Elden Ring exploded out of the gate at launch with millions of players traveling through the Lands Between from February through March. However, while sales for Elden Ring have been high, metrics from some storefronts show that the number of players still logging onto the game has been dropping in recent days.
There could be a number of reasons for this lack of concurrent players, on Steam especially, which has the most transparent metrics for community behaviors among Elden Ring players. However, the metric of concurrent players here doesn't exactly have the same impact for a mostly single-player title with limited multiplayer, as opposed to a live-service game like Destiny 2 or Babylon's Fall. Nevertheless, the data is interesting to take a look at.
According to SteamDB, a third-party community of fans that collect information from the Steam storefront, the number of concurrent players on Elden Ring has dropped from nearly a million players in March to closer to 100,000 at the time of this writing in May. This accounts for a nearly 90% drop inconsistent players booting up the game through Steam in the months since its launch in February. So, while Elden Ring has memorable encounters that continue to last with players, the experience hasn't been enough to keep the majority of its players going beyond a single playthrough.
Looking at this data from StreamDB, it would appear that the drop-off wasn't immediate but has instead been a consistent downward trend since first peaking at over 950,000 players in mid-March. Considering that Elden Ring's limited multiplayer isn't exactly built for keeping players logging in every day like a live-service title, it is likely that this is just a natural regression of the player base. Additionally, the Steam achievements also imply that nearly 35% of players have already beaten the game, which could easily be a natural stopping point for many.
Much of the initial eruption of players in the data is thanks to how well Elden Ring initially sold, but those massive sales likely haven't stayed consistent for the last few months. That being said, maintaining nearly 100,000 players per day this long after release is still a decent showing towards the single-player game's longevity. Between players looking to test their skills by playing as quickly as possible and testing new builds, there are several ways that the game can keep these players coming back every day. It should also be noted that this data is only coming from one storefront and doesn't include consoles like PlayStation and Xbox.
Elden Ring is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: via Exputer