The First Descendant’s Playercount Shows Why People Are Still Making Live Looters

As we speak, Nexon’s The First Descendant is setting new playercount records every ten minutes or so on Steam, its first weekend after its launch and free from terrible server issues that consumed the last few days.

It’s doing extremely well. Right now it’s hitting 243,000 concurrent players, and dispelling the notion that there is PvE live service looter fatigue. Though…with a catch.

People may say they hate it, but there is clearly something attractive about a free, live, loot-based game that grabs big numbers, and I think all we have to do is compare it to rivals to show why some studios are still going down this road despite the fact that everyone is allegedly sick of the concept.

Really, it seems more like it depends on game format, not quality. Here’s what I mean:

• Lost Ark – 1.3 million peak, ongoing live game, free-to-play
• Destiny 2 – 316,000 peak, ongoing live game, free-to-play base with paid expansions and seasons
• The First Descendant – 243,000 peak, ongoing live game, free-to-play
• Warframe – 189,800 peak, ongoing live game, free-to-play
• Outriders – 125,100 peak, not live, paid
• The Division – 114,200 peak, live, paid
• Remnant 2 – 110,800 peak, not live, paid
• Marvel’s Avengers – 31,000 peak, live, paid
• Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League – 13,400 peak, live, paid
• Anthem – Unknown concurrent peak, live, paid

This isn’t everything, but you get the idea, and it’s more than just “paid games are played less than free games.” Some of the worst failures in recent AAA history are games that tried to be both live service games, but also enormous blockbusters costing $60-70. Something like Outriders found strong initial success, but that idea faded in time and the fate of the IP is unclear. Anthem, Avengers and Suicide Squad are some of the biggest failures in the last two console generations.

Destiny 2 is something of an exception as it did not launch free-to-play. But it was the model many of these games ended up trying to follow. The game most similar to The First Descendant is Warframe, a game it clearly tried to emulate in every way. Probably the biggest “balanced” success is The Division, which was never f2p and did solid numbers as a live game. But it also got in pretty early. It also depend on budget, of course. Remnant 2 was not a sprawling AAA production, but put up good numbers and should be considered a success.

But The First Descendant is about to come along and probably top 300,000 players soon. Maybe even beat Destiny 2’s all-time high here. And it’s…just okay? It’s full of microtransactions and pretty dull gameplay loops and rather bland characters. But with halfway decent shooting, buildcrafting and being free it’s…surging. It reminds me of Lost Ark performing similarly, which you guessed it, is from a Korean studio.

The model, whether you like it not, has been shown to work. And some of the biggest industry failures are the ones that tried to have it all, an expensive base game also with pricey microtransactions and battle passes. There are exceptions to the rule, but this is why it’s not a huge surprise that The First Descendant is doing well despite not being…really that good. But I am continuing to give it a chance.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.