Crimson Desert arrived with a thud on the critical side, a 78 Metascore, which, in context, is poor for a game this big, and caused its developer’s stock to tank. But soon enough, many players found they vehemently disagreed with most of those reviews, and both sales and playtime have spiked. Now, in its second weekend, Crimson Desert’s concurrent Steam players actually went up, which is not something you see all that often in this space.
Crimson Desert opened with 248,000 concurrent players on Steam its first weekend, and sailed past that with a 276,000 peak yesterday, remaining one of the top games on Steam. If you’re wondering about its console performance, even without specific numbers, Crimson Desert is #4 on PS5 behind only 2K26, Fortnite and its new season, and The Show 26. Impressive.
We’re seeing two things here. One is that players are now so addicted to Crimson Desert that they’re now playing more after last week, joined together for a higher concurrent total. The second is that word of mouth has spread, saying “actually, this game is awesome,” leading to more players. I have essentially not stopped evangelizing about it to my friends and followers since launch (I am proud to say I gave it a 9.5 at release).
additional factor here is that Crimson Desert has raced to give the game enormous patches. There was a day one patch that fixed many things from the review period (another potential reason for lower scores), then another quick one that drastically helped fast travel, controls and inventory space. Then, this weekend, more Quality of Life fixes and wild additions like the ability to ride legendary and boss animals as mounts. Again, this game came out less than two weeks ago. If you’re playing it now, you got to skip past some of its biggest problems (though some certainly remain).
You cannot change your review score on Metacritic, but I do recommend that some critics potentially circle back around and check out the current state of the game. No, I don’t believe any are “done,” as even if you finish the main story, you can easily pull another 150 hours from this game.
My advice for players considering the game:
“Waiting until it’s fixed” to play in a few months isn’t worth it given how fast almost all the biggest issues have been patched. Waiting for a sale? Sure, that’s up to you.
You gotta push through. I agree it sucks to have the beginning of games be bad, but I’ve never seen a game more worth it than this.
Put the main story on hold. Think of this game as Skyrim. Do all the side quests, figure out all the systems, and wander around randomly. You will never stop finding things despite how enormous this world is. That is its greatest strength.
So, can it top itself in week three? I doubt it, but this game has surprised everyone on many levels.