Elden Ring has been a phenomenon. It took the most refined mechanics honed over FromSoftware’s beloved “Souls-like” titles and combined them with an open-world scope and painterly aesthetic that are unrivaled even in the AAA space. Given the immense popularity of the game, the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was bound to perform well on live streaming with a mountain of hype sustaining fans over the past few months.
However, even with respect to these lofty expectations, Shadow of the Erdtree utterly dominated the gaming market upon its release on the 21st of June. Sales-wise, Elden Ring had sold 25M copies just a couple weeks before the DLC released, but the months of hype prior to the DLC saw an extra 2M copies sold since February. Even among other successful DLC released this year, like Destiny 2’s The Final Shape, this performance is outstanding.
With sales figures like this, it’s worth looking at exactly how successful the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was at raising Elden Ring viewership, and how developer FromSoftware and publisher Bandai Namco contributed to the DLC’s success through streaming-centric promotions.
Promotional Strategies Build Viewership Leading Up to Shadow of the Erdtree’s Release
The impact of Shadow of the Erdtree was felt long before the DLC was actually released. A month ago, Elden Ring’s viewership sat at 736K hours watched, but over the next few weeks, it steadily rose to 5.8M hours watched the day before the DLC was released. When the viewership for a game is this high, it magnifies the effect of the promotional campaign on viewership and demonstrates the importance of such campaigns – a lesson that even smaller indie games could benefit from. Campaigns like the Red Bull Levels event provided a sneak peek at the DLC and included the streaming community in the DLC’s launch.
Shadow of the Erdtree is a Phenomenon Played by the Top Streamers
The strategy paid off, with Shadow of the Erdtree driving Elden Ring viewership up to 15.2M hours watched on its release day. Incredibly, this made Elden Ring the most watched game last week (even above GTA V), and the most watched stream category for its release day (even beating out all Just Chatting streams combined). In fact, the total viewership over the four days since release has reached an incredible 46.2M hours watched, with a peak viewership of 835K. This is the best a game launch could possibly hope to perform, let alone a DLC release.
Part of the DLC’s success is the passionate streaming community around the game. Earlier this year, Kai Cenat jumped into Elden Ring with his marathon stream which, itself, was a phenomenal success. Backing this up, Kai Cenat supported the DLC as well with a Shadow of the Erdtree marathon that has so far generated 5.1M hours watched – a substantial 11% of all Elden Ring viewership since the DLC’s release. Of course, a bevy of other streaming celebrities have also tried out the game, including Rubius and zackrawrr with 723K and 692K hours watched, respectively.
Streaming offers a unique benefit to fans of “maso-core” (incredibly difficult) games like Elden Ring. Players who can’t beat these games themselves are able to learn strategies and watch the game’s story via expert streamers. Shadow of the Erdtree is a fantastic example of this, with players bemoaning the immense challenge set by the game’s director Hidetaka Miyazaki. To even access the DLC content requires defeating an optional boss that only 38% of players had beaten prior to the DLC’s release. If fans opt out of playing the game themselves, this means watching the DLC’s 20-25 hour runtime on live-streaming platforms – a massive boon to developers and advertisers.
Shadow of the Erdtree is the only DLC planned for Elden Ring as of now, even though Miyazaki has left the faint possibility open for something in the future. But fans will have more than enough to chew on for a couple of months yet, what with new builds to try out, mastering the DLC’s bosses, and setting new, restrictive challenges with which to entertain fans. Stream Hatchet will be watching as the community continues to innovate within the bounds of Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree.
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