Crimson Desert's critic reviews may have been harsher than its user reviews because normal players not working on a deadline had more time to venture off the golden path and enjoy the game's rich world and systems, according to Lybee Park, CEO of developer Pearl Abyss' Europe branch.
Park spoke to The Game Business about Crimson Desert's reception, focusing on the launch period back when it was a different, meaningfully worse game that has since received approximately eight bazillion updates.
Interviewer Christopher Dring says "the critical reception was a little bit more mixed, right? It wasn't terrible, but it was a little bit lower." Crimson Desert's critical reception was, indeed, not terrible: it sits at 77 on Metacritic against an 8.7 user score. On Steam, Crimson Desert Enhanced, an improved version of the game that's replaced the old one less than a year after launch, has 83% positive lifetime user reviews and, as it happens, 77% positive recent reviews. (Our Crimson Desert Review awarded the game 4 out of 5 stars.)
It's not unusual for critical and user reviews to differ, and this is far from the biggest gap I've seen for a game. If you look at some of the best-rated releases of 2026, a lot of them have slightly lower user scores than critic scores, with exceptions like Resident Evil Requiem, which just has even more glowing user scores. 6 out of 5 stars.
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