The first month of Crimson Desert was full of great updates and neat discoveries

Crimson Desert quietly came out of nowhere last year and became one of the most popular games of 2026. Developed by Pearl Abyss, the massive open-world, single-player fantasy RPG has been a huge hit on Steam and PlayStation 5.

Sure, it might have some awkward controls, AI-generated art, and a messy questline that was added late in development, but that hasn’t stopped players from spending hundreds of hours on it Crimson Desert’s photorealistic looking world. It also helps that Pearl Abyss has been relentless with patches and fixes. Almost every few days, it seems to add new features and abilities, fix bugs, or tweak settings based on player feedback. Now, nearly a month after its release on April 19, Crimson Desert it’s in a better place than it was at launch and could end up being one of the biggest games of the year.

early Crimson Desert the reviews weren’t great

“It feels like a game designed for people who just want to consume content,” he wrote from Bloomberg Jason Schreier at Bluesky the day before the game’s release, as written reactions were posted on various sites. Many reviewers found the RPG to be incredibly large and gorgeous, and not much more than that. The polygons impressions at that time presented the title: “After 10 hours, Crimson DesertThe massive open world hasn’t shown me anything interesting.” Ouch.

At launch, the game landed at a 78 on Metacritic, which is a perfectly solid number, but it felt like a mistake for Crimson Desert after all the months of endless hype building. It wasn’t all bad, however, as some critics celebrated the game’s combat and others, like Paul Tassi, even praised Crimson Desert widely However, even the most positive reviews and impressions complained about the game’s messy and often clumsy controls.

Mixed reactions sent the studio’s stock tumbling

As mixed reviews and negative comments from early players emerged Crimson Desert’During the launch, the backlash seems to have scared off Pearl Abyss investors a lot. Within 24 hours of the release, the studio’s stock price fell nearly 30 percentgoing from KRW 65,600 (South Korean Won) to KRW 46,000. While gamers who loved the RPG tried to defend it against negative and lukewarm reviews, it seemed that investors weren’t convinced that the long-awaited game would pay off in the long run.

Everyone agreed Crimson Desertthe controls are bad

The one thing almost every reviewer, player, and fan seemed to agree on afterward Crimson Desertliberation was that its controls were funky at best and almost unusable at worst. One of the many Reddit posts criticizing the game’s controls was titled, “Worst controls I’ve ever seen in a game. Really, really.”

Like someone who was playing Crimson Desert before all the patches, I was shocked at how unresponsive the movement was, how bad the menu navigation felt, and how complicated almost every part of the RPG was. Collecting anything sucks. Running around here felt awful. Using powers and different inventory items was a mess. It was all pretty bad. not in vain Pearl Abyss promised to improve the controls in future updates.

But at least the cats are cool

In Crimson Desert, you can pick up any cat you find in the world, carry it in your arms and gently pet it as you walk by. As you can imagine, the cat-loving internet gave this feature a big thumbs up. Bad controls, bland storytelling and performance issues be damned, you can pet and collect cats.

“I got to the first town and was walking around saying hello to everyone, I noticed the village cat,” says one review. on Steam. “Trying to pet him, I picked him up and was able to walk around town with him in my arms, petting him and completing my tasks. This game is great, highly recommended.”

Less amazing: Players found AI art Crimson Desert

It only took about a day players to start finding what looked a lot like AI-generated artwork Crimson Desert Players saw ugly paintings that presented nonsensical images and appeared to be made by a machine without soul or care. And it turns out, bad art was made by an AI. But the developers claimed that it was just temporary art that had been left in the game by accident, and all would be removed in future updates. Hmm.

This led to a delightful trend of developers on social media posting all the silly and terrible temporary art that they had included in previous games during development, all of which was created without using controversial AI tools and designed to draw as much attention to itself as possible, precisely so that it wouldn’t accidentally be in a game at launch.

Crimson Desert he received three patches in his first week

In the following four days Crimson Desert launched, the RPG received three patches. These patches attempted to fix the poor controls while fixing bugs and implementing some quality of life changes. This was just the beginning of Pearl Abyss’ aggressive patch Crimson Desert, something that still happens a month later, as the studio continues to try to use player feedback to help improve the game.

The game’s Steam player rating improved a lot after the updates

All that Pearl Abyss work seems to have paid off Crimson Desert’Steam’s player rating rose sharply after a rough start. At launch, the massive RPG struggled to receive positive reviews on Valve’s popular PC store.

As reported Forbes, it was initially around 51 percent, or “mixed,” on Steam. But four days and a few updates later, it skyrocketed until 80 percent of user reviews were positive. As of April 17th, it’s now at an even more impressive 86% positive, which is closer to all the pre-launch hype.

from Kotaku the prints compliment the images, but not much else

After playing about 12 hours of Crimson Desert, I played outside. While the updates helped make it a little less complicated, I just found the world to be a dull and empty landscape, and none of the missions really grabbed me. I fully admit that maybe if I put in another 30 hours, I could find a more fun game buried Crimson Desert’s beautifully rendered world, but there are too many other games I want to play instead of investing more time into something and hoping it eventually gets better. But hey, those rocks are pretty…

Gamers keep finding interesting details and sharing them online

Even if you don’t enjoy it Crimson DesertI can still be blown away by all the amazing details people have found within this great RPG. For example, Did you know you can cook raw meat with the power of the sun? yes wild things

Crimson Desert it might come to Switch 2…one day

Heo Jin-young, CEO of Pearl Abyss he told investors and shareholders during a meeting in March that, yes, the study looks at portability Crimson Desert on the Nintendo Switch 2. But it sounds far away, and if it happens, expect a simple experience.

“Because the Switch still has lower specs compared to other consoles,” the CEO said, “there are aspects we have to give up. internally, we got interested and started R&D.”

Players who have played a lot and killed everything are asking the developers for things to kill

to play Crimson Desert for long enough, and you’ll eventually reach a point where you’ve killed most of the game’s enemies, wiped out their bandit camps, and cleared out all the big forts. This happened to Paul Tassi a Forbesand it has happened to others too, according to Reddit posts online.

“Even the bandit camps are empty once they’ve been cleared. The patrols clear up a lot when the peaceful factions take over. I played for six hours yesterday and had TWO fights total. TWO. And it took less than 10 seconds, because I basically shot them all one or two.” one player complained on Reddit. Many players are hoping that Pearl Abyss will add an option to make more of the game’s enemies respawn, like in other open-world RPGs such as Skyrim.

Given how dedicated the studio is to adding things based on player feedback, it seems likely that the reappearance of bandit camps and more will one day be a feature in Crimson Desert

Crimson Desert has sold more than 5 million copies

According to Pearl Abyss, as of April 15, Crimson Desert has sold more than five million copies. The studio posted the good news online and thanked players for all their support and help. In an industry that seems to struggle to launch new and successful games, Crimson Desert it seems a bit of a miracle.

“Thank you to all Greymane who have joined us on this journey, experienced the world of Pywel, and supported the game,” the studio said on Twitter. “Achieving this milestone would not have been possible without your support, and we are truly grateful.”