You can't pause in Elden Ring. Why? Because it's a FromSoftware game, and FromSoftware thinks it adds a bit of challenge. That's all well and good for those who want to challenge their bladder to a mid-boss fight standoff, but when there's a pizza delivery at the door, the 'no pause' thing instantly goes from cute to crisis of the highest order.
Thankfully, just a few days after launch, modder TechieW has come to the rescue with a simple mod that adds a pause button to the PC version of Elden Ring. It's pretty easy to install and works tremendously well. Take a look:
There's only one catch that applies to every Elden Ring mod at the moment: You'll have to disable Easy Anti-Cheat for the game to launch properly with the mod installed. It's a fast process and easily reversible if you follow this handy guide from Windows Central. Turning off EAC will also cause the game to launch in offline mode, which means co-op and invasions are disabled and you won't see player messages or bloodstains either.
If you've been tearing through Worlds Between with co-op buddies then the pause mod probably isn't worth the hassle, but if you're a parent who's poking at Elden Ring alone and needs the option to drop everything at a moment's notice, this is a perfect solution.
As Nexus Mods user MooseDef points out in the mod post's comments, pausing would also be great for taking screenshots, though by default there's a big "game paused" menu on-screen. Mod author TechieW said there's an (untested) way to get rid of the on-screen message by deleting the mod's "hook_textures" and "hook_fonts" folders in Elden Ring's game folder. I wasn't actually able to take screenshots through normal means while the game was paused (the Steam screenshot key did nothing until I unpaused and neither did my Nvidia Shadowplay hotkey), but OBS worked just fine.
