Although we somehow managed to get through the entirety of 2023, including the traditionally FromSoftware-adoring The Game Awards, with barely any information on Elden Ring’s hugely-awaited Shadow of the Erdtree DLC expansion aside from the fact that it exists, its release might not be too far off.
That’s according to a listing published via online retailer Datablitz and surfaced on Reddit, which seems to have mistakenly included slides from a pitch deck or something similar and has since been pulled, referencing a February release for a special Elden Ring-themed version of the Thrustmaster eSwap controller to tie in to the launch of Shadow of the Erdtree. If accurate, it’d mean the DLC drops almost exactly a year after its announcement this year.
Interestingly, the listing also mentions a second drop in 2025 to coincide with a “major keybeat” or “new game expansion” though this seems to be more of a guess on Thrustmaster’s part than any kind of schedule from Bandai Namco or FromSoftware.
The last we heard of the expansion “officially” was in FromSoftware’s parent company, Kadokawa, mentioning the DLC in its most recent investor report along with assuring that work on the expansion continues.
“The release timing of DLC for Elden Ring has not yet been announced, but development is proceeding smoothly,” read one section of the report, with the company telling investors it’s taking “measures for maximising the LTV (Life Time Value) of Elden Ring.”
An FAQ segment of the report also brings the question back into the light, saying, “What is the development status of DLC for Elden Ring and when will it be released?” to which Kadokawa responds, “We are currently working hard on the development of DLC for Elden Ring but we have not announced a release date at this time.”
Elden Ring was first released back in February 2022 and has had a few notable updates since, including the additions of PvP colosseums and raytracing on PC and consoles. The game won multiple Game of the Year awards including at Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards and the D.I.C.E. Awards.
We gave Elden Ring a huge 9.5/10 in our original review, saying “While it feels like the impact of Breath of the Wild is waning as the open world genre starts to stagnate again, Elden Ring stands out as not only an achievement in FromSoftware’s hall of fame, but also as an open-world RPG. Elden Ring is without a doubt, FromSoft’s most ambitious undertaking yet, and like Dark Souls before it, I believe it will leave a permanent mark on both the open-world genre and the games industry in general.”
