Published Mar 20, 2026, 10:49 AM EDT

Jen Glennon is a New York-based journalist and editor with more than a decade of experience covering games and entertainment. She has previously worked at Kotaku, Inverse, and Newsweek. Jen joined Polygon in 2025 and has a relentless appetite for Final Fantasy, Yakuza, and Costco rotisserie chicken.

Sluggish and counterintuitive inputs are prompting players to ditch the game entirely

Image: Pearl Abyss via Polygon

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It's been less than 24 hours since the launch of Crimson Desert , developer Pearl Abyss's follow-up to the wildly successful MMORPG Black Desert Online. And it's safe to say things are off to a rocky start. Reviews have been middling, and its Steam user score has already fallen to "Mixed" after nearly 6,000 reviews.…