Hype is a double-edged sword, one which Crimson Desert is currently being sliced up by. With it now out in the wild, let’s take a look at how the game’s insane hype is both propelling it to greatness and leaving it suffering.
Crimson Desert got people frothing early thanks to those ridiculously slick trailers that made it look like every great open-world game mashed into one — big cinematic story, flashy combat, and about a hundred different things to do. Pearl Abyss’ Black Desert pedigree helped sell the dream, and the steady drip of previews and influencer hype did the rest, building it up as the next big thing long before anyone actually got their hands on it.
Based on the early data, that hype is paying off in terms of sales and player counts. SteamDB is currently the only source of player numbers we have right now, so keep that in mind, but it’s certainly promising: launch day saw just under 240k concurrent players. I think that number might grow across the weekend as well. Big concurrent peaks like that point toward pretty strong sales on Steam, as does the fact that it’s currently sitting as the top best-seller and most wishlisted game.
It’s also sitting at the top of the best-selling charts on the PS Store, as well as on Xbox. In other words, regardless of anything else, the pre-release hype has likely already pushed Crimson Desert into the millions in terms of copies sold.
But outside of just copies sold, things are a little more complicated.
We start with the critic reviews: an 80 and a 78 on review aggregators OpenCritic and Metacritic respectively are perfectly good scores. However, the pre-release hype was so high that there’s been a noticeable sense of disappointment surrounding them — a definite slice from that double-edged sword we’ve been talking about. On social media, people have been acting like Crimson Desert has been carpet-bombed by reviews.
It wasn’t just players reacting either. As the reviews went live, developer and publisher Pearl Abyss’ stock price dropped sharply — falling from $43.79 the day before launch to $30.70 by the time the South Korean stock market closed. As I write this, the market is still closed, and I suspect the stock price may rise again due to the game’s sales, but that’s speculation on my behalf.
The user reviews are also painting a similar picture of a game with some great elements but also some clear issues. Across 10.5k reviews on Steam, the game is currently sitting at a “Mixed” rating. Two of the biggest complaints so far are that the story is bland and that the controls are clunky and awkward. The rest of the reviews seem to be trying to figure out what the game actually is, with some people loving its broadness and scale, while others view it as a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none kind of title.
In fairness, early Steam reviews do tend to lean more negative as people share bugs, glitches and first impressions. The positivity often comes later as players get further in and the initial sting of those problems wears off a little, so we’ll have to see how it all pans out.
The PS Store shows people leaning a bit more positive, although over there we only have star ratings to go by — 1.3k of them so far, giving the game a 4.21 out of 5.
All said and done, then, Crimson Desert has had a crazy launch. It serves as a terrific example of how dangerous pre-release hype can be. I can only imagine the folks at Pearl Abyss are riding a rollercoaster of emotions right now as they deal with strong player numbers and sales, decent critic reviews, mixed player reception, and a stock price that took a dramatic plunge.
However confusing that must be, I think it has overall been a good launch. The user reviews are already showing signs of trending back toward positivity, and the sales show every sign of being very strong, at least based on the early data we have. Those sales alone will likely be enough to bring the stock price back up as well.
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