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Elden Ring Starts 2023 at the Top of the Charts

Elden Ring, the new action role-playing game developed by FromSoftware, has started off the year at number two on the Steam charts.

By NexusArc Staff Published Jan 10, 2023 Updated Apr 8, 2026 361 words

Elden Ring kept selling after its launch year

Elden Ring, the new action role-playing game developed by FromSoftware, has started off the year at number two on the Steam charts. According to Steam's most recent data, Elden Ring was the second most popular game on the platform during the first week of January 2023.

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.

The NexusArc read

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.