How many players does The First Descendant have?

Modified Jul 03, 2024 02:12 IST

How many players in The First Descendant — The First Descendant is here, and players can't get enough of it (Image via Nexon)

Despite some performance hitches on consoles, The First Descendant had a very successful launch this week. The brand-new looter shooter title hit over 300,000 concurrent players across all platforms on the day of release. That makes it one of the most successful Western launches from its MMO juggernaut publisher, Nexon.

With the glitzy coat of Unreal Engine 5 paint, The First Descendant has created a respectable playerbase and cut into the relatively static MMO-lite looter shooter niche. The question is how far this player count will grow if the developers manage to retain players, that is.

Note: The statistics in this article have been sourced from SteamDB.

The First Descendant player count on release, compared to similar titles

The game has already hit 200k live players on Steam (Image via SteamDB)

As of writing, The First Descendant has over 200,000 live players on Steam and an all-time peak of 229,257 players — a milestone it reached about eight hours after its launch.

Warframe, one of the biggest titles in this general niche, only has an all-time peak player count of 189,837. Another comparable co-op shooter with abilities, Outrider, hit its milestone of 125,143 players in the week it was released — roughly half of The First Descendant.

The only competitor that has these Steam numbers beat is Destiny 2, which reached an all-time high live player count of over 300,000 after the release of its Lightfall expansion. Granted, Destiny 2 did have an entire prequel worth of existing fanbase to piggyback on.

The projection for The First Descendant going forward should be off the charts, but there's a catch. A few factors may line up conveniently to explain away why Nexon's latest is doing the numbers.

It comes down to two aspects, the first of which is its lack of barrier for entry. It's a free-to-play title in a gaming landscape where looter shooters are on the rise again. To follow it up, the second factor is its visuals: the appeal of a free-to-play Unreal Engine 5 triple-A world is hard to beat.

We would not be amiss to think a subset of the players just wanted to check out the cutting-edge future of MMO-lites in the much-hyped Unreal Engine 5. Therein lies the concern. Such a subset of players might not be otherwise interested in The First Descendant's web of resources and mechanics, and drop out in a week.

Will The First Descendant player count soar to new heights? This remains a very open-ended question for now. On release, while it has managed to hit the 200k live player count milestone, the game is sitting on 'Mixed' reception in Steam. As of writing, only 42% of the 6,500 reviews are positive.

Meanwhile, check out our other guides on the game:

Edited by Sijo Samuel Paul