The Elder Scrolls Online
Every legend starts somewhere and in The Elder Scrolls Online, it starts with you. Join millions of players in an online, fantasy RPG set in a vast living Elder Scrolls world.
Action RPGMMORPGOpen WorldRole-Playing
Your like matters. Every heart nudges this game's GamingPickz Score and where it ranks (a small 5% of the score), so the lists get better for everyone.
- Released
- 2014
- Developer
- ZeniMax Online Studios
- Platforms
- 6 systems
- Critics
- 80
- Steam Deck
- verified
- Download
- 150 GB
What is The Elder Scrolls Online?
Every legend starts somewhere and in The Elder Scrolls Online, it starts with you. Join millions of players in an online, fantasy RPG set in a vast living Elder Scrolls world.
Description as published by the developer on its own store page, read 30 August 2026. It is marketing copy, not our assessment.
The record
| First released | 4 April 2014 |
|---|---|
| Developer | ZeniMax Online Studios |
| Publisher | Bethesda Softworks |
| Platforms | PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, Steam Deck |
| Genres | Action RPG, MMORPG, Open World, Role-Playing |
| Languages | 7 supported |
Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata Q1188904, seeded 30 August 2026. Store data from Steam, read 30 August 2026.
How was The Elder Scrolls Online received?
Method. Player figures are Steam's own totals for the PC version, read 30 August 2026. The Metacritic score is the one Steam publishes on its store page and can lag the site itself. Metacritic page. Neither is our opinion. We have not published a review of this game.
Accessibility
Seeing
- Camera Comfort
Hearing
- Custom Volume Controls
- Stereo Sound
- Surround Sound
Input
- Partial Controller Support
- Playable without Timed Input
Difficulty
None declared
Method. Features the publisher declared on its own store page. A declaration is a floor, not a review.
What does it support?
| Capability | Support |
|---|---|
| Controller | partial support |
| Cloud saves | No |
| Cross-platform play | No |
| Mod support | No official workshop |
| Online play | Yes |
| In-game purchases | Yes |
| Steam Deck | verified |
| Download size | 150 GB |
| Add-on content | 6 DLC listed |
| Age gate | 17+ |
Content descriptors
- Some nudity or sexual content
- Frequent violence or gore
- General mature content
Method. Read from the publisher's Steam listing on 30 August 2026. Describes the PC version. Console versions differ.
What does it cost?
Steam price in US dollars, read 30 August 2026. Prices move hourly and vary by region. Check the current price.
Is The Elder Scrolls Online worth it?
81% of 161,491 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Very Positive. It costs $19.99 on Steam, and critics score it 80/100.
That is the data, not a verdict for sale: whether it is worth it depends on the price you pay and what you want. Players do report problems — see the reported-problems section below before buying. We have not published our own review of this game.
How long is The Elder Scrolls Online? How long to beat it
Total play time for The Elder Scrolls Online is about 605.5 hours to do everything, and around 48.3 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.
| How you play | Hours | Players logged |
|---|---|---|
| Just the main story: straight through the critical path | 48.3h | 52 |
| Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do | 211.8h | 93 |
| Completionist: everything: 100% the game | 605.5h | 19 |
At its current price of $19.99, beating the main story works out to about $0.41 per hour. That is the price divided by the hours, a value read and not a verdict: a longer game costs less per hour, which is not the same as being the better game.
Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.
The Elder Scrolls Online system requirements
The minimum requirements from The Elder Scrolls Online's Steam page. These are what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings.
| Memory | 4 GB RAM (other games at this level) |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel® Core™ i5 2300 |
| Graphics | Direct X 11.0 compliant video card with 1GB RAM (NVIDIA® GeForce® 560 · runs on a low-end GPU |
| Storage | 150 GB (more games this size) |
| System | 64-bit OS required |
Where The Elder Scrolls Online sits on the grid
Compare the whole catalogueThe Elder Scrolls Online plotted on the axes the GamingPickz Score is built from, on the full 0 to 100 scale so its position is its real one. Change either axis to see where it lands.
1 games have both
Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.
Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.
- Multi-platform
Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.
How positions are decided
No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
- Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
- Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
- No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
- A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
- Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.
Estimated sales for The Elder Scrolls Online
These are estimates, not reported figures. ZeniMax Online Studios has not published unit sales for The Elder Scrolls Online, and nobody outside the company can measure them. What follows is arithmetic on the review count, with the method printed below so you can check it or reject it.
How this was calculated
Steam sales track review counts closely enough that dividing one by the other across games with published figures gives a usable multiplier. This is the standard method for estimating sales from outside a publisher.
| Reviews on Steam | 161,491 |
|---|---|
| Sales per review | 30 to 60 |
| List price | $19.99 |
| Assumed average selling price | 33% to 66% of list |
What this cannot tell you
Steam only. Console, Epic, GOG and retail sales are not in here. For a game that sold heavily on PlayStation this is a fraction of the real number.
The band is wide because the method is imprecise. Review rates vary with price, genre, launch era and how insistently a game asks. Published analyses put the ratio between 30 and 60 for paid games, and we show the whole range rather than picking a point in it.
The owner estimate above measures something else. SteamSpy counts accounts that have the game, which includes free weekends, bundles, giveaways and gifts. It sits higher than a sales figure for that reason, and the two are not alternative answers to the same question.
Revenue is the shakiest line. It assumes an average selling price well below list because most copies move in sales, and it ignores regional pricing, refunds, key resellers and whatever deal the publisher actually has with Valve. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a figure.
If ZeniMax Online Studios publishes a real number we will use that instead and say where it came from. Our editorial policy covers how we handle figures we cannot verify.
The Elder Scrolls Online price & deals: is it on sale?
We have one reading so far: $19.99 on 30 August 2026. Prices are checked daily from here, and this becomes a chart once there is more than one point to join. A single observation is a price, not a history.
Latest The Elder Scrolls Online updates & patch notes
Pulled from The Elder Scrolls Online's own Steam feed on 5 September 2026. Posts marked as from the studio were written by the developer; the rest are articles Steam syndicated from elsewhere. Every one links to its source.
- "You can’t just throw new people at that problem": Bethesda devs doubt future Elder Scrolls and Fallout games will have the same "quality level", after losing seasoned staff to Xbo
- An Update on the Warden and Class Refresh
- Golden Pursuits—Straight to the Crate
- Get More Out of Tamriel with the ESO Plus Free Trial
- Combat Updates – Update 51 PTS
- Battle for Bonus Rewards during Whitestrake’s Mayhem
What readers say about The Elder Scrolls Online
Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.
Loading reviews…
Problems players report
We read the 300 most recent negative Steam reviews of The Elder Scrolls Online on 30 August 2026 and counted what they mention. These are complaints, not confirmed defects: we have not reproduced any of them, and a review describes one person's machine. What the counts tell you is which problems more than one person ran into.
- Crashes and freezes17 of 300 (6%)
You don't know when it's going to crash and when it does it takes the entire computer with it.
Steam review, 30 July 2026 · 513 hours played · 138 readers marked it helpfulIt will repeatedly crash if it's not running under "just the right conditions" and it will crash OVER AND OVER again.
Steam review, 27 July 2026 · 2,367 hours played · 7 readers marked it helpful - Monetisation inside the game17 of 300 (6%)
The game is also full of microtransactions, so a 4th layer of money scraping.
Steam review, 22 June 2026 · 29 hours played · 488 readers marked it helpfulWhile yes, the game does have loot boxes; they are mostly cosmetic.
Steam review, 27 July 2026 · 2,367 hours played · 7 readers marked it helpful - Servers and connection10 of 300 (3%)
decent game but no end of life plan for the game so when the servers shut down the game is gone i cant recommend that
Steam review, 30 June 2026 · 3 hours played · 10 readers marked it helpfulIf you like PVE and can deal with poorly optimized servers where you die from lag about as often as the enemy, it might be a game for you.
Steam review, 8 August 2026 · 1,019 hours played · 4 readers marked it helpful
A further 6 reviews call the game buggy or broken without saying how, which is why they are counted separately rather than assigned to a theme. Counted by keyword across review text, so a review discussing two problems is counted under both. Read the reviews yourself.
Did it run on your PC?
Tell other players how it ran on your machine. One tap, from your saved PC if you have one.
Where The Elder Scrolls Online appears
The ranked lists and finder pages The Elder Scrolls Online qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.
Get the weekly rundown
One email a week: what moved in the rankings, what launched, and what dropped in price. No more than that, and unsubscribing takes one click.
We send the weekly email and nothing else. Your address is never sold, shared or used to build a profile, and it is not readable by anyone visiting this site. See our privacy policy.
Games like The Elder Scrolls Online
24 games overlap with The Elder Scrolls Online on the tags Steam players applied to it, on genre, and on theme. The closest are FINAL FANTASY XIV Online, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Old School RuneScape.
Part of the The Elder Scrolls series
The Elder Scrolls Online is one of 7 The Elder Scrolls games we track. See the whole series ranked by the GamingPickz Score, plotted on the grid, and listed in release order:
The Elder Scrolls Online head to head
See The Elder Scrolls Online compared side by side, on score, price, specs and more:
More The Elder Scrolls Online comparisons: vs Reign of Guilds, vs The Elder Scrolls: Arena, vs The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition Deluxe (2009), vs The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year Edition, vs The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition, vs The Elder Scrolls: Legends, vs The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
Common questions about The Elder Scrolls Online
What platforms is The Elder Scrolls Online on?
The Elder Scrolls Online is available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, Steam Deck. It first released in 2014.
How much does The Elder Scrolls Online cost?
$19.99 on Steam in the United States, read on 30 August 2026. Prices move often and vary by region, so check the store before buying.
Do players recommend The Elder Scrolls Online?
81% of 161,491 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Very Positive. That is players rating it, not our review. We have not published a review of this game.
What is the Metacritic score for The Elder Scrolls Online?
80 out of 100 for the PC version, as published on the game's own Steam store page. Steam can lag Metacritic by a few points.
Does The Elder Scrolls Online work on Steam Deck?
Valve rates The Elder Scrolls Online as verified on the Steam Deck, from its own testing. That means it works out of the box with no configuration.
How big is the The Elder Scrolls Online download?
150 GB on PC, from the storage requirement on its Steam listing. Console versions differ.
Who made The Elder Scrolls Online?
The Elder Scrolls Online was developed by ZeniMax Online Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks.
Is The Elder Scrolls Online worth it in 2026?
81% of 161,491 Steam reviews are positive (Very Positive), and it is $19.99 on steam. That is the strongest signal we hold; "worth it" depends on the price you pay and what you want, so weigh the sentiment against the current price above.
Is The Elder Scrolls Online on sale?
Not at the moment. The Elder Scrolls Online is at its $19.99 list price on Steam, read on 30 August 2026. It has been cheaper before; the price history above shows when.
What are the system requirements for The Elder Scrolls Online?
At minimum, The Elder Scrolls Online needs 4 GB RAM, a Intel® Core™ i5 2300, a Direct X 11.0 compliant video card with 1GB RAM (NVIDIA® GeForce® 560, 150 GB of storage, from its Steam listing. That is what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings. Check it against your own PC on the can-I-run page.