Crimson Desert's new Charting the Unknown expansion is off to a good start as far as Steam reviews are concerned, but it hasn't given the game a massive boost in players just yet.
Over on Steam, Charting the Unknown sits at a "Mostly Positive" rating after 250 reviews, with players praising developer Pearl Abyss for expanding the already-massive open-world game across the year with free updates and this DLC. While some players seem to pre-emptively be giving it props before playing all of the DLC, first impressions are mostly positive. However, some players are reporting a "game breaking bug" in the first quest of the DLC expansion.
As of the time of writing – roughly 12 hours since the expansion launched – Crimson Desert has had a 24 hour peak of 16,955 concurrent players on Steam (per SteamDB's charts) which marks the third-lowest week the game has seen since launch. However, this peak has once again risen after a slight dip during the early hours, and not to mention it's Friday, when people will likely be working – the true test will be the game's weekend peak, as most games hit their highest the Sunday after launch (although in Crimson Desert's case it was actually the following Sunday it hit its all-time high of 276,261).
However, there may be another culprit. Action game fans are likely dropping into the new release Phantom Blade Zero this weekend, which has had an absolutely massive launch on Steam – currently sitting in 11th place in the highest concurrent Steam players of all-time list with its peak of 723,876. Both games are Golden Joystick Awards 2026 Ultimate Game of the Year nominees, and it's likely that more people will be dropping into both games this weekend, even if choosing between them may be a hard decision for many.
