All articles tagged with #pearl abyss
Crimson Desert faced backlash after update 1.06.00 altered Damiane’s Elegant Carmine outfit, prompting negative Steam reviews; Pearl Abyss said the change was unintentional and caused by a bug and will be fixed in the next patch, despite the game’s strong commercial performance.
Pearl Abyss posted a Q1 revenue of ₩328.5B ($220.6M), up 419.8% year over year driven by Crimson Desert's launch, with ₩212.1B operating profit and ₩170B net profit; 59% of revenue came from PC and 38% from console, while NA/EU accounted for 81% of total. Full‑year guidance is ₩879–₩975B, Crimson Desert revenue is expected to front‑load (₩644.1–₩734.8B), and the company is developing DokeV and Plan 8. It also sold Fenris Creations back to its CEO for $120M.
CCP Games has rebranded as Fenris Creations after a management buyout from Pearl Abyss, driven in part by branding concerns with the CCP acronym and a desire for renewed independence. Valuation shifts since 2018 illustrate changing market dynamics. Fenris will focus on Eve Online and its spin-offs (Eve Frontier, Vanguard) with a three-year expansion plan, while partnering with Google DeepMind to explore AI-enabled development and governance. The move preserves a shared Eve universe across projects and aims to modernize core systems, improve new-player experience, and pursue open modding and economy ideas within the Fenris umbrella.
Pearl Abyss says Crimson Desert's next major patch will drop in the coming days, adding new special mounts and an extraction feature to recover materials used in equipment refinement, along with a broad slate of bug fixes; a recent patch (1.05.00) rolled out, and future patches have historically released on weekends, though no exact date is set yet.
Pearl Abyss transformed Crimson Desert from a lukewarm launch into a global phenomenon by delivering near-weekly updates that embraced player feedback, a strategy that helped it become the fastest-selling South Korean game with over 5 million copies sold since its March release.
South Korea’s prime minister Kim Min-seok praised Crimson Desert after it surpassed 4 million sales just two weeks after launch, calling the game a “new chapter in K-content” and a turning point for the domestic games industry, highlighting its in-house technology and cultural touches like Korean food and taekwondo as signs of Korea’s growing influence in global gaming.
Pearl Abyss is previewing Crimson Desert's upcoming major patch, which will add new difficulty settings, keyboard/mouse and controller presets, inventory category tabs, and improvements to distant scenery, with a larger download due to the visual upgrades; the patch is expected to release sometime next week.
An opinion piece argues Crimson Desert's undisclosed use of AI-generated placeholder art reveals a larger industry trend: studios increasingly rely on generative AI to cut costs, prompting ethical concerns among players, critics, and awards bodies and urging greater transparency.
Crimson Desert’s original, demanding combat defined its identity, but backlash over reduced challenge led Pearl Abyss to dial back the friction. The studio now introduces a dedicated difficulty setting to restore that edge while giving players a choice, balancing the game’s tough design with broader accessibility.
A WIRED review portrays Crimson Desert as a cat-dad sandbox: you play as Kliff in a sprawling open world where you can adopt up to 30 cats (including a portly ‘loafy’ named Potato), pet them, and let cat companionship flavor a grand adventure that blends satisfying combat, inventive traversal, and gorgeous scenery—launched with bugs but patched over time, with a future multiplayer mode teased.
Pearl Abyss released Crimson Desert patch 1.03 for PS5, delivering a slew of QoL and bug fixes: improved Greymane and Pailune camps, expanded farm areas, a new Weapon Display option, and a Fast Forward Speed control; quest and NPC issues are ironed out, Abyss puzzles and combat feel smoother with updated lock-on and new Kliff ability Focused Aerial Roll plus related Damiane/Oongka tweaks; UI, maps, and loading screens see improvements, plus new music tracks. The update also brings broader stability and performance fixes across platforms and adds advanced graphics options (PS5 Enhanced Raytracing; Pro models get PSSR Sharpness; PC gains XeSS options) as part of ongoing enhancements.
Pearl Abyss’s upcoming Crimson Desert patch (April–June) adds boss rematch options, enemy remnants retaking liberated locations, and new difficulty levels (easy/normal/hard). It also brings character tweaks (Damiane and Oongka gains akin to Force Palm and Axiom Force), new outfits, optional weapon-back visuals, plus quality-of-life improvements (storage tabs, UI tweaks, controls, and distant scenery). Pets and mounts get updates, and the full original soundtrack will be released for free on Steam and streaming platforms.
Pearl Abyss’s Crimson Desert update removes AI-generated art assets discovered at launch, replacing them with non-AI artwork and promising a comprehensive audit to align visuals with the game’s art direction. The studio admitted AI was used “primarily” in early production and apologized for the lack of transparency, noting the replacements include a painting with too many limbs. This follows similar controversies elsewhere and comes as Crimson Desert has sold over 3 million copies and recently set a Steam concurrency record.
A ~12-hour look at Crimson Desert finds a deeply flawed game: a generic, hard-to-engage story and awkward controls sit beside an expansive, detailed open world and a surprising variety of mechanics and deep combat. The writer appreciates moments when systems click (like learning moves by watching NPCs and quirky interactions like dropkicking enemies), but frequent design oddities—confusing prompts, heavy inventories, and unnecessary disguises—dampen the experience. Overall, it’s entertaining and ambitious enough to keep playing, though not clearly worth full price, and likely best on sale.
Pearl Abyss indicated at a shareholders’ meeting that it has begun research and development with interest in bringing Crimson Desert to Nintendo Switch 2, noting that Switch’s lower specs would require compromises; no port is confirmed as the game has only just launched.