Crimson Desert's Big Launch Week: Record Sales, Mixed Reviews, and an AI Scandal

Pearl Abyss' open world action game Crimson Desert launched on March 19 to genuinely enormous numbers — 3 million copies sold in five days, with Steam concurrents peaking at nearly 250,000, briefly making it the third most-played game on the platform behind only Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2. By any commercial measure, that's a blockbuster debut. The studio reportedly spent seven years and around $133 million making it.

The reception, though, has been complicated. User reviews landed on "mixed" out of the gate, with controls at the centre of the complaints. Crimson Desert pushes PC players toward a controller, but even then the scheme drew criticism for being unintuitive — players flagged awkward NPC interaction inputs, an inconsistent jump mechanic, and movement that felt clunky outside of combat. A Pearl Abyss exec responded by saying the controls are "like riding a bike" and come naturally once learned, which convinced approximately nobody. Reviews have since improved to "mostly positive" as players have settled in.

Then came the AI art controversy. Players spotted signs and in-game paintings bearing the telltale signs of AI generation shortly after launch. Pearl Abyss admitted the assets were "unintentionally included in the final release," apologised for failing to disclose their use, and launched a comprehensive audit of all in-game assets. The omission put the studio in direct violation of Steam's AI content disclosure policy — a disclaimer has since been added to the store page. Pearl Abyss's stock dropped nearly 30% in the days following launch.

Epic Games has cut over 1,000 staff — more people than currently work at Valve — as CEO Tim Sweeney cited a sustained slump in Fortnite engagement that has left the company "spending significantly more" than it's making. Sweeney pointed to a combination of industry-wide headwinds and Epic-specific struggles, including the challenge of "delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season." The layoffs also come with the shutdown of Fortnite Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and Festival Battle Stage. Sweeney insisted the cuts are not related to AI.

The response from the wider industry was pointed. Former Valve writer Chet Faliszek — whose credits include Portal, Left 4 Dead, and the Half-Life 2 episodes — posted a blunt TikTok video taking direct aim at Sweeney. "Tim has gone from making games to making one game, spending all his time trying to make as much money as possible," Faliszek said. "And hey Tim, Gabe's better at that than you." Faliszek drew a sharp contrast with Valve's culture of employee ownership and agency, questioning why anyone at Epic would now work hard when layoffs like this can happen at any time. Worth noting that Faliszek's Valve loyalty isn't exactly impartial — but the underlying point landed.

Bungie's extraction shooter Marathon has sold around 1.2 million copies since launch, generating roughly $55 million in gross revenue across PC, PS5, and Xbox — figures that, according to analyst firm Alinea Analytics, fall well short of what Sony and Bungie were hoping for. The numbers come with one striking detail: an estimated 70% of sales came from Steam, with PS5 accounting for just 19% and Xbox 11%.

That PC-heavy split is significant context for Sony's ongoing strategy around PC releases. The company has reportedly been pulling back from day-one PC launches for its big single-player exclusives, but has kept multiplayer titles multiplatform — and Marathon's Steam dominance shows why. The bigger concern is Bungie itself: Sony flagged Bungie's failure to hit sales and engagement targets back in November, recording a significant impairment charge as a result. Marathon needed to be a turnaround. At 1.2 million, it isn't yet.

A new AI watermarking technology developed by former Microsoft executive Troy Batterberry aims to help game studios track down the source of internal leaks before they reach the public. The tool — from a company called Echomark — embeds invisible, unique identifiers into documents and internal materials, so that when something leaks, studios can trace it back to the specific person who accessed it. Bethesda's Todd Howard recently described leaks as almost never helpful, arguing they generate misinformation and leave audiences building expectations around a game that doesn't yet exist. The technology is already being trialled in the industry.

The catch is that it only works on document-based leaks — screenshots, builds, and other forms of disclosure remain much harder to trace. And studios determined to shadow-drop games to stay ahead of leaks entirely aren't exactly crying out for a solution. But for the slow drip of internal memos and early footage that has dogged major announcements for years, this is at least a credible countermeasure.

A study published in Current Psychology — claiming to be the first quantitative measure of the phenomenon — has concluded that post-game depression is a genuine psychological experience. Defined as "the sense of emptiness that arises after completing a deeply immersive game," it breaks down into four components: rumination about the game, the challenge of the experience ending, the urge to replay, and a temporary inability to enjoy other media. RPGs came out as the genre most likely to trigger it, likely due to the combination of long playtimes, deep narrative investment, and the particular finality of a credits roll.

The researchers ran two studies across 373 participants. The phenomenon has been widely discussed on social media and YouTube for years; this is the first time it's been measured properly. Timely, given Crimson Desert is apparently very good once the controls click.

Subnautica 2's early access date was 'self-servingly' leaked by Krafton, say devs' lawyers, and the legal dispute between the publisher and the game's reinstated co-founders is showing no signs of calming down. Lawyers for Unknown Worlds' Charlie Cleveland, Max McGuire, and Ted Gill argue the leak was intentional and designed to damage the game — Krafton disputes this, naturally.

Jensen Huang has pushed back on the DLSS 5 backlash, telling the Lex Fridman podcast that he understands gamers' concerns about AI-generated aesthetics — "I don't love AI slop myself" — but argues DLSS 5 is doing something fundamentally different to generative AI content. Whether that distinction lands with players who don't like what they're seeing is another matter.

Borderlands 4's first Story DLC has arrived — Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned takes players to a new zone called The Whispering Glacier, bringing back fan favourites including Ellie, Crazy Earl, and Pickle. The March 26 update also raises the level cap from 50 to 60 and introduces shared character progression across all saves, which is free for all players.

CD Projekt Red has dropped its clearest hint yet that new Witcher 3 DLC is coming, officially confirming an unannounced project currently in development. Rumours of a third story expansion have been circulating since mid-2025 — if it lands, it'll be more than a decade after the base game released. CDPR hasn't confirmed anything beyond the project's existence.

Ubisoft's Red Storm studio is being shut down as a game developer, with 105 employees losing their jobs and 10 projects cancelled in the process. The North Carolina studio, founded in 1996 with Tom Clancy as a co-founder, had been quietly working across a wide range of games before being folded into Ubisoft's broader restructuring push.

UK game development is contracting at a pace not seen in 14 years, according to trade body TIGA. Over 1,500 jobs were lost in the year to September 2025 — the first downturn since 2011 — with studio numbers falling and new startups struggling to get off the ground. TIGA is calling for government intervention to protect what has historically been one of the UK's strongest creative industries.

Dying Light: The Beast is getting a substantial free update called Restored Land, which makes the world persistent — kill all the zombies in an area and it gradually returns to its pre-apocalyptic state, with living humans moving back in. It also adds Roadkill Rally vehicular challenges and an optional One Life mode that wipes your save if you die. Good. More of this.

Minecraft's second drop of 2026 has been revealed — Chaos Cubed adds the Sulfur Caves biome underground, two new blocks, and the Sulfur Cube mob. No release date yet, but if it follows last year's cadence, expect it around mid-June. Underground Minecraft players are eating well this year.

Two indie devs accidentally released games with the same name within days of each other — one a puzzle platformer, one a cosy repair sim, both called Piece by Piece, both on Steam. Rather than fight about it, they bundled both games together at a discount. "It's crazy to think that if you act like human beings about a situation, it somehow ends up great." It really is.

The Cities: Skylines 2 developer has spoken about what went wrong — Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen says the studio "completely overestimated" Unity's capabilities at the start of development, building core systems on engine features that weren't ready. The game has since changed hands entirely. A candid admission, and a useful reminder that engine promises don't always survive contact with a full production.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's Season 3 roadmap has been revealed, dropping April 2 with new multiplayer maps, weapons, Zombies content, and Warzone updates. Post-launch support for Black Ops 7 has been strong — Season 3 looks to continue that, though the roadmap details are predictably extensive.

Hello Neighbor has hit its highest-ever concurrent player count on Steam, eight years after launch — almost entirely on the back of a heavy discount. The 2017 horror game was divisive on release, and the spike is price-driven rather than a genuine revival, but it's a fun Steam chart oddity regardless.

Arc Raiders is teasing its next update with a short clip suggesting Shredders are about to escape Stella Montis — confirming a fan theory that the underground facility connects to Blue Gate via tunnels. The Flashpoint update drops next week. Niche news, but Arc Raiders has a dedicated PC playerbase who will care a lot about this.