Elden Ring’s player engagement is through the roof: 45% of its 15.7m Steam players have played for 100+ hours

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Elden Ring's player engagement is through the roof: Over 45% of its Steam players have played for 100+ hours


Elden Ring is one of the most successful premium games of all time. Building on everything FromSoftware laid out with the Dark Souls series and adding it to an open world, Elden Ring true coming-out party for FromSoftware.

It won game of the year at The Game Awards, has one of the highest Metacritic scores of all time, and has sold over 30 million copies as of the last official announcement.

Alinea data shows that Elden Ring has now reached a staggering 36 million players across all platforms, with revenues approaching $2 billion.

Steam accounts for 15.7 million players – 43% of the game's audience – meaning Steam is Elden Ring's biggest platform. PlayStation comes in second with 13.2 million, while Xbox accounts for the remaining 7.4 million:

Almost 10% of Steam's Elden Ring players have wishlisted Nightreign, which has 2.5 million wishlists overall. Our data also shows that 300K Steam players have already bought Nightreign.


While the jury is still out on the quality of From Software's first multiplayer-first Soulslike, all these indicators point to Nightreign being a huge success. And there's also a Switch 2 version of the original Elden Ring en route, providing yet another boost for the franchise.


Want to see how Nightreign performs across Steam and console? Reach out to us, and we'll give you a trial of our platform.

Elden Ring – and especially its DLC – is hard. While it abandons the linear structure of FromSoftware's previous games, giving players more choice when they're stuck, Elden Ring's bosses are some of the most challenging out there.


I'm looking at you, Malenia and Promised Consort Radahn.


Despite the game's mercilessness, 10.9% of Elden Ring players on PlayStation and 10.2% on Steam have unlocked every trophy/achievement in the game. However, just 3.7% of Xbox players managed this feat.


The trophy/achievement data clearly shows that Elden Ring players are dedicated – especially on Steam and Xbox. But looking deeper at Alinea's playtime distribution data reveals just how dedicated they really are:


Elden_Ring_image_2



The results are striking:


  • 64% of Elden Ring players on Steam have played for over 50 hours (versus 49% for PlayStation players)
  • PlayStation players have triple the share of under-5-hours players, signalling that Elden Ring didn't click for everyone on the platform – perhaps due to the difficulty
  • Seven million Steam players – 44.7% of Elden Ring's Steam audience – have played for over 100 hours. That share is 36.7% (almost 5 million players for PlayStation)

But perhaps most remarkably of all, almost 700K players across PlayStation (2.7%) and Steam (2.1%) have played Elden Ring for over 500 hours. Talk about dedication!

How does Elden Ring's playtime distribution compare to other time-sink RPGs?


While Elden Ring's playtime distribution is impressive, let's not look at it in a vacuum.


We'll be looking at our Steam data for Elden Ring (15.7 million Steam players), Baldur's Gate 3 (14.6 million), and Diablo IV (1.5 million). As you can see, there are some distinct player engagement patterns:


Elden_Ring_image_3



All three games are engagement powerhouses. The attention economy is oversaturated, but gamers will make time for quality titles. Case in point: The highest distribution category for each game – by a significant margin – is the 100-500 hour group:


  • Elden Ring leads overwhelmingly at 42.6% in 100-500h, a testament to its vast open world, build diversity, and replayability via New Game+ modes
  • Baldur's Gate 3's 32.3% in the 100-500h bracket underlines its replayability, driven by permutations in narrative choices, romances, and endings
  • Diablo IV, while lagging slightly (26.7%), still sees a dedicated cohort, likely sustained by seasonal updates

Of the three games, Diablo IV has the highest share of players in the 10-15h, 15-20h and, 20-50h groups. This suggests that many players are seeing the game's story through, but aren't necessarily playing the endgame content and grind loop.


That said, Diablo IV leads in the 500h+ tier (2.3%), suggesting a niche of hardcore grinders. Elden Ring and BG3 – despite their depth – cater more to completists than perpetual players.


Elden Ring was marketed heavily and received incredibly high review scores, but it's clearly not for everyone. Elden Ring has the highest share of players who played for under an hour. Its notorious difficulty curve likely filtered out casual players early.


These splits reflect each title's core identity: Elden Ring as a repayable challenge, BG3 as a narrative odyssey, and Diablo IV as a cyclical grind.


The attention economy is oversaturated, and we at Alinea have long been advocates of indies and shorter, more sustainable games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Astro Bot.


But there's still a player appetite for big-budget 100-hour games, and gamers are happy to make time for these experiences if they resonate.
 
7.4 million sold on xbox.

This is what Square Enix needs to do.

They will have their 30 million seller.
It's made up data regarding copies sold per platform. We only know it sold over 30M and during its first week (in the UK?) ~44% of the copies sold were on PC.

We don't have the platform breakdown.
 
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100 is a lot.
I finished the game in 70, was helping other players beat bosses for 20. And that's it.
 
Hope the next one is even higher.
YES, PLEASE.

I've never understood the "it's too long" complaint. Really? You'll spend 30+ hours in Elden Ring and then say, "Eh, I think I've had enough fun"

If you're short on time, that's fair. But if time is the issue, then maybe long games just aren't for you. That doesn't make them a problem, it just means you should pick something else
 
So significantly more people play ER on console than PC? I guess it didn't resonate as much with the PC crowd. Oh well.
 
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This game is like crack, once you start playing you just can't stop. No matter how long the hiatus, as soon as you start it sucks you back in.

This game is an unbelievable achievement, a pinnacle of videogame design.
 
YES, PLEASE.

I've never understood the "it's too long" complaint. Really? You'll spend 30+ hours in Elden Ring and then say, "Eh, I think I've had enough fun"

If you're short on time, that's fair. But if time is the issue, then maybe long games just aren't for you. That doesn't make them a problem, it just means you should pick something else
r8mhymY.jpeg
 
This game is like crack, once you start playing you just can't stop. No matter how long the hiatus, as soon as you start it sucks you back in.

This game is an unbelievable achievement, a pinnacle of videogame design.
Agreed. I do think other FromSoft games have more replay value due to their smaller scale, but that first playthrough of Elden Ring is unbelievably immersive. It damn near ticks every box for an action-RPG single-player video game: satisfying combat, steady sense of progression/powering up, character customization, secrets around every corner, incredibly varied and often surprising landscapes/vistas, a large map with areas you can see but can't reach until later, memorable and frequent boss fights, tons of equipment, collectibles, and consumables to find that are actually useful, and a constant desire to see what's next in the game world.

Honestly can't imagine what Elden Ring 2 will be like. Will they play it safe and basically give us the same game, just in a completely new setting? Would be the safest option and I imagine the vast majority of ER players would be thrilled with that. There's room for improvement in some areas, but they're got a damn good formula on their hands.
 
My friend has never played a soulsborne or seiko before and he platinumed this a month after it came out.

Think the open world souls style appealed to a lot of 1st time players.
 
Seriously? How do we know this?
Despite the game's mercilessness, 10.9% of Elden Ring players on PlayStation and 10.2% on Steam have unlocked every trophy/achievement in the game. However, just 3.7% of Xbox players managed this feat.

The trophy/achievement data clearly shows that Elden Ring players are dedicated – especially on Steam and Xbox. But looking deeper at Alinea's playtime distribution data reveals just how dedicated they really are:
Alinea's playtime distribution data? Where are they getting that from?
Edit: And doesn't the first line contradict the second?
10.9% of Elden Ring players on PlayStation and 10.2% on Steam have unlocked every trophy/achievement in the game. However, just 3.7% of Xbox players managed this feat.

The trophy/achievement data clearly shows that Elden Ring players are dedicated –
especially on Steam and Xbox.
 
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Ah yes, guy in picture. Truly iconic

Appreciate the confidence, though. Posting like you're the final boss of cultural relevance
I was actually agreeing with you.

Don't worry if you didn't get the reference. I laughed at my own joke and that's enough.
 
[Rant]
I hate this "engagement" talk.
The fact that Sony and Microsoft moved goalposts to "engagement" only because all their sales are missing every single one of their unreasonably lofty and daft targets, doesn't mean we all should care about it.

Elden Ring is not an ongoing, perpetually online, terminally unfinished nonsense; it's a finished product with a start and an end, and it sold massively because it's good.
It has been a resounding success and it would still be a resounding success even if the current engagement on it was complete 0.
[/Rant]
 
I plat it on PS5 at 120 hours, put about the same on the Xbox version, and now I just started a 3rd play through on the PS4.
 
Best game of all time 🏆

Reminds me that I should get the last three achievements (legendary armaments, frenzied flame ending, all achievements), should push me up over 750h total.
 
YES, PLEASE.

I've never understood the "it's too long" complaint. Really? You'll spend 30+ hours in Elden Ring and then say, "Eh, I think I've had enough fun"

If you're short on time, that's fair. But if time is the issue, then maybe long games just aren't for you. That doesn't make them a problem, it just means you should pick something else

"Too long" is arguably too long when the developers rely on recycling content to pad out that length. Mountaintop of the Giants/Flame Peak could be completely excised from the game and absolutely nothing of value would be lost but for the area boss. Half (or more) of the minor dungeons feel like they're created from the same basic template with reused bosses at the end.

I still enjoyed my time with the game - Steam says I put 642 hours into it across ten characters - but "it's too long" was very much my top complaint.

So significantly more people play ER on console than PC? I guess it didn't resonate as much with the PC crowd. Oh well.

How do you go from "Steam users comprise nearly half of the game's total playerbase" to the nonsense that you posted?
 
It's made up data regarding copies sold per platform. We only know it sold over 30M and during its first week (in the UK?) ~44% of the copies sold were on PC.

We don't have the platform breakdown.
We do have some numbers as of the end of 2022 (from the CESA whitebook):

PS5: 3.64m
XB Series + XBO: 3.04m
PS4: 2.67m
 
Amazing game, with BG3, they're the best titles since the mid 2000s, but we gotta remember something important, Elden Ring is a COVID game. The perfect game to invest a shitload of time on when you're stuck at home for weeks/months. It would have been very successful without COVID, but not on the scale that it is currently.
 
Amazing game, with BG3, they're the best titles since the mid 2000s, but we gotta remember something important, Elden Ring is a COVID game. The perfect game to invest a shitload of time on when you're stuck at home for weeks/months. It would have been very successful without COVID, but not on the scale that it is currently.
Elden Ring came out in 2022, after the overwhelming majority of lockdowns had ended.
 
Those dates were different everywhere. But i was referring about work. In 2022, people were working from home, or not working at all. Games like Elden Ring and Animal Crossing were the ultimate COVID titles to pass time.
People went back to work in 2021 in Los Angeles

I'm mentioning my city because you might not be aware but Los Angeles is very populated and had lots of restrictions. we have over 9 million people in Los Angeles county. it is also a ultra progressive/liberal county, meaning we actually had our restrictions longer than more conservative places.

Most the USA was back to normal in 2022. many businesses have permanently decided to stay remote or adopt a hybrid model, but by 2022 every business who planned on having employees return already had them do it. tbh this was mostly done by late 2021.

you're lumping Elden Ring and Animal Crossing in the same category but the world wasn't even close to being the same as it was in 2020 vs 2022
 
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