As an unrepentant lover of weird, obtuse RPGs, I’ve been pleased to see the critical consensus on Steam turning in Crimson Desert’s favour—and it is an RPG, despite Pearl Abyss’s baffling insistence that it is not.
When Crimson Desert launched last week, it was quickly inundated with reviews both positive and negative on Steam. Players seemed to love its incredible scope, but they found its dodgy controls and obtuse design eccentricities a deal breaker. Steam user reviews settled on Mixed.
None of this stopped players from gravitating towards it, though—unsurprising, given that this is 2026’s first blockbuster open-world romp. Within 24 hours, Pearl Abyss was celebrating 2 million sales. The team wasn’t content to rest on its laurels, though, and promised improvements.
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The reviews started to become more positive, too, as the game shed its Mixed rating. And they’ve continued to climb, quickly going from Mostly Positive to Very Positive—that’s from an impressive 25,000 reviews. It’s racking up those sales, too, with Pearl Abyss announcing it had hit the 3 million milestone yesterday.
We are grateful to share #CrimsonDesert has sold through 3 million copies worldwide. To everyone who has stepped into Pywel and shared this journey with us, thank you. Your feedback continues to help shape the experience, and we will keep working to make the journey ahead even… pic.twitter.com/8T26KzhQwmMarch 24, 2026
Pearl Abyss’s tinkering has undoubtedly helped, but I suspect the increasing positivity would have happened regardless—albeit not as quickly. Dense, eccentric games don’t tend to make great first impressions, outside of weirdos like me who love this shit. And I suspect the players who really vibed with it took the weekend to play around in Pywel before dropping their impressions on Steam.
None of this invalidates the many criticisms that have been flung its way, of course. Only this morning, a bunch of us were bemoaning the game’s ridiculous quest design in PC Gamer’s Slack—how Kliff just seems to know where to go and who to speak to without any context, leaving us players doggedly traipsing around the world following an invisible, unfathomable thread.
It’s very, very strange. But I clearly enjoy being baffled.
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