Nexon Delivers Brutal Verdict on The First Descendant, Calling It a Strong Launch With No Staying Power

Nexon has delivered one of the bluntest post launch assessments a publisher can give one of its own live service games, with president and chief executive officer Junghun Lee openly classifying The First Descendant under the company’s “what did not work” category during its March 31, 2026 capital markets briefing. In Nexon’s own capital markets briefing, Lee grouped the looter shooter alongside Dungeon and Fighter Mobile as a title that opened with momentum but failed to hold players over time. He described the issue in harshly simple terms, saying The First Descendant had a “strong launch, no staying power,” and added that these are structural design problems that cannot be solved with a simple patch.

That phrasing is especially damaging because it does not sound like a temporary stumble or a routine live service soft patch. Nexon is effectively saying the game’s weakness sits inside its core retention design. Lee’s exact wording makes that impossible to soften. He said the title suffered from the same kind of long term engagement failure that hurt Dungeon and Fighter Mobile, and stressed that the fix requires structural changes to game mechanics rather than ordinary live tuning. That strongly suggests Nexon believes The First Descendant’s broader gameplay loop, reward motivation, and player progression framework were not compelling enough to sustain interest after launch.

The contrast with the game’s opening performance makes the decline stand out even more. On Steam, The First Descendant reached a peak of 264,860 concurrent players, while its current review status sits at 57.07 percent positive across about 110,000 reviews, which SteamDB classifies as Mixed. That is a major fall from the early attention the game commanded when it first arrived as a free to play Unreal Engine 5 shooter with strong visual appeal and a large scale co op hook.

Critical reception also never fully protected it from those underlying problems. On Metacritic, the game opened to mixed reviews, reinforcing the sense that while the presentation, production values, and initial audience curiosity were there, the underlying mechanics did not separate it enough from the crowded live service and looter shooter field. That combination of mixed reviews and weak long term retention is exactly the kind of profile that can be fatal for a game built around ongoing engagement rather than a one time box sale.

What makes this even more important is that Nexon’s language also lines up with the company’s recent roadmap direction. The publisher has already been signaling that the game needs a deeper reset rather than normal seasonal upkeep, and the planned Season 4 work has increasingly been framed around larger structural overhaul. Lee’s comments now confirm that this is not just a community perception problem or a content cadence issue. Internally, Nexon appears to believe the core formula itself needs meaningful reconstruction.

That said, Nexon is not necessarily giving up yet. The company has supported games through difficult periods before, and its broader investor presentation still emphasized transformation, durability, and a more disciplined approach to turning franchises into long term businesses. The First Descendant may still get the chance to prove it can evolve. But after comments this direct, it is also fair to say the game is now under far more pressure than a typical live service title entering its next season. If the next round of changes fails to materially improve retention and player confidence, Nexon has already created the language investors can use to understand why the game did not become the pillar it hoped for.

For now, the biggest takeaway is not that The First Descendant launched badly. It did not. The bigger issue is that Nexon no longer seems interested in pretending a strong debut matters if the long game is broken. In live service terms, that may be the most honest assessment the company could have made.

What do you think, can The First Descendant still be turned around with a deeper redesign, or has Nexon already said everything players need to know about its long term future?