The First Descendant Hits 10+ Million Players Despite Controversy

Released last week, The First Descendant is a new sci-fi third-person looter shooter from Nexon that feels like a mix between Warframe, Destiny, and The Division. Yet despite mixed reviews and controversy involving icons and in-game purchases, The First Descendant has reached over 10 million players in just seven days.

The First Descendant launched on July 2 to mixed reviews from critics and players on Steam. After playing a dozen hours or so of the new online shooter myself, I came away unimpressed. Sure, the game is fun in the moment and looks nice, but its story and characters are forgettable and the endgame after finishing up the campaign is a slog focused on grinding for materials to unlock new characters and gear.

Yet, a fun free game with loot and a cool grappling hook seems to be enough to make The First Descendant one of the most popular games this month. On July 12, the official First Descendant Twitter account posted that the F2P shooter had reached over 10 million players in just seven days.

“Thank you all for your tremendous support and love,” posted the official account. “It means everything to us. We will do our best to bring you great experiences. Can’t wait to continue this journey together!”

While the devs behind First Descendant are likely celebrating the huge number of players hopping into the game to check it out, it’s been far from a perfect week for Nexon’s shooter.

First Descendant’s no good, very bad week

Shortly after the game launched, people pointed out how similar icons in First Descendant were to icons in Destiny 2. On Friday, Nexon responded to this controversy, saying they took it “seriously” and promised to change the icons while calling Destiny 2 a “globally renowned looter shooter” that was “respected” by the developers and which also inspired them “during the development process.”

Meanwhile, complaints have been raised by players that First Descendant’s drop rates are too low for much-needed resources to craft and unlock new characters. Nexon says that the drop rates are working as intended, but did suggest it would make changes to the game to make farming and grinding easier.

There has also been criticism of the game’s microtransactions. One big complaint is that shaders or paints for cosmetics must be bought over and over for each new skin and character. Players have also connected the poor drop rate of materials used to unlock characters with the fact that Nexon will gladly take your money in exchange for skipping all that and unlocking new characters instantly.

For now, The First Descendant is still doing well on Steam with, as I write this, over 170k players currently looting and/or shooting it up in the sci-fi game. It remains to be seen if Nexon can improve the game and update it frequently enough with new content to keep all these players around. If not, it might end up going the way of Synced, a different sci-fi co-op shooter that Tencent just announced was ending after only a year of service.

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