Elden Ring Was The Top Unbeaten Game Of 2022 But This Other Stat Is Astonishing
by
Zak Killian
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Thursday, December 29, 2022, 02:35 PM EDT
FromSoftware has held a coveted status as a beloved developer of "cult" games ever since the original PlayStation. Titles like King's Field and Armored Core never really breached the mainstream gaming audience, but their fans were absolutely rabid with passion. That fandom leaked over into the mainstream a bit with the Dark Souls series, but this year it finally poured out into the zeitgeist with Elden Ring.
Image: How Long To Beat statistics page
More people played Elden Ring than any previous FromSoftware game, and that's clearly represented in How Long To Beat's "Most Completed" statistic: some 5900 of the site's users finished the dark fantasy epic. That's even more incredible in light of the fact that the game also topped that site's "Longest Games" list at 107 hours, even beating out JRPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and Tactics Ogre: Reborn.
The least surprising statistic, given the game's extreme difficulty, is that it also tops the site's "most retired" list. "Retired" games, in that site's lexicon, are games that users gave up on and put away, either temporarily or permanently. Nearly 2.5 times as many users "retired" Elden Ring as the second-place title, indie Zelda-like game Tunic.
Source: Elden Ring Steam Global Achievements
With that said, How Long To Beat's data only represents reports from its users, and clearly isn't representative of the gaming community as a whole. To know that, we can easily turn to Steam's global achievement statistics. While there are technically four endings to the game, there are only three "final" achievements for the game: Age of the Stars, Elden Lord, and Lord of Frenzied Flame. These achievements are at 25.6%, 18.9%, and 13.0% respectively—we guess most players find the allure of puppet witch Ranni too great to ignore.
Elden Ring has been an ultimate success for FromSoftware, selling more than ten million copies and cleaning up at the Game Awards, where it earned Geoffies for Best Game Direction, Best Art Direction, Most Anticipated, Best Role-Playing, and the overall Game of the Year award. If you haven't dived into director Miyazaki's magnum opus yet, it's currently on sale for 30% off in Steam's Winter Sale.