Jorie McKibbin 
Elden Ring has a reputation for being tough as nails, but that might not actually be true given how many players have actually beaten it.
It’s impossible to say for certain how many people have beaten Elden Ring across all platforms. That said, the achievement statistics in Steam paint an interesting picture of the game’s general difficulty. While there is no general achievement for beating the final boss, the Elden Beast, there’s enough data available to make some educated guesses.
Given the reputation FromSoftware games have, it might come as a blow to some players’ pride to be told the game isn’t as hard as they think it is. The truth, however, is far more interesting and complicated than one might think.
How many people have actually beaten Elden Ring?
Close to 40% of Elden Ring players have beaten the game on PC. There is no way to tell exactly how many players have beaten Elden Ring, but 39.5% of Steam players have beaten Hoarah Loux who opens up the path into the Erdtree and lets players reach the final challenges before the ending.
This isn’t the same as saying 39.5% of players have beaten Elden Ring, but it’s extremely close. While it’s possible that some of those players beat Hoarah Loux and put the game down after that, most players who got that far probably went the rest of the way. Just as notably, 35.2% of players have actually beaten the brutally hard optional boss Malenia, Blade of Miquella.
At least 27.3% of players have definitely beaten the game. That’s because Age of the Stars has the highest completion percentage of the three ending achievements, at 27.3%. This is somewhat surprising on its own, as it means more players finished Ranni the Witch’s extremely long questline in order to get the “good” ending than those who simply beat the boss and got one of the “Elden Lord” endings.
Regardless, all signs point to more than 35% of players having beaten the game. With more than 20 million units sold across all platforms and assuming a similar rate of success on PlayStation and Xbox, this would mean more than 7 million players have beaten Elden Ring.
Are Dark Souls and Elden Ring really that hard?
Dark Souls and Elden Ring aren’t all that difficult, given the number of players that actually beat the game. More than 35% of players have beaten Elden Ring and those numbers are fairly typical across the supposedly “hard” games by FromSoftware.
Dark Souls 3 is another game with a reputation for difficulty. Lothric, Younger Prince, is the last Lord of Cinder most players will defeat in this game before moving on to the final boss. Lothric’s achievement boasts a 40.7% completion rate across all players.
“To Link the First Flame” has the highest completion rate of the three ending achievements at 25%, meaning a minimum of 25% of the player base has beaten the game. These values are very similar to Elden Ring, and likewise suggest that roughly one-third of Steam players have beaten Dark Souls 3.
The Witcher 3 offers another interesting point of comparison as a game with similar popularity but less reputation for difficulty. According to the Steam achievement, 23.8% of players have beaten the game on any difficulty. This is considerably lower than most FromSoftware games.
This doesn’t necessarily prove that Elden Ring is “not that hard,” of course. One of the key differences between Elden Ring and The Witcher 3 or other similar games is that it doesn’t have the endless sea of sidequests to get caught up in. Many of the sidequests in Elden Ring ultimately tie into the different endings.
A very high percentage of players who have purchased Elden Ring, Dark Souls, or even Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice have beaten the games. While they’re certainly more challenging than most games, the idea that they’re prohibitively difficult just doesn’t hold up.
