As anticipated, Crimson Desert had a fairly large launch on Steam throughout its first weekend. However maybe not fairly as huge as anticipated. Pearl Abyss’s noisy entrant into the upper echelons of AAA gaming hit a peak of 248,530 gamers on-line on Sunday, which is a way off the largest launches of 2026 to this point, or the largest traditionally inside its style.
Up to now, the 2026 crown goes to indie deck-building roguelike Slay the Spire 2, a recreation made for a tiny fraction of Crimson Desert’s finances, which peaked at an astonishing 574,638 gamers — greater than double Crimson Desert’s whole — on its launch Sunday earlier in March. Slay the Spire 2 is displaying spectacular endurance, too, with a peak this previous Sunday of 463,795 gamers. Day-to-day, it is holding on to fourth place behind the perennial trio of Counter-Strike 2, PUBG, and Dota 2, and forward of Crimson Desert, Apex Legends, and all the remainder.
Crimson Desert is the third-biggest Steam launch of 2026 to this point behind Slay the Spire 2 and Resident Evil Requiem, which peaked at 344,214 concurrent gamers on Saturday, Feb. 28.
Crimson Desert’s peak participant depend is at the moment Steam’s 67th highest of all time. That is no imply feat, nevertheless it’s a great distance off single-player titans like Elden Ring (over 890,000 gamers at launch), Cyberpunk 2077 (over 1 million on day one), and Baldur’s Gate 3 (over 800,000 gamers on its launch weekend). Unfair comparisons, maybe, however throughout its inflated hype cycle, this was the type of firm many observers anticipated Pearl Abyss’s recreation to be maintaining.
On Friday, Pearl Abyss introduced that Crimson Desert had offered 2 million copies in its first day. That is a powerful launch by most requirements, though it appears traders had hoped for extra. Pearl Abyss’s share worth dropped 30% after opinions got here in beneath 80 on Metacritic, and dipped somewhat additional after launch, when participant suggestions largely matched the complaints raised by reviewers.
However issues are already trying up. Crimson Desert’s Steam evaluate score recovered from “combined” to “principally optimistic” over the weekend, and the developer has begun addressing complaints already, apologizing for the “unintentional” use of generative AI artwork within the recreation and patching in enhancements to controls, problem, and merchandise storage.
Now that Crimson Desert is on sale and in gamers’ arms, the story is much like that informed by the sport’s opinions: It isn’t the overwhelming triumph foretold within the recreation’s hype cycle, nevertheless it’s removed from being a car-crash catastrophe, both. Now the onerous work for Pearl Abyss begins; who is aware of, in a few years’ time, we would have one other Cyberpunk 2077 or No Man’s Sky on our arms.
