The new loot shooter from Nexon, The First Descendant, launched today, July 2nd, on Steam. The free-to-play game has 197,000 concurrent players, but the reviews are only mixed. There has been criticism of the cash shop, which apparently isn’t working as intended.
This is the situation:
- The game “The First Descendant” from the South Korean developer Nexon is a cooperative third-person shooter with role-playing elements. We have summarized everything important about The First Descendant for you here.
- Nexon is a South Korean MMORPG giant: Their MMORPG “Dungeon Fighter” is nominally the largest PC MMORPG in the world. Their games are largely unknown to us, only MapleStory is somewhat familiar. Their free-to-play MMORPGs are traditionally seen as pay-to-win – there was even a major scandal with MapleStory, because players were lied to for over 10 years.
- The launch of The First Descendant was this morning at 9 AM on Steam. It is free to play.
This was the rush: Currently, the number of players on Steam is steadily increasing. The record was 197,400 players – but the player count could still rise further.
Negative reviews are increasingly coming from Asia
This is what the reviews on Steam say: Currently, The First Descendant has only 46% positive reviews on Steam, which is considered “mixed.” This is a weak rating.
However, most negative reviews are coming from Asia:
- In Chinese, there are only “26% positive reviews”
- Korea, with “34% positive reviews”, views the game significantly more critically than the West
- In German and English, 58% of all reviews are positive – while not great, it is still significantly better.
A similar trend was last observed with Elden Ring.
Cash shop and problems within it are lowering the reviews
A positive review in German after 3.5 hours praises the game’s graphics and well-thought-out characters. However, the positive review also notes that players can spend money to progress faster in the game.
This seems to be the main point of criticism for many negative reviews: A too lavish cash shop where you can buy anything your heart desires is being criticized. Exactly what one would expect from “Nexon,” as one reviewer remarks sarcastically.
Players buy items, but do not receive them
This is the outrage currently: Ironically, it seems to be causing negative reviews on Steam that players buy currency, “Caliber,” for the battle pass but do not receive this currency.
The developers have acknowledged the mistake and are working on a solution. There are also problems with the Twitch Drops.
Until a few years ago, loot shooters were a booming genre with a bright future ahead. We have covered the development of games like Destiny or The Division on MeinMMO for years. But since 2019, things have gone wrong: Destiny, Division, and Anthem used to be the future of gaming: What happened?
