Hype is a double edged sword, one The Crimson Desert it is currently being cut. Now that it’s in the wild, let’s take a look at how the madness of this game drives it to greatness and leaves it suffering.
The Crimson Desert got people frothing early because of those clever trailers that made it look like an entire open-world game rolled into one – a massive cinematic story, intense combat, and about a hundred different things to do. Pearl Abyss’ Black Desert Ancestry helped sell the dream, and the steady trickle of previews and influencer hype did the rest, building it up as the next big thing long before anyone got their hands on it.
Based on early data, that hype is paying off in terms of sales and player count. 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 less than 240k simultaneous players. I think that number may increase throughout the weekend. Big parallel peaks like that point to strong sales on Steam, as well as the fact that it currently sits as the best-selling and most wish-listed game.
It also sits at the top of the bestseller charts on the PS Store, as well as on Xbox. In other words, no matter what else, the pre-release hype has probably already been pushed The Crimson Desert in the millions in terms of copies sold.
But beyond just copies sold, things get even more complicated.
We start with the critics’ reviews: 80 and 78 on reviews including OpenCritic and Metacritic respectively are excellent scores. However, the pre-release hype was so high that there was a palpable sense of disappointment surrounding them – a definite slice from that double-edged sword we’ve been talking about. On social media, people are acting like him The Crimson Desert carpet-bombing by review.
It wasn’t just the players who reacted either. As the update went live, the stock price of developer and publisher Pearl Abyss fell sharply – dropping from $43.79 the day before its launch to $30.70 at the close of the South Korean stock market. As I write this, the market is still closed, and I suspect that the stock price may rise again due to game sales, but that is speculation on my behalf.
User reviews also paint a similar picture of the game with some good features but also some clear problems. Out of 10.5k reviews on Steam, the game currently sits at a “Mixed” rating. The two biggest complaints so far are that the story doesn’t make sense and that the controls are clunky and awkward. Some reviews seem to be trying to figure out what the game really is, with some people loving its scope and scale, while others see it as a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none title.
In fairness, early Steam reviews tend to be very subjective as people share bugs, errors and first impressions. The positivity usually comes later as the players continue to come in and the intensity of those problems lessens a little bit, so we’ll have to see how everything goes.
The PS Store is showing a steady stream of addicts, though 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, The Crimson Desert you had a crazy presentation. It serves as a good example of how harmful pre-release hype can be. I can only imagine that the folks at Pearl Abyss are riding a lot of emotions right now as they deal with strong player numbers and sales, positive critical reviews, mixed player reception, and a stock price that has dropped dramatically.
However that should be confusing, I think it was a perfectly good presentation. User reviews are already showing signs of turning back to positive, and sales are showing every sign of being very strong, at least based on the early data we have. That sale alone will probably be enough to bring the stock price back up again.
