On the night of March 20, Crimson Desert was released—a hack-and-slash adventure game from the creators of Black Desert at the South Korean company Pearl Abyss. On Steam, the game received a mixed start.
Crimson Desert
In the first few hours, the peak online players for the Steam version of Crimson Desert reached a fairly high mark—239,045 people. This is currently the third-largest result on the platform among 2026 newcomers. Only Resident Evil Requiem (344,214 players) and Slay the Spire 2 (574,638 players) have managed more concurrent players on Steam.
However, Crimson Desert failed to impress gamers. By the time of writing, it had garnered 8.7 thousand reviews on Steam, but only 57% of them were positive—corresponding to a "Mixed" rating.
The majority of criticism in user reviews focuses on awkward controls, uninteresting initial quests, and an overwhelming array of diverse mechanics. Additionally, some gamers were dissatisfied with Crimson Desert's visuals, with complaints also surfacing about optimization.
According to data from Steam Scout, almost half of the reviews (48.2%) for Crimson Desert on Steam were written by English-speaking gamers. The game also has many reviews in Simplified Chinese (15.1%), Korean (11%), Brazilian Portuguese (6%), and Russian (6%).
It should be noted that Crimson Desert is available not only on Steam but also in the Epic Games Store, as well as on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles.