The First Descendant’s Huge Launch Continues, as Do the Problems

The First Descendant has enjoyed a big launch, but it’s also been marred by a number of issues that developer Nexon has continued to apologize and offer compensation for.

Since the free-to-play co-op focused looter shooter launched a long list of issues has emerged, including frame-rate problems, the failure to deliver on promised items such as Twitch drops, and for some players, the failure to deliver items they’ve paid real-world money for.

The latter issue revolves around a problem where customers have yet to receive items when they’ve bought the same item multiple times through the basket on Steam or the PlayStation or Xbox platform stores.

Developer Nexon issued an update on this “mass Caliber purchase error,” promising a fix. In the meantime, it asked players to buy “Caliber” items (items that are bought with the premium in-game currency that is itself bought with real-world money), individually “to avoid any inconvenience.”

For those who bought items from July 2-4 and have yet to receive them, these purchases will be canceled, Nexon warned. “The same measures will be taken for any further mass purchases until the error is resolved,” Nexon said.

“We apologize once again for the inconvenience caused by this error. We are working diligently to fix the issue as soon as possible to minimize inconvenience.”

Meanwhile, producer Lee Beom-jun published a developer chat to YouTube in which he thanked and apologized to players. In the video, the Nexon developer promised a hotfix that would optimize performance of the PlayStation 5 version (The First Descendant runs particularly poorly on PS5). There’s work on those missing Twitch drop rewards, as well as a promise for gun sound improvements and crash fixes.

Interestingly, Lee Beom-jun offered an explanation of sorts for The First Descendant’s controversial third-party data collection and sharing policy that Nexon asks players to agree to before playing the game. This personal information sharing, one of the leading complaints amid the game’s ‘mixed’ Steam user reviews rating, is supposedly required because Nexon uses it to track what players are doing in The First Descendant in order to improve it. Lee Beom-jun insisted Nexon does not use players’ personal data, rather the nicknames they choose.

There is no explanation for The First Descendant’s ultra aggressive monetization, however, which some players have described as “microtransaction hell.”

Despite all these problems, The First Descendant has enjoyed a big launch, with a huge 239,513 peak concurrent players so far on Steam. That’s enough to put the game in Steam’s top five most-played games. Sony and Microsoft do not share player numbers. Check out IGN’s The First Descendant review in progress to find out what we think of the game so far.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.