We should all be very thankful we never got a rumoured Elden Ring season pass
Elden Ring's DLC could've looked a lot different.
First reported by the folk over at Twisted Voxel, a rumour surrounding the long-awaited Elden Ring DLC has emerged. Supposedly, the Elden Ring DLC revealed on Twitter earlier this year – Shadow of the Erdtree – was to initially launch as a a ‘season pass’ comprised of two DLCs.
The season pass concept was reportedly scrapped by FromSoftware, which favoured a larger, single expansion in the form of Shadow of the Erdtree. We also got a small content update in the form of the PvP-focused colosseums update that landed late last year, too.
The information about this aborted season pass comes from Discord (via Twisted Voxel), of all places, but it does come from Lance McDonald, who is no stranger to FromSoftware. You may recognise the name from a massive PT file mining operation, or perhaps as the guy that figured out how to make Bloodborne even better.
Regardless of where it's coming from, this information should be taken with a pinch of salt until FromSoftware confirms it; although, the chances of the developer confirming that a season pass was once in the works are pretty slim.
In the Discord messages, McDonald details that he does not know when the season pass was cancelled. The colosseums showed up one day for free, and that was that. McDonald seems to suggest that FromSoftware was missing a lot of content, so now only one, mammoth DLC package is coming. This makes sense, but again, we don’t know if it is necessarily true. Maybe more will be revealed when we finally get to see what Shadows of the Erdtree has to offer.
McDonald also notes that this is a similar situation to Bloodborne during post-launch; Bloodborne supposedly also had two DLC’s planned, before the two were merged into one DLC known as The Old Hunters.
Either way, if true, this is good news for fans. In an industry that is overflowing with season passes, battle passes, and more, I don’t really fancy purchasing another. Just look at how Blizzard has been handling the service in Diablo Immortal and Overwatch 2 – that's not something we want to see in a FromSoft game, now is it?