Pearl Abyss isn’t resting on its laurels following the successful launch of Crimson Desert and is already working on bringing new content to the game. While not everything was roses and rainbows at launch time, due to an initial lack of support for Intel GPUs and then admitting to using AI art post-release, it didn’t stop those sales numbers from reaching impressive levels.
- Pearl Abyss announced that Crimson Desert surpassed 2 million units sold within its first 24 hours of release on March 20, 2026, and went on to sell 3 million copies worldwide within its first week. – VGC
- Pre-launch momentum was also exceptional — Crimson Desert was approaching 400K pre-orders on Steam alone before release, representing over $20M in gross revenue, with more than 10% of those sales occurring in a single 24-hour window at the peak of the marketing campaign.
- At the three-day pre-launch mark, Crimson Desert’s $20.3M on Steam outperformed Kingdom Come: Deliverance II by nearly 4x and Expedition 33 by nearly 10x at the same point in their respective pre-release timeframe.
- The PC version of the game currently sits at a 78 on Metacritic, reflecting “generally favorable reviews.” –Push Square
Moving forward, CEO Heo Jin-young has acknowledged that player feedback is asking for gameplay patches, but hasn’t mentioned any fresh narrative possibilities for protagonist Kliff. The story has been a point of common criticism, and he sympathizes with player disappointment regarding it, but the team chose to focus on strengthening gameplay instead. When it comes to paid DLC, the CEO said the free content will be a priority and is enthusiastic to bring the game to the Nintendo Switch 2. Request for multiplayer support has also been made, and the devs are looking into it, but have said it would be difficult to implement.
Lastly, the team has already begun work on its next game, which is called DukeV, and will use the same engine as Crimson Desert. DokeV is a stark departure in style but will still be an open-world action-adventure game with heavy creature-collecting elements. In terms of art design, it could use an anime-inspired art style and cute characters inhabiting a modern urban world. The expected release could be sometime in 2027.