A year after the release of The First Berserker: Khazan, the story of the project began to unfold not quite as expected by the players and Nexon itself. And this is the case when good reviews don’t save you from the cold reality of numbers.
The game started confidently, garnered a decent online following and received a warm welcome from the players, but now changes are taking place inside the studio that are difficult to ignore.
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The First Berserker Khazan developers reassigned after weak sales
According to Yonhap, about 100 developers have been transferred to a special unit within Neonle, the so—called “R Team”. This is an internal structure where specialists are sent to be redistributed between other projects.
Officially, this is not the closure of the game or the cancellation of support. Nexon emphasizes that the Khazan team has not been disbanded: some of the developers continue to work on the final tasks related to the project. But the scale of the transfer itself suggests that the active development phase has actually been completed.
To put it simply, the studio is already looking further.
Khazan player count drops despite strong reviews and gameplay feedback
At the start, Khazan looked promising: almost 33,000 simultaneous players on Steam — an excellent indicator for an action RPG without a high-profile AAA giant brand.
But it turned out to be more difficult to keep the audience. The online peak now barely exceeds 1,000 players. For a game that was supposed to be part of a global strategy, this is an alarming signal.
The irony is that the players themselves did not reject the game. Khazan has about 85% positive reviews on Steam and a decent score on Metacritic. Many people note the combat system, gloomy atmosphere and interesting mechanics inspired by the Dungeon Fighter universe.
That is, the problem is not the quality of gameplay, but the fact that the project could not stay in the information field and attract a wide enough audience.
Why Khazan sales missed expectations for Nexon
The main reason for the changes is money. Nexon explicitly states that sales were below market expectations.
An additional blow is the delays in the release in China. For such projects, this is a key region, and without it, the overall revenue picture looks much weaker.
Interestingly, even earlier, the publisher called the release of Khazan a “strategic step” to promote the franchise globally. And technically it remains true. But in practice, it is clear that the expectations were higher than the actual result.
In the industry, this is a classic situation — a good game, but not a hit.
Khazan future updates DLC and platform plans remain unclear
The most important question now is what’s next.
At the moment, The First Berserker: Khazan is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, but plans for DLC, major updates or new platforms remain in limbo.
Nexon does not talk about the closure of the project, but also does not give clear signals about its future. This leaves the game in a strange position.: it exists and works, but its development is questionable.
At the same time, the company itself relies on the redistribution of resources. The developers who worked on Khazan can be involved in other projects where their experience will be more in demand.
And this is perhaps the main conclusion of the whole story: even if the game turned out to be decent, it’s not enough for a major publisher — scale is important.
