According to HowLongtoBeat (and first spotted by Kotaku), FromSoftware’s Elden Ring was simultaneously the most completed game of 2022, and the one most players couldn’t bring themselves to finish.
With how popular Elden Ring has proven to be with audiences (it’s even big on Twitter and YouTube), the divide makes some degree of sense. And for a game without any substantial post-launch updates as of yet, it says a lot about the staying power of FromSoftware’s fantasy-RPG.
Since its release in February 2022, nearly 6,000 players have beaten Elden Ring. That’s a pretty impressive number, particularly when you look at the considerable gap between it and other games on the list: BlueTwelve Studio’s Stray has been beaten by 3,900 thousand players, Nintendo’s Pokémon Legends: Arceus by 2,500.
As for the “most backlogged” category, 3,100 thousand players have yet to complete Elden Ring. In respective second and third place, Guerilla Games’ Horizon Forbidden West is trailing behind at 1,600 players, and Stray at 1,400. And along with being backlogged, 264 players have retired (read: given up on it, either for the moment or forever) on the game.
Elden Ring also has the distinction of being the longest game of 2022, at least by HowLongtoBeat’s metrics. At 107 hours, it’s followed by Nintendo’s Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (99 hours) and Square Enix’s Tactics Ogre: Reborn (68 hours). For all three games, the main quest and all side content were factored into the playtime.
Having been recently crowned Game of the Year at the Game Awards earlier in the month, it’s safe to say that 2022 was the year of Elden Ring.