Crimson Desert has finally been released and has received a mixed reception from the community… Players frequently criticize two areas on Steam.
How did the launch go? Despite the late hour, there were temporarily 239,045 players on Steam last night simultaneously trying out the newly released Crimson Desert (Source: steamdb.info). Only four other titles managed to attract more simultaneous interested players on Valve’s platform in the past 24 hours (Counter-Strike 2, PUBG, Dota 2, and Slay the Spire 2).
Over the weekend, this number is likely to increase again. However, there is not only reason for joy for those responsible at Pearl Abyss. Of the 7,380 reviews so far (as of March 20, 2026, 07:16 AM), only 57 percent are positive.
“One of the best games I have played in a long time.”
What are players criticizing? The reports from the past weeks and months made it clear that almost everyone first struggles with the complex, unintuitive controls of Crimson Desert. It also doesn’t help that the game holds back important hints and requires players to really dive into Crimson Desert.
This is reflected in many community reviews after the first hours of play. Unlike us, many buyers apparently also struggle with technical issues. Here’s a selection of the criticism:
- jschmittkl complains on Steam: “The controls are a disaster. Firstly, the keyboard movement controls cannot be adjusted, which is absolutely useless for me as I am left-handed. Secondly, the gamepad controls are not much better, totally overloaded and complicated. For the simplest actions, you have to press multiple buttons.”
- Alterra Doc describes performance issues on Steam: “Unfortunately, I have significant FPS problems that do not meet the recommended requirements. I have a Ryzen 9 5800X 12 Core, 4060Ti & 32GB RAM and can barely achieve an average of 40 FPS on all settings. The game is otherwise very exciting at the beginning, but it’s too choppy for me.”
- W² writes on Steam: “Technically, the game is in a horrifically poor state. Flickering shadows are commonplace, and vegetation like plants, grass, and trees moves unnaturally quickly at times, which is extremely disruptive and completely breaks immersion. The movement is a disaster: slow, clunky, and imprecise.”
What are players praising? Since the majority of reviews are positive, there is of course also a lot of praise from the community.
- Kiripa has played for almost 6 hours and celebrates on Steam: “One of the best games I have played in a long time. Everything runs great; there’s nothing negative to say about the game.”
- MuXuS praises on Steam: “Very nice game. Graphics + performance are excellent, the combat system is a lot of fun, and the world is simply stunning with all the little details and things to discover.”
- jumo2810 also comments on Steam: “The graphics are incredibly good, the controls are a bit tricky to get used to, but not as bad as I had feared. There’s an incredible amount to discover. I am really enjoying the game so far.”
With that, Steam users also praise what has already impressed our testers about Crimson Desert: the combat system, the game world, and the multitude of things to discover in Pywel. You can find our full experience report here: Our MMORPG expert is overwhelmed by the best of 12 years of open-world games after over 60 hours in Crimson Desert
