Only 6.8% of Crimson Desert players on Steam have finished the open-world game 2 months after launch, and that means 93.2% of them are playing it right

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The majority of Crimson Desert players on Steam are toiling to finish the gargantuan game's main quests two months after launch, global gameplay statistics reveal, and that's not a bad thing. Developer Pearl Abyss' latest release thrives when the player luxuriates in size and variety, while the storyline it provides protagonist Kliff is as satisfying as you'd imagine an epic created for a man named Kliff.

Which is to say, the game is "far better as a sandbox than as a story," as GamesRadar+ guides writer Joel Franey writes in his four-out-of-five Crimson Desert review. The Steam stats gaming content creator TheRealZephryss shares on Twitter seem to confirm this as the personality quips, "Looks like everyone is still in Hernand" (the starting area a lot of people really were trapped in for more than two weeks after launch).

pic.twitter.com/1Hc6eMIk0sMay 16, 2026

At the moment, Steam achievement stats show only 6.8% of Crimson Desert players have completed all the game's main quests… of which there are many. GamesRadar+ estimates the time to beat Crimson Desert can easily surpass 200 hours if you're going for 100% completion, while a more ascetic main quest playthrough lies in the 35-50 hours range.

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Steam stats also show 22.6% of players haven't even made it through Crimson Desert's first chapter – there are 14, if you count the prologue and epilogue – and that only 25.4% of people have made it halfway through the game's main story and completed Chapter 7.

Considering Crimson Desert reached 5 million copies sold within four weeks, that's a lot of Greymanes staggering around Pywel with their scabbard on backwards, drifting from infinite boss fights to wolf mounts, picking up cute clothes, wandering dense forests, and generally suffering to absorb the content flood that is Crimson Desert. But for some, the work is a duty and honor.

As one fan on Twitter tells TheRealZephryss, "It's not that finishing is difficult, I am just taking my sweet, sweet time, living day by day." Kliff has some wisdom to impart on players after all.

Crimson Desert Kliff actor says video game acting wasn't treated as "proper acting" by peers who are now asking how to get into the industry.

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Ashley BardhanSenior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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