As much as Nexon might be rolling in success right now thanks to the millions of sales driven by Embark Studios' ARC Raiders, no publisher and developer hits the mark every single time. Nexon is brave enough to admit that, and even point out that certain games did not work, like The First Descendant.
In its latest financial briefing doc, Nexon outlines the once popular shooter as a key example of what went wrong, alongside Dungeon & Fighter Mobile. "Strong launch, no staying power," the document reads when recalling The First Descendant's launch. The game managed a whopping 264k concurrent players on Steam when it first launched, but has since dwindled in its player numbers. Now, it still gets a few thousand a day, which isn't the worst concurrent count we've seen for a live-service title, but it's clearly not what Nexon had hoped for.
"These are design issues that are not fixed with a patch - they require structural changes to game mechanics," Nexon admits. There's still seasonal content coming to the game, as well as the odd patch here and there, but perhaps this could change soon, as Nexon moves onto what works, rather than lingering on what doesn't.