More than 2 million people have played/been brutalized by Elden Ring Nightreign in its first 24 hours

Best Elden Ring Nightreign team compositions: Ironeye holding on to a spectral hawk as they leave the Roundtable Hold. — (Image credit: FromSoftware)

Elden Ring Nightreign is here, and as I write this there are nearly 300,000 players roaming Limveld in pursuit of statistically-unlikely success in FromSoft's roguelike remix. The launch hasn't been without criticisms, many of which we shared in our Nightreign review, but that apparently hasn't slowed the influx of newly-christened Nightfarers.

In a tweet from the official Elden Ring X account, Bandai Namco announced that two million people have played Elden Ring Nightreign in its first 24 hours. "Darkness fell over Limveld, and two million Nightfarers rose up against it," Bandai Namco said. "Thank you for your support."

Not all those Nightfarers are thrilled with their early runs, however. Citing brutal singleplayer difficulty, struggles to coordinate in matchmade parties, and arbitrarily punishing difficulty tuning, early Steam reviewers have left the game at a "Mixed" rating, with only 64% leaving positive reviews. As a result, Nightreign has the unfortunate honor of being FromSoft's worst-reviewed game launch on Steam.

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.

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