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Steam chart-topping survival game Once Human has launched to mixed reviews, but its biggest problem has been solved in the first hour

Once Human, a breakout Next Fest star, has officially launched multiple-character creation following player pushback, addressing one of the major concerns raised in its mixed Steam reviews. However, teething problems such as server-switching bugs and privacy policy concerns remain.

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Open-world survival game Once Human has finally landed, and following player push-back, developer Starry Studio has announced that multiple-character creation has been officially launched into the game.

"Now, multiple-character creation is available," Starry Studio says of its decision to launch the feature within the first hour of the game's release. "We initially closed multi-character creation because the experience wasn't up to snuff. We wanted to perfect it by August 1, but that plan backfired. Sorry about that!"

The breakout Next Fest star climbed into the top five most-wishlisted games on Steam ahead of its July 9 launch date, but fell short of victory following a slew of unfavorable reviews. The inability to create multiple characters across multiple saves was perhaps the biggest offender, but according to information shared on Reddit drawn from the official Once Human Discord server, the issue has been rectified.

Relieved as many players might be, the survival game is still not without its share of teething problems. Many of the mixed Steam reviews praise the developer's attentiveness, especially the speed at which Starry Studio mobilized itself to launch the withheld multi-character feature. However, a bug that prevents server-switching, as well as installation errors and concerns over publisher NetEase's privacy policy are still rife among them. 

This isn't the first case of Steam review bombing this year – Dragon's Dogma 2 suffered a similar setback – and it likely won't be the last. But it's still early days for Once Human, and if Starry Studio's attentiveness holds up, there's still hope that some of the more negative reviews could be flipped with a little dev TLC.

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