In its first week of availability, The First Descendant was played by 10 million players.
Nexon’s free-to-play looter shooter launched in slow June and immediately gained popularity, with an impressive 264,860 concurrent players on Steam alone. (Microsoft and Sony don’t publicly share player counts.)
Nexon has now confirmed an impressive 10 million total players in seven days. It said that we “have reached” 10 million players, suggesting that the number is based on player accounts and not dormant downloads.
“Thank you all for your overwhelming support and love,” Nexon continued. “It means everything to us. We will do everything in our power to provide you with a great experience. We can’t wait to continue this journey together!”
🎉 10 million descendants! 🎉
In just 7 days we reached 10 million descendants!
Thank you all for your overwhelming support and love. It means everything to us.
We will do everything we can to provide you with a great experience. We can’t wait to continue this journey together! photo:twitter.com/SsvcelMTsh— First Descendant (@FirstDescendant) July 12, 2024
The First Descendant has already been a huge success, but Nexon will be mindful of growing player numbers as the game evolves. We’ve seen how challenging that has become for many publishers and developers as they’ve entered the ultra-competitive live services market in recent years.
While The First Descendant is undoubtedly a hit, it hasn’t been without controversy, and has a “mixed” user rating on Steam. Players have been slammed for The First Descendant’s ultra-aggressive monetization, which includes $100 character packs and premium customization items that expire after exploit. Nexon has also been accused of copying Destiny 2 icons onto the ones used in The First Descendant, something the company has now said it will address in-game.
Overall, The First Descendant is a mix of mechanics from various looter shooters already on the market. There’s more than a whiff of Destiny in The First Descendant’s design, systems, and mechanics, but there’s also a lot of Warframe in there, too.
This week Nexon released significant update for The First Descendant This brings some gigantic changes to the game, but leaves some aspects that have been a topic of discussion in the community alone.
IGN The First Descendant Movie Review returned a 5/10 rating. We said: “The First Descendant has all the basic elements of a fantastic looter shooter, but they’re buried under a pile of repetitive quests, a terrible story, and an irritating free-to-play model that affects the game’s design in the worst possible way.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
