Much of the online discussion about Crimson Desert over the last 36 hours has revolved around its review scores. It launched to a perfectly fine 77 on Metacritic and 81 on OpenCritic (later jumping to 78 and dropping to 80, respectively), but these scores were deemed unacceptable by vocal segments of the gaming community, with reviewers harassed and websites disparaged.
Many of these people thought the game, which they'd yet to play, deserved a much higher score than this, and took it upon themselves to campaign for better. Until they played it.
The game launched on March 19 at 10 pm GMT/6 pm ET/ 3 pm PT, and within its first 10 hours, it received a 66 percent "Mixed" rating on Steam, with almost 5,000 negative reviews.
Anything between 70 and 80 on review aggregation sites is good. It may suggest the game doesn't quite hit the heights some hoped, but it's certainly a good score. We've just been conditioned to think it isn't.
That is, unless you're a Pearl Abyss shareholder, who panicked following its reviews, and share prices tumbled by 30 percent.
It turns out that, actually, perhaps reviewers went a little light on the game, though,...
