Elden Ring Nightreign servers shut down this morning 'to improve expedition matchmaking' but it's royally screwed some unprepared players
Imagine being one hit away from a win and poof, no server.
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It's been a rough week for Elden Ring Nightreign. Not from a player count perspective: it's absolutely flying off the shelves with over 3.5 million copies sold in just five days. But when it comes to performance, Nightreign has not held up to expectations.
Aside from solo runs being nightmarish, one of the most frustrating parts of Nightreign has been its matchmaking. Solo queuing isn't too bad, especially if you just select all the bosses and go from there, but queuing in a duo makes it almost impossible to find a player. I waited an hour the other night for just one more player to join our expedition. It's not just me: Ted Litchfield also had the same issue waiting two hours for matchmaking to work.
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But it's not like FromSoftware is just ignoring all of this. In a bid to try and help ease the issues, the devs suggested a couple of fixes for players to try and then promised that they were working on it. Well, that fix is currently underway, and some players still aren't happy.
Last night FromSoftware announced that Nightreign servers will be closing for maintenance: "Servers will undergo maintenance on June 6, 2025, to improve expedition matchmaking with an active Remembrance." The only problem is that not everyone got the message.
"They turned off the server while I was one hit away from defeating Libra," Affectionate_Elk7258 says. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA." That's rough buddy.
I just solo'd the final Nightlord as executor seconds before the servers shut down, what a hell of a fight from r/Nightreign
The comments of this post are full of players patting each other on the back solemnly because they too got screwed over by the maintenance. "I was finally about to beat Augur with the locust buff, I feel your pain," one player says. While others just reflect on how most of their teammates got randomly Thanos-snapped into oblivion leaving them alone in Nightreign to die.
But it's not all bad news. One player managed to squeeze in a run just before the servers went down. "I just solo'd the final Nightlord as Executor seconds before the servers shut down, what a hell of a fight," voidsenight says. "The stress from getting kicked back to the main menu was greater than me losing the fight if I'm totally honest. Idk if in singleplayer you get kicked from your session or not but I did not wanna risk it lol."
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While FromSoft did make an announcement before switching the servers off there's nothing on the Steam page about this and, honestly, I would've been none the wiser if it hadn't been for all the players grieving over lost progress.
Maintenance was only meant to last a couple of hours, so Nightreign's servers should all be up and running by now. But just remember to keep one eye out for maintenance updates or server closures, because no one should have to go through the pain of getting a solid victory ripped from their hands.

Elie is a news writer with an unhealthy love of horror games—even though their greatest fear is being chased. When they're not screaming or hiding, there's a good chance you'll find them testing their metal in metroidvanias or just admiring their Pokemon TCG collection. Elie has previously worked at TechRadar Gaming as a staff writer and studied at JOMEC in International Journalism and Documentaries – spending their free time filming short docs about Smash Bros. or any indie game that crossed their path.
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