ring's Downloadable Content section on Valve's PC game distribution platform Steam, spotted by fans earlier today on SteamDB. This website uses the SteamKit .NET library to interface directly with the Steam network, and while this new app isn't visible on the main Steam site, it definitely is in its backend.
It's important to note that there's no hard evidence to confirm that this app is actually Shadow of the Erdtree, and there's no part of the SteamDB listing that says anything about a release timing, either. However, this is the first time the game's DLC section has gotten an update in two years, and the timing does line up rather nicely with information from a recent leak.
Last month, a collaboration between Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco and gaming accessory manufacturer Thrustmaster briefly leaked on a retail site, revealing that the latter would be launching Elden Ring-themed controllers at the same time Shadow of the Erdtree becomes available. The collab page noted that the expansion was scheduled to release in "February 2024" on Elden Ring's anniversary, which would be February 25 (it also said a "major keybeat or new game expansion" is coming in 2025).
The leaked page was quickly taken down, but screenshots of it are still visible on social media, and if you ask me, the whole thing looks very, very real (notably, it was even still appearing in Google search results for several hours post-deletion, so the page did exist). Now, it's fully possible that the release date info it included was outdated — but now that Elden Ring's gotten a mysterious new DLC listing a month later, two weeks before the start of February, I'm starting to hope that we might actually get Shadow of the Erdtree on the game's second birthday.
Again, though, I'm going to reiterate that nothing is concrete, and FromSoftware's Yasuhiro Kitao even said that the DLC is "still a little ways off" in an interview at the start of December. That comment made most fans believe we wouldn't see the expansion drop until at least summer 2024, but who knows? Maybe his idea of "a little ways off" is three months, or perhaps Bandai Namco and FromSoftware have pushed Shadow of the Erdtree's release forward a bit.
Ultimately, only time will tell, but regardless of whether the DLC is coming next month or not, it'd be sweet to get an actual trailer for it soon. At the moment, we know next to nothing about it other than that it'll be similar to Dark Souls or Bloodborne's expansions in terms of size and scope, and that Miquella will likely be an important character in its story based on the poster shown with its reveal.
Elden Ring is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PCs, and PlayStation systems. It's one of the best Xbox games and best PC games of all time, and if you're a fan of challenging action RPGs, rich, layered open worlds, and near-limitless options for creative buildcrafting, we strongly recommend playing it.
