Elden Ring hits 764,000 concurrent Steam users, nearly 6x what Dark Souls III ever got

Elden Ring has enjoyed a healthy start on Steam, reaching more than 764,000 concurrent players just hours after its release.

That’s nearly six times more than Dark Souls III’s highest ever concurrent player count.

According to SteamDB, just three hours after the game was released on Steam it hit its peak concurrent players, reaching 764,835.

Given that this was the middle of the night in Europe, and given that it was a Thursday night, it’s likely that this figure will be surpassed this weekend.

Dark Souls III’s highest ever concurrent player count was 129,975, which it reached six years ago.

Until Elden Ring was released, this was the most concurrent players any Dark Souls game had achieved, with Dark Souls I and II only reaching 24,501 and 79,528 respectively.

Having received near-universal praise from critics, Elden Ring is already sitting near the top of some ‘best game of all time’ lists.

Based on 116 reviews at the time of writing, Elden Ring is the second highest-rated title ever on OpenCritic with a ‘Top Critic Average’ of 96 – an achievement matched only by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto V (all of which currently hold a slightly lower true average score).

And on review aggregation site Metacritic, at the time of publishing Elden Ring has scores of 97 (PS5) and 95 (PC and Xbox Series X/S).

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Elden Ring is officially one of the best reviewed games ever

Following the publication of reviews, the FromSoftware title has topped aggregation sites

Following a one-month delay, Elden Ring is released today on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC.

VGC’s Elden Ring review called it From Software’s most vital game since Demon’s Souls.

“Elden Ring is a fantastic game that can still deliver the unmatched thrill of defeating a tough boss after an hours-long battle,” wrote reviewer Jordan Middler.

“Those who worship at the church of Souls-like will find a game that’s basically everything they ever wanted.”