Elden Ring
FromSoftware, the maker of Elden Ring and the upcoming Armored Core 6, has a modestly sized staff. Despite the high expectations surrounding the development of both games, the studio’s development teams are surprisingly small, with Elden Ring’s development team actually being smaller than Armored Core 6’s.
This information comes from a recent Japanese feature on FromSoftware, shared by Japanese game media site Dengeki Online.
This feature follows up on an earlier piece that outlined FromSoftware’s growth in staff size over the last decade. The studio has gone from about 200 developers in 2010 to about 300 today, with the peak periods for both Elden Ring and Armored Core 6 falling around 200-230 internal dev staff.
This growth in staff size is considered realistic by the studio, and a sign of progress. FromSoftware notes that players “don’t need to know every staff member involved in a game’s development,” and that it will continue to make games that “stand out with a small, but talented group of creators.”
Ubisoft, maker of games like Assassin’s Creed and Rabbids, has about 2,000 developers working on the current game, with plans to increase that number to 2,800. Even Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios has surpassed FromSoftware in terms of employee count, now having over 400 employees.
With Armored Core 6 nearing release, it is likely that many of those 200-230 developers have shifted to working on the Elden Ring expansion or other new projects. We will have to wait and see what FromSoftware has in store for the future.
Translation of the feature
“FromSoftware’s current internal staff is 300, but they’re fluidly moved between projects based on their needs and the current development phase,” it says. “Elden Ring and Armored Core 6 are right at the peak of their development cycle, with about 200-230 dev staff working on them both at the same time.”
“The number of people working on Elden Ring is smaller than Armored Core 6, but it still has the scale of an Open-world game,” it adds. “Considering this, having the same team size is impressive.”
If you are playing Armored Core 6 and wondering who made your favorite game, be sure to check out our review, which also has a list of the best AC6 mods you can download.
