The survival title Once Human should be everything that The Day Before once promised. Whether it can meet players’ expectations, you will find out on MeinMMO.
What is Once Human all about? Once Human is a free survival game for PC and mobile that lets players explore an open world together and fight against monsters.
- In December 2023, Once Human was seen as a major hope for survival fans, after the once most-wanted game on Steam, The Day Before, had proven to be a major flop.
- At the Steam Next Fest 2024, the demo of Once Human dominated in all categories; it was one of the most desired games on Steam.
- Since July 9, the survival title has finally been playable – shortly before its release, there were two stylish trailers:
Players complain: Once Human is said to be a data octopus
Can Once Human meet expectations? Currently, it does not look very promising. Although the survival hope had a decent start on Steam, the first reviews are rather mixed.
With 68,000 concurrent players and a 24-hour peak of 82,000, Once Human ranks in the top 20 of the most played games on Steam, but has only a 56% positive rating (via SteamDB).
What bothers the players? As is common with new games, Once Human also faced server issues at launch. Initial players reported long wait times, crashes, and lags. Furthermore, frustration arose from in-game shop prices and the limitation to one character, without the possibility to switch servers.
However, the most common criticism is the data privacy policy of Once Human. Many players complain that the survival game requires personal data that has nothing to do with gaming at all. According to the Privacy Policy, this includes things like the full name, state identification as well as passport data (via easebar).
In discussions on Steam and Reddit, users are more relaxed about data collection: the Privacy Policy is quite standard. Additionally, data is not automatically collected, but also includes information that players can voluntarily provide – for example, to make a purchase or participate in surveys.
Developers respond to feedback, receive praise
Is there any positive news? Indeed, yes. So far, the developers have shown themselves receptive to feedback. The devs reported on Discord just a few hours after release that players can now create multiple characters. This feature had actually been postponed for optimization, but “it backfired”.
The quick response is rewarded by the players and praised in reviews on Steam. This is also reflected in the overall rating, which was initially quite negative and has since risen to “mixed”.
For some, Once Human actually fulfills what was once promised in the trailers for The Day Before. The survival game may not necessarily reinvent the wheel, but it is simply fun, that seems to be the consensus.
So it seems that Once Human has not yet fully lived up to the title of the great survival hope. Now it must be shown how the game develops and whether its mobile status will be its downfall. At least there are still the 25 best survival games 2024 for PS5, Steam, and Xbox.
