‘Elden Ring’ is having game save issues on PS5

The long wait is over: Elden Ring has finally arrived. FromSoftware’s latest opus has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, but there are some notable issues with the RPG. For one thing, there’s a problem with game save data on PlayStation 5 that’s worth keeping in mind.

Publisher Bandai Namco said that if your console switches off unexpectedly while you’re playing Elden Ring or you put the PS5 in rest mode, “saved data may not be saved correctly.” It’s working on a fix for the issue, but for now it’s best for PS5 players to save their progress manually “by exiting the game regularly.” Bandai Namco said your data will be saved properly when you open the menu with the Option button and select Quit Game.

For the time being, it’s probably best for PS5 players to exit and restart the game after completing a major event (the bosses already seem tough enough without having to beat them twice) or visiting a site of Lost Grace checkpoint. It’s an annoyance that will likely break the level of immersion, but until FromSoftware and Bandai Namco release a patch to fix the issue, exiting the game every so often is still better than losing a big chunk of progress.

The bug is especially grievous given that Elden Ring doesn’t have a pause option. PS5 players might have been tempted to put their console into rest mode when they take a break, but it doesn’t seem like a great idea to do that for now.

Bandai Namco also says it’s working to resolve performance issues, particularly on PC. Those include framerate drops, stuttering, Easy Anti-Cheat not launching for some Steam accounts and the mouse sensitivity being too high. The publisher didn’t offer a timeline for rolling out the fixes.

Elden Ring is already a big hit. At the time of writing, Twitch streams have more than 796,000 viewers, an impressive number for a primarily single-player game in this genre. Elden Ring hit peak concurrent viewership of 910,000, according to Niko Partners senior analyst Daniel Ahmad. Elden Ring is far outpacing the peak player counts of other FromSoftware titles on Steam too. The number of concurrent players has hit a high of 764,835 — even before people have more free time to play at the weekend.