Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree expansion sells five million copies in three days

FromSoftware's souls-like experiences are no strangers to being absolutely massive hits, and now, even the studio's expansions are joining in on the tradition. Today, Bandai Namco announced that the Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree expansion alone has now sold over five million copies, and the impressive milestone has been reached within only three days.

The Shadow of the Erdtree expansion was released on June 21, meaning the actual sold number could be much higher now than it was three days from launch. "This milestone is the result of the tremendous support from fans all over the world, to whom we express our heartfelt gratitude," says Bandai Namco in its announcement.

Coming in with the massive new Realm of Shadow environment, fresh enemies and bosses to struggle with, as well as new weapons (including hand-to-hand styles), spells, and armor sets, the expansion is touting a huge amount of content for Miyazaki fans to dive into.

Here's how the studio describes the setting:

The Realm of Shadow has been kept apart from the Lands Between since its creation. Now, in pursuit of Miquella, the Tarnished are among the first souls to set foot here in unknown ages. Traverse new open field areas to reach dense new legacy dungeons full of hazards and undiscovered mysteries.

The expansion has also taken the top spot on Metacritic as the most highly-rated post-launch content ever for a game by critics. However, not all players agree with this verdict, with the expansion's Steam store page still showing a Mostly Positive user review score. While up from the Mixed score it had at launch, players are mostly complaining about the massive difficulty spike the expansion's mobs and bosses show up with compared to the base game. Some performance issues also exist.

FromSoftware released its first update for the Elden Ring expansion only yesterday, June 26, to remedy some of these issues. The Calibration Update adjusts the balance of the early encounters by boosting player attack and damage negation levels when they find the new Shadow Realm Blessings items. However, the later stages of the game will still pose a major threat to players, just as before.