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.