The First Descendant is hemorrhaging players, but all is not lost

Free-to-play looter shooter The First Descendant is losing players at a rapid pace with 87% leaving the game in just three months. Despite a passionate core audience remaining, the majority of players have already left NEXON’s latest game behind for virtual pastures new.

Since hitting a launch peak of 264,860 concurrent players, The First Descendant’s strong opening week failed to keep the majority of players. However, with Halloween events and new content coming to the free game, there is hope the game can turn things around in the near future.

The First Descendant player count plummets

In a report by PCGamesN, it’s revealed that NEXON’s latest release has lost 87% of its PC playerbase since launch. While console stats are unknown, the public data for the game’s Steam players paints a ghastly picture.

As a free, live-service game, consistently high player counts (alongside the typical whales) are a sign of health. However, The First Descendant’s average player numbers have sadly fallen to an average player count of 17,000.

A drop in players is to be expected, but NEXON’s release has failed to see spikes in players correlating with patches and content drops. This is a sign that interest is low in players that have dropped the game, and the downwards slope is only continuing.

Not all doom and gloom

Of course, this isn’t already a sign of the end, despite what some may say. After all, games like Helldivers 2 have managed to crawl back tens of thousands of players after the release of patches and new content.

Furthermore, The First Descendant player numbers are still pretty high, and the usual bout of high-spending whales are likely still on-board. While the lost of over hundreds of thousands of players is a worry, the game is still in its early stages.

For more news on NEXON’s free-to-play shooter, read about the Ultimate Freyna update with a brand-new storyline and also an infuriating bug that is soon to be patched.