Elden Ring is Tencent’s next target for mobile loot boxes and microtransactions

Enlarge / Artist's rendition of two Elden Ring teams, The Medium and The Message, battling it out in a colosseum constructed from micro-transactions and overseen by mystical creatures known as Whales. (credit: Bandai Namco)

To its fans, Elden Ring is a noble struggle, where the effort you put into memorizing boss patterns, improving your build, and fine-tuning your reactions offsets your near-constant deaths in a grim, unforgiving landscape.

To Tencent, it seems, Elden Ring is an opportunity to create another free-to-play game, one flush with in-app purchases and booster packs that may not mesh at all with the game's nature or setting.

Reuters reports that Tencent, the Chinese firm that owns a 16 percent stake in Elden Ring and Dark Souls-maker FromSoftware, has a mobile version of Elden Ring in development. Progress "has been slow," according to three people familiar with the project cited by Reuters. But it will be free-to-play, will have in-app purchases, and may resemble miHoYo's Genshin Impact in its play/pay flow, according to Reuters.