With the launch of the Shadow of the Erdtree growth, Bandai Namco is hoping it’s going to usher in loads of new Elden Ring gamers and bump up the sport’s already spectacular gross sales. It’s too early to inform whether or not it has met the writer’s expectations however, on the very least, Shadow of the Erdtree has acquired extra folks enjoying Elden Ring on Steam.

In line with SteamDB, there have been simply over 240,000 concurrent Elden Ring gamers at 9 p.m. UTC on June 20, which might’ve been an hour earlier than Shadow of the Erdtree‘s PC launch in U.S. As soon as the DLC was obtainable worldwide, that quantity virtually doubled to greater than 495,000 gamers and, at round June 21, 2 a.m. UTC, peaked at 589,948 gamers.

Whereas nowhere close to as excessive as its all-time peak participant depend of 953,426 concurrent gamers, 589,948 continues to be greater than half that quantity and the most effective Elden Ring has carried out on Steam in two years. There’s sadly no approach of checking if the participant counts on PlayStation and Xbox are related however, if they’re, this seems to be to be a really robust exhibiting for Shadow of the Erdtree. What’s extra, on the time of writing, Elden Ring has shot as much as change into Steam’s third most-played recreation with 467,135 concurrent gamers. The one two video games outperforming it are Counter-Strike 2 and viral sensation Banana.

It might appear baffling {that a} recreation that solely includes clicking a banana time and again is proving extra well-liked than a large DLC growth to 2022’s Sport of the Yr winner, nevertheless it does make some sense. For starters, Banana is totally free to play, to not point out a lot simpler than Elden Ring. Final I checked, Banana doesn’t have extraordinarily difficult boss fights. Plus, the bananas you earn from Banana may be bought for actual cash though this has invited accusations of the sport being a rip-off of some sort.

Hopefully, Bandai Namco received’t be too bothered {that a} fundamental clicker recreation has extra gamers than Elden Ring on PC. Though it’s not as if Elden Ring must be extra profitable; even earlier than the DLC launched, it had bought over 25 million copies worldwide based on the FromSoftware Twitter account. Regardless of such gross sales, Shadow of the Erdtree is meant to be the one DLC growth for the sport, that means FromSoftware’s subsequent mission shall be one thing else solely… although I’m certain Elden Ring 2 will occur ultimately.