Pearl Abyss held a shareholder meeting, where the company’s president, Ho Jin—yong, revealed new sales figures for Crimson Desert, acknowledged problems with the plot and shared plans for the future – including the team’s transition to DokeV.
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Crimson Desert: sales are flying up, but far from ideal
The launch of Crimson Desert turned out to be powerful — more than 3 million copies in 4.5 days. The Pearl Abyss action game is now moving at full speed towards 5 million copies sold, and this is after a series of updates that have boosted player ratings. Commercially, everything is fine. But the story turned out differently.
Ho Jin-yong said bluntly at a meeting with shareholders: he understands the criticism of the plot. Moreover, the team itself saw the weaknesses even at the final stage of development. But the priority was deliberately given to the gameplay, in which Pearl Abyss feels most confident. There simply wasn’t enough time for a serious revision of the narrative.
However, it was on the gameplay that Pearl Abyss built her entire bet — and, judging by the results, she did not lose.
Crimson Desert: Gameplay that makes up for a weak storyline
Crimson Desert is based on mechanics. Not based on the plot, not on the characters, but on a pure gameplay foundation. And he does it so confidently that 5 million sales cease to surprise.
The open world here is not a decorative backdrop for quests. Pearl Abyss has assembled a dense sandbox system, where each zone is tied to physics, verticality and dynamic events. Locations like Pywel and Calpheon, familiar to Black Desert veterans, have been redesigned from scratch: less MMO routine, more scripted activities and live encounters. The feeling is different.
Exploring the world works in several layers at once:
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Dynamic weather affects combat — rain reduces grip, wind changes the trajectory of arrows;
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The endurance system limits parkour and rock climbing — you can’t just climb anywhere.;
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Random events — caravans, ambushes, NPC duels — are generated right during the journey, without script triggers.
By the way, the world of Crimson Desert is not “crammed” with content for show. The density of activities is lower than in Black Desert, but each of them is noticeably deeper in mechanics. This is especially felt in quests — instead of the standard “bring-kill”, there are scripted scenes and variable outcomes. The approach is high-quality, although not without rough edges.
The Crimson Desert Combat system is Pearl Abyss’s signature action game on steroids
The fight is a separate story. Pearl Abyss actually crossed its proprietary Black Desert system with action-RPG elements of the Dragon’s Dogma level. The hybrid turned out to be audacious.
What’s under the hood:
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Full—fledged grapple system, throws and counterattacks – grapple mechanics are tied to physics;
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Manual aiming in long—range combat without autoloading – accuracy is really needed here;
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Strike bundles are based on timings, not banal cooldowns;
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The environment participates in the battle directly — you can throw the enemy off a cliff or slam him into a wall.
According to testers, combat loop in Crimson Desert is based on improvisation, not on learned rotations. This sharply distinguishes the Pearl Abyss project from classic MMOs — and it seems that this is what they are coming here for.
It is worth mentioning the Blackspace engine separately — it pulls large-scale battles without loading and gives destructibility of objects. Not total destruction, but key elements of the environment react to the player’s actions — and this directly affects tactics.
And yes, it was because of this combat system that Pearl Abyss abandoned full—fledged multiplayer in Crimson Desert at the start. Syncing physics, AI, and combat online is too expensive a story, especially without FPS drawdown. A compromise that the studio is not ready to make yet.
By the way, according to unofficial information, part of the plot problems of Crimson Desert is related to personnel changes in the project management. The change of key people — presumably — led to the loss of a unified vision, and the final version of the story was already being assembled in the “as soon as we can” mode.
Multiplayer in Crimson Desert — we wanted to, but we ran into technology
The topic of multiplayer mode has also surfaced. Pearl Abyss experimented with multiplayer for Crimson Desert, but faced severe limitations: the introduction of online would require serious sacrifices in graphics and performance. It is still unclear whether the developers will abandon this idea completely. But there’s not much optimism, judging by Jin Young’s tone.
DLC, Mods, Difficulty, and the Nintendo Switch 2
Several other hot topics were touched upon at the meeting:
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DLC for Crimson Desert — there are no specific plans. The studio relies on the development of the basic version through free updates and sales growth.
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Mod support — Pearl Abyss is considering this possibility, but the implementation rests on the need to open up a significant part of the engine. No decisions have been made yet.
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Reduced difficulty — developers want to lower the entry threshold, including through working with the community and streamers.
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Version for Nintendo Switch 2 — the theme is being analyzed, but the console’s hardware limitations may bury the porting even at the prototype stage.
Pearl Abyss switches to DokeV release in 2-3 years
And most importantly. The core Crimson Desert team has already switched to DokeV, an open—world action adventure game announced a few years ago. Both projects run on the Blackspace engine, and DokeV’s development went on in parallel, just in slow motion. Now Pearl Abyss promises to accelerate — according to studio estimates, there are two to three years left before the release of DokeV.
