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Elden Ring Starts 2023 at the Top of the Charts

Elden Ring was reported near the top of Steam’s bestseller chart in early 2023, as awards attention and community activity sustained interest after its launch year.

By NexusArc Staff Published Jan 9, 2023 349 words

Image: Bandai Namco Entertainment / FromSoftware.

Elden Ring kept selling after its launch year

Jivaro placed FromSoftware’s Elden Ring at No. 2 on Steam’s bestseller chart during the first week of January 2023. This was a sales ranking, not a ranking by active players.

The original Jivaro story noted Elden Ring’s strong position on the Steam charts at the start of 2023. That mattered because Elden Ring was not a fresh January release; it had already dominated much of 2022. Staying near the top showed how long FromSoftware’s open-world RPG continued to pull in new players.

Chart strength after the first rush is a different kind of success. Launch spikes can be driven by hype. Continued sales show word-of-mouth, streaming, awards attention, and community discussion continuing to work long after release.

Steam Deck helped keep older hits visible

The Steam top ten around that period also reflected how Valve’s Steam Deck changed buying behavior. Players were not only buying new games; they were buying games that worked well on portable PC hardware. Elden Ring’s scale made it a showcase for players who wanted a large RPG away from a desk.

That portable angle helped older high-profile games stay in conversation. When hardware changes how people play, it can also revive interest in games that already had their launch moment.

Awards, builds, and community momentum

Elden Ring’s Game of the Year momentum also kept it visible. New players arrived after hearing about the awards, while existing players kept sharing boss strategies, build routes, lore theories, and challenge runs. The game became less of a single launch and more of a continuing community object.

That is the kind of momentum publishers want but cannot easily manufacture. A difficult RPG with opaque systems became one of the most persistent mainstream games of its era because players kept finding reasons to talk about it.

Why Elden Ring stayed on the charts

Elden Ring’s early-2023 chart strength showed that FromSoftware had built something with a long tail. It was not only a major launch; it became a game people kept discovering, debating, and replaying well after the awards season ended.