Elden Ring accounts for 4 of the top 5 best-selling games on Steam last week

According to SteamDB, the top five best-selling games on Steam last week were Elden Ring, Elden Ring, Elden Ring Deluxe Edition, Destiny 2: The Witch Queen Deluxe Edition, and Elden Ring. Just outside the very top, the Witch Queen's standard edition came in hot at number six, leaving just two games eating up the top six spots.

I don't think anyone expected FromSoftware's hotly anticipated open world RPG or the latest instalment of Bungie's popular looter-shooter to sell poorly by any means, but it's a bit absurd to see them sweep all the top-selling spots. What is it that differentiates each entry?

Aside from deluxe vs. standard editions, which account for one duplicate entry apiece for each game, the top spot for Elden Ring actually went to the game's Japanese version, which outsold other localizations.

As for the difference between Elden Ring on entries two and five on the list, my best guess is that the lower one accounts for the last of people's pre-orders in the first half of the week, caught up in the excitement of pre-launch coverage.

Whatever the cause, Elden Ring, and to a lesser extent the Witch Queen, seem to have taken PC gaming by storm. Outside the top five, the Steam Deck's position as the seventh best-selling item on Steam caught my attention. The portable gaming PC certainly impressed us as well as other reviewers, but it's a piece of hardware in the middle of a soft launch as opposed to a readily downloadable videogame like Total War: Warhammer 3.