The First Descendant Dev Issues A Warning To Cheaters

As more and more people download Nexon's new game, they're learning that what everyone has been saying about "The First Descendant" is basically true. It's a great-looking, mostly enjoyable free-to-play action game that borrows a good bit of inspiration from "Destiny 2" and "Warframe," yet still manages to be entertaining on its own. Now that "The First Descendant" has finished making first impressions, it's seriously contending the bane of all online multiplayer games: cheaters.

The devs put out a message reminding players not to use cheat programs and not to go AFK during missions to farm rewards that their teammates are actually earning. According to this message, "The dev team is working on measures" to counteract cheats and exploits. However, the post didn't offer any clarification about what changes will actually be implemented.

Lately, there have been increasing reports of inappropriate behavior in our game.
While the dev team is working on measures, we want to remind Descendants of the following guidelines:

1️⃣ The use, distribution, or creation of unauthorized programs is strictly prohibited. 🚫
2️⃣... pic.twitter.com/FylSNnI7JY

— The First Descendant (@FirstDescendant) July 16, 2024

Frankly, this probably won't be an easy fix for Nexon. There are more cheaters than most players realize – yes, even those of us who spend all our free time gaming. When even some of the biggest Twitch streamers have been caught cheating publicly, you know the problem is widespread. Fans of "The First Descendant" are still happy to hear that these problems are on Nexon's radar, however, because AFK farming in particular has become a major issue in the game.

Despite the criticisms that some people have about the game, "The First Descendant" has still had a pretty impressive launch. Not only did the game see 10 million players within its first week, SteamDB calculates that the game's peak player count was over 250,000, and it's averaging well over 100,000 active players at any given time. Unfortunately, it turns out not all those players are actually playing the game as intended. While many fans of "The First Descendant" celebrated Nexon's community guidelines post, many others shared their own stories of AFK players ruining their experience with the game.

please bring a timer to kick inactive players, so many people just stand there and do nothing for rewards at the end of missions and just let everyone else do the work, and temporarily ban people that leave collosi boss fights

— caleb (@calebposh) July 16, 2024

Players offered their own solutions to the problem, which ranged from having timers that automatically kick out inactive players to reworking the game's reward systems to further incentivize people to actually play.

I would like something done about the system that allows you to gain experience points without doing anything.

— kyo_0y (@kyo_0y_) July 16, 2024

Nexon is focused on the issue of inactive players sticking around to get free rewards, but "First Descendant" fans are also encountering players leaving mid-mission, dooming them to failure. 

There's always players leaving Colossi missions and it's annoying. Also people under level going into higher missions under prepared. They just waste the death counter. There needs to be a restriction saying max lvl descendant only allowed for certain missions.

— The Beard Beast (@Beastman45Games) July 16, 2024

At least some of these problems can be chalked up to how recently "The First Descendant" was released. Because it's free, pretty much everyone is at least checking the game out. With any luck, the truly committed fans will eventually make up a larger portion of the playerbase. In the meantime, Nexon needs to come up with an in-game solution that encourages people to play together.