Nexon has published its capital markets briefing it presented to investors just days ago on March 31, 2026, containing a litany of thoughts and insights into the publisher, where it has seen success over the last year, and where it has stumbled. Those stumbles, according to president and chief executive officer Junghun Lee, include the company’s third-person UE5-powered looter-shooter, The First Descendent, which Lee is very candid about in his thoughts on how the game is performing nearly two years after its launch.
Speaking after Patrick Söderlund, the newly appointed executive chairman at Nexon, a new role that was created specifically for him, Lee begins by acknowledging Söderlund’s “candid assessment” of where Nexon stands right now, and continues in that same spirit with “a straightforward assessment of our performance since our last CMB in 2024 with recognition of what worked, and what didn’t.“
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The First Descendent, in Lee and ultimately in Nexon’s eyes, is part of the ‘what didn’t’ category, as he calls it out alongside Dungeon & Fighter Mobile for having a great launch, but ultimately unable to retain its playerbase.
“Dungeon & Fighter Mobile launched with terrific momentum in 2024, then lost its way. The retention mechanics weren’t strong enough to hold players long-term. Same issue with The First Descendent: Strong launch, no staying power. These are design issues that are not fixed with a patch – they require structural changes to game mechanics.”
That last bit is arguably the most damning of what Lee says. It also lines up with what Nexon said just a few months ago, back in December 2025, when the game’s Season 4 update was delayed into Summer 2026 as part of the company’s attempt to reinvent the game’s core experience.
When The First Descendent launched, it reached 10 million players within a week of its arrival, including reaching a peak of 264,860 concurrent players on Steam. Tens of thousands of ‘Mixed’ user reviews over the last two years, paired with mixed critical reviews at launch, both of which cite how the game’s mechanics fail to stand out among the crowd of free-to-play titles, and the game’s future is very much in question.
But it wouldn’t be the first live service title that Nexon stuck with in an attempt to turn it around for the better. If it hadn’t stuck with Embark Studios when The Finals took a dip post-launch, then we wouldn’t have gotten ARC Raiders, and we wouldn’t be seeing The Finals currently enjoying an uptick in players after its latest update.
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