Some 'Elden Ring' Players Are Making The Game 'Pay To Win'

It's hard to avoid hearing about Elden Ring lately. FromSoftware's latest Soulsbourne adventure has blown away all sorts of records, including becoming the fastest-selling game that isn't a copy-paste Call Of Duty or FIFA title since Red Dead Redemption 2. That outcome is in no small part down to the absolute dazzling array of ten-out-of-tens the game received from reviewers.

However, despite director Hidetaka Miyazaki trying to make Elden Ring more approachable than the Dark Souls series, it is still controller-breakingly difficult compared to a lot of games, and this has led inevitably to cheating. If you go on eBay now, you can pay real world money for Elden Ring's in-game currency, runes. Being (basically) a black market the prices vary, but there is real cash to be made from these totally virtual assets.

Fans of FromSoftware fare can check out the best Elden Ring wins and fails below.



Eurogamer's Ed Nightingale has gone through the hard part so you don't have to. Having paid £11 in real money for two million Elden Ring runes, the seller then messaged Nightingale with a password to join his realm. The biggest shock was that this wasn't a scam. At the arranged day and time, the eBay entrepreneur led the writer to a pile of runes, which he picked up before being booted out.

There is, however, some suspicion that the runes are ill-gotten in the first place. There is an item duplication exploit which apparently works in Elden Ring, but if you are buying runes off a shady guy on eBay then you can't be too picky, really. The runes and the delivery of them being legitimate is only one part of the story though.

The phrase "only cheating yourself" comes to mind, here. By fast-tracking stats it might be easier to take down grunts, but you still will be left with lowly equipment. Without learning how to play Elden Ring as it's supposed to be, it'll be much harder to improve for the end game. Also, when you die you drop all the runes you're carrying - and if you die once more having failed to retrieve them, that's it, they're gone. Which light well make your eBay adventures for nothing.

Then again, the game is hard, I guess.