Despite Nexon’s current success with millions of sales generated by Embark Studios’ ARC Raiders, not every publisher or developer hits the mark with every release. Nexon is bravely acknowledging this, even highlighting games that haven’t performed as expected, such as *The First Descendant*.
In its latest financial briefing document, Nexon presents the once-popular shooter as a key example of what went wrong, alongside *Dungeon & Fighter Mobile*. The document states, “Strong launch, no persistence,” when discussing *The First Descendant*’s debut. The game successfully attracted an impressive 264,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch, but its player count has since declined significantly. Today, it still sees a few thousand players daily, which isn’t the worst concurrent player number for a live-service title, but it’s clearly not what Nexon had hoped for.
Nexon admits, “These are design problems that are not fixed with a patch – they require structural changes in game mechanics.” While seasonal content and various fixes are still planned for the game, this strategy might soon shift as Nexon focuses on what works, rather than dwelling on what doesn’t.