Crimson Desert’s Steam player count is big, but not the biggest this year

As expected, Crimson Desert had a pretty big launch on Steam during its first weekend. But perhaps not quite as big as expected. Pearl Abyss’s noisy entrant into the higher echelons of AAA gaming hit a peak of 248,530 players online on Sunday, which is some way off the biggest launches of 2026 to date, or the biggest historically within its genre.