[UPDATE - April 30, 2026] Pearl Abyss has now confirmed that CCP Games will be sold back to its CEO, Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, for around $120 million.
[ORIGINAL STORY] On September 6, 2018, South Korean game developer Pearl Abyss (Black Desert) acquired CCP Games and the MMORPG EVE Online, the flagship product of the Icelandic studio, for around $425 million.
Nearly seven years later, Pearl Abyss might be reconsidering their stake in CCP Games. At least, that's what a new report by Korean website MTN alleges today: PA has reportedly reached out to multiple game companies to gauge their potential interest in acquiring CCP Games.
We don't have public visibility on the sales performance of CCP's games, but we do know that there were several missteps along the way, both prior and after the acquisition by Pearl Abyss. Over its nearly thirty-year history, CCP canceled at least four games (an MMO set in the World of Darkness, Project Legion, Eve: The Second Genesis, and Project Nova), while other projects notoriously fizzled too early, such as Dust 514. For a while, CCP even released several Virtual Reality games (EVE: Valkyrie, Gunjack, Gunjack 2: End of Shift, and Sparc), although eventually it gave up once it became crystal clear that the VR market was too small.
More recently, CCP launched EVE: Frontier, a survival spin-off of EVE Online, in 'Founder Access'. Perhaps Pearl Abyss isn't thrilled with the direction of Frontier and the other new project, Vanguard, CCP's umpteenth at a shooter game connected with its MMORPG.
Whatever the case, the MTN report alleges that the Korean company would be glad to be rid of this subsidiary and focus on its own games, such as Crimson Desert and DokeV. This is the same source that shared a tentative internal release date for Crimson Desert, by the way, to which Pearl Abyss only referred back to official announcements coming from its own social channels.
Needless to say, we'll update this article if PA chooses to comment in any way. Stay tuned.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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