‘Dark Souls 3’ exceeds 3M units shipped, player base still stuck before first bonfire achievement

The success of “Dark Souls 3” continues, as Bandai Namco announced that it is currently the franchise’s biggest title to date. So far, the number of shipped copies for the game is already at three million.

However, Gematsu noted that this is the figure for shipment to retailer, not necessarily the actual number of sales of the game. Of the three million, 1.5 million have been reportedly shipped to North America, one million to Europe and 500,000 in Japan and Asia. This boost in shipment numbers gives a grand total of over 13 million copies shipped for the entire “Dark Souls” series.

Previously it was reported that “Dark Souls 3” had easily surpassed the launch week sales of its predecessor. According to an earlier report by Eurogamer, the title was already up by over 60 percent than “Dark Souls 2” in less than a month since its launch on all platforms.

The figures then had only been for physical copies of the game. What’s more, “Dark Souls 3” had enjoyed the top spot on the U.K. charts in April, overtaking the likes of “The Division,” “Quantum Break” and “Far Cry Primal.”

Even though the numbers of shipment are overwhelming, it seems that player activity in “Dark Souls 3” is showing a discrepancy—at least on the PC. VG 247 spotted the stats via Steam, which shows the achievement system that its player base has already obtained.

As per the report, only 10 percent of the players have been able to get as far as the first bonfire in the game. Thus, only 10 percent of players have been able to achieve the Enkindle achievement, which requires the player to light the first bonfire. This is surprising, mainly because the area is not far from the tutorial area and is only a few minutes of gameplay once the title is booted.

And even though “Dark Souls” as a series is known for its difficulty level, not even a quarter of the player base had been able to defeat the tutorial boss Iudex Gundyr. The source speculated that this may be due to the bugs that have plagued “Dark Souls 3” players with game crashes when getting to the bonfire.