Japanese game studio gives employees a day off to play Elden Ring

Japanese indie game studio PocketPair has announced on Twitter that the company is giving its employees a day off on February 25 to play Elden Ring. While not a day off, employees don’t have to come to the office on February 28 (Mon.) either. Elden Ring comes out on February 25 (Fri.), so they get to focus on playing the game for three days straight without having to worry about getting up early to go to work the following day.

According to the tweet, the company expected that employees wouldn’t be able to concentrate on work when Elden Ring launches on February 25 and has decided to give them a day off. The company also tweeted out saying some of the workers have been recently preparing to beat the game as fast as they can and become the Elden Lord by honing their skills on Dark Souls.

Elden Ring is one of the most anticipated games of 2022. Being able to play it without having to allocate time for work is understandably a delight for fans of FromSoftware.

PocketPair is a Japanese game studio known for the open world survival action game Craftopia. The studio is currently working on a new open world monster-taming and -raising action RPG called Palworld, a game where players can hunt, sell, mount, breed, or even eat Pokémon-like creatures called Pals.

Incidentally, this isn’t the first time a company is giving out a day off to play a game. A VR/AR/MR development company in Japan called Mark-on did it when Monster Hunter Rise, also a much-anticipated title, launched in March 2021. The wording used in the announcement is quite similar to the one used by PocketPair. Perhaps it has become a template of a sort to be used when granting employees a day off to play games.

Elden Ring is the latest action RPG from FromSoftware that introduces the concept of open field to enrichen a sense of exploration and discovery. It’s coming out on February 25 for PC (Steam), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. The exact release schedule and the launch trailer can be found below: