Beomjun Lee from NEXON to Address Live Service Challenges at GDC 2025, Gives a Glimpse of The First Descendant Season 3

On March 20 at GDC 2025, Beomjun Lee, the Executive Producer of The First Descendant, will share his knowledge on tackling obstacles in live-service gaming during his session “Enduring a 57 Metacritic as a Live Service Game”. He will shed light on the game’s initial struggles and how they planned for its enhancement and also give a sneak peek of the upcoming Season 3: Breakthrough update.

Core Issues and Their Resolutions

• Incorporation of Player Feedback: The team had to focus on revising the character balance, redesigning combat systems, and filling content gaps despite the mixed response and a mediocre Metacritic score (57) at launch.
• Three Central Areas of Focus:
  • Swiftly incorporating player feedback.
  • Maintaining a steady stream of top-quality content upgrades.
  • Bettering overall stability and performance.
• Better Communication:
  • Introduced AMA sessions on Discord for real-time interaction and queries.
  • Began monthly live streams featuring community Q&A.

Outcome of Player-Focused Strategy

• Season 2 (December 2024): With a 20% increase in returning players and a 92.4% rise in daily active users compared to Season 1.
• Structural Revisions:
  • Increased update cycles from 3 to 4 months for thorough content improvement.
  • Post-launch, the development team saw a growth of 50%.
  • Support for PS4/Xbox One was ceased to channel energy towards latest-gen platforms.

Season 3: Breakthrough (July 2025)

• A New Open World: An expansive field named Axion filled with distinct creatures and mechanics for players to explore.
• Mounts: A feature for quicker traversing.
• Epic-Scale Boss Fights: Team-based combats against enormous enemies.
• Partnerships & Content: Major IP collaborations, weapons as requested by the community, and an exclusive lounge for players to display their collectibles.

Beomjun Lee’s upcoming talk at GDC underscores the journey of The First Descendant from initially criticized release to a thriving live-service game, propelled by user feedback and significant modifications. Although these amendments have solidified the game’s user base, it does not match the count during its launch, which saw a peak of 264,860 simultaneous users.

The highly anticipated Season 3 is aimed at reaffirming its position in the looter shooter category by introducing exhaustive content and various improvements to the gameplay.