We are finally one week away from Crimson Desert hitting PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S consoles next week on March 19, 2026. Developer Pearl Abyss put out the game's official launch trailer today, showcasing it once more ahead of its launch date that you'd be forgiven if you believed would never come at one point during its many delays.
Thankfully, it is actually on its way. We've seen what feels like a hundred gameplay clips with its multiple deep dives and Gamescom previews over the years, and earlier this week, we finally got a look at its full recommended specs across PC and consoles.
Today, on top of the new launch trailer (which you can check out below), there's also been an update to the game's Steam page (spotted on Reddit), which confirms that it will use Denuvo Anti-Tamper 5 on PCs.
Revealing its inclusion just one week before release has already caused ire among players who were otherwise looking forward to jumping into Crimson Desert and its mythical world of Pywel next week, though Pearl Abyss has yet to make a statement in response.
"I love when developers shadow drop performance issues," is what one Reddit user had to say in response to the news, and it pretty much sums up the overall feeling of PC players. It's also kicked up a new wave of the controversy that Pearl Abyss was dealing with just last week, when players were accusing the studio of hiding the game's real performance capabilities on consoles.
Now, that conversation has shifted to players questioning its PC performance, which, until now, has had some incredibly positive previews from the likes of trusted industry icons Digital Foundry. Hopefully, those early previews will still be able to hold up once the game is out and players across a variety of builds have been able to spend significant time with it.
Crimson Desert is primed to be one of the biggest releases of the year, and as much as PC players may bemoan the last-minute Denuvo DRM notice, it'll likely still reach that watermark. We'll see what next week's launch brings.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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