Elden Ring fans hyped themselves up for an anniversary DLC announcement, now they're all sad

Elden Ring
(Image credit: FromSoftware)

After an event last week yielded zero Elden Ring DLC announcements, its community is disappointed. 

Last week on February 25, Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco held a celebratory one-year anniversary livestream for the game. Many players were expecting some sort of DLC announcement at the showcase, and are now pretty peeved that such news never materialized. 

Over on the Elden Ring-dedicated subreddit, players are voicing their disappointment with the livestream. "lame event for such an awesome game," one response wrote, while another added "Yeah, DLC rumors asides this was very underwhelming for an anniversary."

As the second comment alludes to, there was never confirmation of a DLC announcement from Bandai Namco or developer FromSoftware in the first place. Instead, players got wound up on their own speculation about a reveal, taking the whole thing to new and absolutely ludicrous heights based on zero evidence.

Now, everyone's just plain disappointed. The anniversary livestream actually featured a PvP tournament between streamers instead. "I almost feel bad for the streamers. It's probably a big opportunity for them, but people were always going to be hoping for a DLC announcement," writes one Reddit user in response.

As we wrote last week, plenty of Elden Ring fans were getting excited for the supposed DLC announcement which, even at the time, looked unlikely. Even though FromSoftware has a track record of post-launch expansions for games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, the developer has typically announced these at publisher showcases, and not at events like this.

So everyone's going home pretty sad from Elden Ring's anniversary event. Still, one Elden Ring insider claimed knowledge of "huge" DLC in the works earlier this month, so we could well be in for an announcement further down the line.

Check out our new games 2023 guide for a look ahead at all the games and expansions that we actually can expect in the near future. 

Hirun Cryer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.