Who made The First Descendant? Developer history explored

The First Descendant, a free-to-play looter shooter, was developed by Nexon Games Co. Ltd, a Korean wing of the Nexon group. Known for other MMO Korean titles like MapleStory and Blue Archive, Nexon's live-service pedigree is well-known—with a tinge of ill-repute from a specific Gacha scandal.

Newcomers to The First Descendant will thus be interested to know about the history of the developers and how it may color public perception of the new looter shooter.

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Popular titles from The First Descendant's developer and publisher Nexon

The First Descendant developers are well-versed in the craft of publishing and maintaining live-service games, starting with arguably their most popular product, MapleStory. This was far from their first Rodeo though.

MapleStory is a seminal entry for Korean MMOs (Image via Nexon)

In the 1990s, The First Descendant developers had already made some leeway into MMORPGs and the online gaming space with titles like Nexus and Dark Ages. However, the early 2000s turned out to be their golden age of proliferation, with games that still have loyal player bases in the East:

• MapleStory (launched 2003): A 2D sidescroller MMORPG, and possibly the most iconic title Nexon is known for
• Dungeon and Fighter (launched 2005): A multiplayer beat-em-up, Dungeon and Fighter is Nexon's magnum opus in terms of sales numbers, boasting over 850 million registered players (as of 2022).
• KartRider (released 2004): An online racing game
• MabiNogi (released in 2004): This MMORPG spawned the prequel spinoff that we know as Vindictus today.

Nexon's projects and subsidiaries cumulatively cast a broad net that involves many genres, including first-person shooters (GameHI's Sudden Attack and more recently The Finals), the mobile market (EAFC Mobile), and even coterie single-player titles like Dave The Diver. Primarily though, they're known for the ever-present cash shops to fill out the progression ramps on their free-to-play titles.

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The MapleStory debacle and 'Dynamic Rates'

These cash shops are quite ubiquitous in Korean live-service games. However, Nexon's juggernaut presence in the online gaming scene comes with a side-order of player cynicism due to their legal tussles with the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC).

After a decade-long KFTC probe into the MapleStory publishers, Nexon was fined a sum of roughly $9 million USD (11.9 billion Won). This is the largest sum ever fined by any Korean government body under the Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce Act.

The fine was issued due to allegations of probability-rate manipulation on Cubes (Gacha items) in MapleStory, which the KFTC investigation found to be true on account of substantial evidence from examining in-game data and company documents.

At the same time, The First Descendant developers are the legal owners of a patent called 'Dynamic Rates', which amounts to probability manipulation in Gacha system for individual users on the basis of various factors including total play time, the player's current items, number of friends, and friends' play time stats.

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Check out our other guides on The First Descendant:

• How to defeat the Hanged Man boss in The First Descendant
• The First Descendant Complete Bunny questline: All Record locations
• The First Descendant Thunder Cage build: Best Modules, unique trait, and more
• The First Descendant Bunny build: Best modules and playstyle, explained