Would you rather stop playing a game than lower the difficulty? The First Berserker: Khazan devs reckon you would

Are you the sort of player that would rather drop a game altogether than simply bump the difficulty down (if such an option exists?) If so, then you might be in better company than you think – at least that’s what the developer of The First Berserker: Khazan has deduced from poring over its player data, anyway.

In an update on Steam, Neople revealed some interesting information about the behaviour of players that picked up its hardcore action role-playing game since its release in March 2025.

As part of the game’s big June update, Junho Lee (Khazan’s creative director) posted a big rundown of the thinking behind the game’s difficulty rework that explained the reasons for adding a ‘Beginner’ mode to the game. Whilst the update is a couple of weeks old now, I’ve seen the statement doing the rounds in dev Discords and message boards this morning, and thought it was worth bringing to attention more broadly.

“At launch, we set our intended standard experience as ‘Normal’ and added a more accessible option labeled ‘Easy’,” wrote Lee. “We figured that if players found the game too difficult, they’d simply switch to Easy. But when we looked at the data, we saw that many players just quit the game without ever changing the difficulty.”

Per Lee and the team’s research, there was a simple reason for this: he believes players feel like “[they’d] rather quit with dignity than drop it down to Easy.”

It’s a fascinating study of player psychology. Just look towards something like Bloodborne or Sekiro – games that launched without a second difficulty mode – and the fervent conversation that kicks up every single time someone suggests slapping an ‘Easy’ mode in those games. People get very defensive about their ability to master difficult games like these, and see it as a mark of pride that they can take on the (in some cases) extreme challenge that comes with the action-RPG genre. Just think back to the discourse around beating ‘pre-patch Radahn’ in Shadow of the Erdtree, for example.

Lee continues: “Some also said that if the default had been called ‘Hard’ instead, they would’ve felt okay about switching down to ‘Normal’.” Again, this demonstrates player ego more than anything else – did Neople’s decision to call its difficulty modes ‘Normal’ and ‘Easy’ affect player retention? It would seem so.

“Difficulty is subjective, and each player experiences Khazan’s challenges differently,” muses Lee. “That’s why we offered multiple difficulty options from the start. We wanted more people to enjoy Khazan, and we thought it would be better to let players freely adjust the challenge. We thought it was up to the player to lower it if it’s too hard or raise it if it’s too easy.

“That’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from all of you.”

The result? In the June update, Neople added in both ‘Beginner’ and ‘Hardcore’ difficulty modes. ‘Beginner’ was a result of people claiming “Sure, there’s an ‘Easy’ mode… but it’s the hardest Easy mode I’ve ever played,” per Lee, that doesn’t just make enemies easier to kill and make your character more hardy, also adds accessibility elements (allowing you to engage at your own discretion better). ‘Hardcore’, meanwhile, rolls out the bosses in the game in their “purest form”: bastard-hard versions of the encounters that are more true to the prototyped versions from earlier on in the dev cycle.

This is the polar opposite approach compared to a creator like Hidetaka Miyazaki, creator of Dark Souls. He has gone on the record as saying turning down Elden Ring’s difficulty would “break the game itself”. Monster Hunter Wilds is actually enduring complaints about the opposite end of the spectrum at the moment, with veteran players clamouring for harder fights in the post-game. Newly-released Wuchang: Fallen Feathers devs are using post-launch patches to address ‘cheap difficulty’ in its fights. It’s somewhat impossible to get the balance right the first time, clearly.

I appreciate the transparency of the developers, here. I think Neople’s assessment and reaction to player behaviour is a fascinating look behind the curtain of game development, and something more developers should endeavour to communicate. Regarding game development, I’d rather this than something a little more underhanded, like you see in Resident Evil 4 – which will quietly bump the difficulty down without telling you if you’re struggling with a certain section (see the video below for more information on that little nugget).

Difficulty in hard games is not a new conversation. In fact, it’s something of a cultural battleground. Only recently, our own Ed mused on the positive impact difficulty options had on his experience with Lies of P Overture. We’ve spoken about how achingly fine-tuned balance in video games can often be a bore, if we’re honest.

What’s your opinion? Are you more likely to pick up The First Berserker: Khazan knowing that there are more difficulty options now available? Or do you like your games as masochistic as they come (roll on, Nioh 3)?