The First Descendant Dev Launches Investigation Into ‘Abusive Users’ as Chat Slammed for Being a 'Cesspool'

The First Descendant is only a week old but it’s already suffering from a player toxicity problem the developer has said it will investigate.

Nexon’s free-to-play co-op focused looter shooter, a sort of fusion of the likes of Warframe and Destiny, launched on June 30 and players have already found toxicity in the chat, such as inappropriate comments as well as hack adverts designed to encourage players to pay to cheat.

Some The First Descendant players have called the chat a “cesspool”, making it hard to find others to group up with in-game.

Nexon issued an update to say it has now launched an investigation but stopped short of confirming a plan of action.

“We're inspecting abusive gaming behavior to ensure that all Descendants can enjoy the game in a pleasant environment,” Nexon said. “If you notice any abnormal or abusive behavior while playing the game, please report it through the in-game reporting feature.”

Toxicity isn’t the only issue with The First Descendant right now. It’s got significant performance issues, especially on PlayStation 5 where the frame-rate can struggle, crash problems, and lots of players are still waiting for promised rewards, such as Twitch drops.

Nexon has issued multiple apologies and dished out compensation in the form of in-game resources, but that hasn’t stopped the complaints. Nexon even had to ask players to stop buying the same item multiple times through Steam or the PlayStation or Xbox platform stores because players weren’t getting what they paid for.

We know that hack advertisement chats are becoming frequent in the game, and we are continuously working to resolve this issue.
You can help us by reporting these posts! Here are the methods.

1. Press Player Interaction (T) near the target.
2. Select the target from the chat.
3.… pic.twitter.com/bIeC3BrNPh— The First Descendant (@FirstDescendant) July 5, 2024

Producer Lee Beom-jun published a developer chat to YouTube in which he said the sheer volume of launch players took Nexon by surprise. There’s a hotfix in the works to sort out the PS5 version, and various other tweaks in the works. There is no explanation for The First Descendant’s ultra aggressive monetization, however, which some players have described as “microtransaction hell.”

Despite all these problems, The First Descendant has enjoyed a big launch, with a huge 239,513 peak concurrent players so far on Steam. That’s enough to put the game in Steam’s top five most-played games (Sony and Microsoft do not share player numbers). Check out IGN's The First Descendant review in progress to find out what we think of the game so far.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.