Let’s rewind to 2022. Elden Ring had just body-slammed the gaming world, selling 13.4 million copies by May and turning everyone into Tarnished-obsessed zombies. I was one of them, hollowing out in real life while waiting for any crumb of news about an expansion. The hype was real, the copium was free, and the internet’s rumor mill was churning out DLC theories faster than you could say “git gud.” Four years later, here I sit in 2026, looking back at the absolute circus that was the Elden Ring DLC saga—and boy, did it deliver some twists. Let me take you on a little journey through the madness, seasoned with a healthy dose of hindsight and a dash of British sarcasm.
Back in the day, our collective obsession was fed by FromSoftware’s track record. The studio had a habit of dropping expansions like gospel, usually within a year of launch. Dark Souls got Artorias of the Abyss 13 months later; Dark Souls 2’s Crown of the Sunken King arrived after four months; Dark Souls 3’s Ashes of Ariandel took seven; Bloodborne’s The Old Hunters showed up eight months post-release. (RIP Demon’s Souls and Sekiro—their DLC dreams remain in the grave.) Everyone and their maiden assumed Elden Ring would follow suit. I mean, with sales numbers that made shareholders weep tears of joy, ignoring DLC would’ve been like leaving runes on a corpse—unthinkable.
Then came the leaks—oh, the sacred leaks! In mid-2022, a hacker group reportedly poked Bandai Namco, and suddenly the internet was aflame with a supposed DLC title: Barbarians of the Badlands. The leak claimed a Q3 2023 release, which felt... off. FromSoft isn't exactly known for pumping out expansions on a generic schedule, but given Elden Ring’s open-world scale, a longer development cycle made some sense. I remember Reddit threads dissecting every pixel of the Badlands concept, imagining we’d finally play as a nomadic warrior horde. It was delicious fan fiction, and we gobbled it up like starving dogs. Spoiler: it was about as real as Patches’ sincerity. By the time 2023 rolled around, “Barbarians of the Badlands” had become a meme among the tarnished faithful—a collective fever dream we’d all shared.
Miyazaki, ever the cryptic grandmaster, threw a spanner in the works with a 2022 interview. He mentioned his team was in the final stages of an unannounced project, and FromSoft wasn’t too keen on sequels lately (cue the music for everyone hoping for Elden Ring 2). When asked directly about DLC, he sidestepped like a DEX build avoiding a giant’s slam. That silence was deafening. Some of us started doomposting: maybe Elden Ring was the exception, just like Sekiro and Demon’s Souls? Maybe the Lands Between would remain forever static? I even saw a guy on Twitter threaten to challenge Miyazaki to a duel if no DLC was announced by 2024. Oh, how naive we were.
Fast forward to early 2024. The wait had stretched to nearly two years, and I’d gone through all five stages of grief multiple times. Then, like a bolt from the Greater Will, FromSoftware announced Shadow of the Erdtree at a major showcase. The trailer dropped, and the internet collectively lost its Marika. New areas? A giant, spectral tree? Bosses that looked like they’d stomp my soul into paste? Sign me up. The expansion finally launched in June 2024, a full 28 months after the base game, shattering the previous DLC timeline. It turns out Miyazaki wasn’t bluffing about needing more time to craft something worthy of the open-world benchmark Elden Ring set. And honestly? Worth every second of the wait—the expansion was a masterpiece that gave us enough new trauma to last a lifetime.
What tickles me most in 2026 is looking back at the “Barbarians of the Badlands” debacle. That hack amounted to nothing but a wet fart in a hurricane. Meanwhile, Shadow of the Erdtree proved that FromSoft plays by their own rules. No leaks, no rushed expansions, just a polished slab of content that expanded the lore and broke our spirits in equal measure. The moral of the story? Never trust leaks that sound too specific to be true, and never bet against FromSoftware’s ability to make you wait until you’re on the verge of hollowing.
So here we are, four years after the base game’s release, with Elden Ring still living rent-free in my head. The community is already speculating about a possible second expansion or even a sequel—Miyazaki did say it’s “case-by-case,” after all. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the only certainty in the Lands Between is that you’ll die a lot and love every second of it. In the meantime, I’m just grateful I no longer have to refresh Twitter every five minutes hoping for a DLC announcement. That was a dark, dark time. 🗡️✨