A batch of new backend updates spotted on the Steam database has Elden Ring players riled up about the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, and more so than with previous updates like this, I think they're actually onto something. There is legitimate evidence to suggest FromSoftware is entering the final stretch of a significant Elden Ring update, understandably believed to be the long-awaited DLC.
So, what happened this time? Well, in the past 12 hours or so, an entry with the "[DLC]" tag was added to multiple categories in Elden Ring's SteamDB history. A depot, per Steam's documentation, is a group of files delivered to users as one item. Adding a depot like this doesn't instantly release it on Steam; as I understand it, it just sorts it into a specific category for developers to view and work with. Rather, as developers work on stuff, it gets sorted like this for Steam.
In addition to miscellaneous categories with unclear designations like "pd-9" and "pd-7," an Elden Ring entry tagged "[DLC]" has recently appeared in the following Steam categories: "qa-release," "qa-debug," "dev-release," "dev-debug," and "development." DLC has appeared in "development" recently, but based on my search of the game's entire SteamDB update history, this appears to be the first mention of DLC in debug and QA, which are the most compelling categories here, since May 2023.
That May update was so inordinately large, and touched such a wide range of depots, that I'm currently assuming it was some sort of big-picture maintenance or housekeeping. However, it is worth noting that DLC was mentioned in all of the same groups that are being talked about now, not to mention other categories like "tech-review" and "play-test-3."
Does this mean FromSoftware has progressed to the quality assurance and debug stages of DLC development – steps which would normally come toward the end of development and precede an imminent release? Quite possibly, yes. I'm not ready to bet a kidney on it, but several factors suggest the latest update is more than just another excuse for Tarnished to go Hollow once again.
Never having made a game, let alone released one on Steam, I tried to answer a few questions as best as I could. First of all, is this actually the kind of DLC fans are thinking of? Is DLC listed like this in SteamDB? Sometimes, yes.
Steamworks notes that, by default, DLC content is managed under a base game's ID. "If you want to offer a lot of different DLC depots for your product, turn on 'Manage DLC depots separately,'" Valve advises devs. "Then DLC depots are managed and uploaded separately under their own DLC AppID. This keeps the depot list for the base game short and reduces app meta data downloads by clients."
Elden Ring, of course, doesn't have any other DLC, so it would make sense that it also doesn't have a dedicated list for it. So it is possible for DLC to appear in a changelist like this. Does this sort of backend activity indicate an impending release? Again, it can, but I want to be very reserved with that hope.
For comparison, I looked at the update history of a few other Steam games with recent DLC – an imperfect comparison, I hasten to add, because developers can operate very differently on Steam, especially when it comes to scheduling and time tables. But there are still useful parallels to be drawn in the way DLC is moved around on Steam, and these support the theory that FromSoftware is putting on the finishing touches for a big content drop.
Dead by Daylight, for instance, has consistently listed "[DLC]" in categories like "shipping-live-external," "public-test," and "shipping-qa-internal2" in the lead-up to release, often three weeks or so before a DLC launch. Sound familiar? I'm not saying this is what the entire QA process looks like, or that the Elden Ring DLC is only a few weeks away; I'm saying that this process can leave a similar trail in SteamDB across multiple developers.
Games like Naraka Bladepoint and Moonstone Island, which have dedicated "ListOfDLC" entries collecting a variety of content, look a little different in SteamDB. (Elden Ring also technically has a "ListOfDLC," but it hasn't been touched since its release.) As it happens, Moonstone Island developer Studio Supersoft has been teasing yet another DLC for a while, and on January 2 it changed two DLC items in the game's "beta" category.
This made me wonder if there's a chance this Elden Ring DLC mention could be something other than Shadow of the Erdtree, and while it certainly might be, it seems unlikely. The biggest Elden Ring update so far, in terms of new content rather than balance changes, is probably the PvP arena released on December 7, 2022. In the weeks leading up to this December patch, there was a similar pattern of SteamDB updates to those dev and QA categories. However, none of this stuff was tagged as DLC, even though the arena is technically downloadable content.
All of this leads me to speculate that this new and repeatedly mentioned DLC file is either Shadow of the Erdtree, the start of new nomenclature from FromSoftware, or a normal update that's still far bigger than the PvP arena. That being said, as we approach the two-year anniversary of Elden Ring's February 25 release date, I do think there is more ground for DLC excitement than ever before.
