Crimson Desert Release Window Confirmed

Summary

• Crimson Desert by Pearl Abyss is set to launch in late 2025, featuring main protagonist Kliff and his Greymanes companions.
• The game will have a simultaneous worldwide release on PC and consoles, as Pearl Abyss opted not to make it a Sony exclusive.
• Early previews of Crimson Desert highlight challenging combat and an immersive open world on par with Dragon’s Dogma 2 and God of War.

South Korean video game developer and publisher Pearl Abyss has revealed that Crimson Desert, its upcoming open-world fantasy experience, is launching in late 2025. Prior to working on Crimson Desert, the company released the popular MMORPG Black Desert Online, among other titles.

Crimson Desert, Pearl Abyss’ first single-player project, will follow main protagonist Kliff and his Greymanes companions as they travel across the continent of Pywel. A new teaser for the upcoming medieval game showed off additional in-engine footage and even provided a launch window.

The Crimson Desert trailer that aired during this year’s recently concluded The Game Awards confirmed a late 2025 release for the title. According to Pearl Abyss, the game is set to have a simultaneous worldwide launch on PC and consoles. Sony wanted to turn Crimson Desert into an exclusive, but Pearl Abyss ultimately decided to publish the title independently. The developer explained to investors that this choice was more advantageous since it was already capable of publishing globally and had branches across the world. Under a typical exclusivity deal, 30% of a game’s revenue would be used to cover platform fees, while the developer and publisher had to split the remaining 70%, Pearl Abyss said.

When Will Crimson Desert be Released?

The decision to release Crimson Desert on multiple platforms is already seemingly paying off for Pearl Abyss, as data provided by analytics tracker SteamDB showed that the game now ranks among the 200 most wishlisted games on Valve’s popular distribution platform. The title will offer a rich combat experience and an immersive open world as Pearl Abyss has promised. Early previews of Crimson Desert presented the game, which is being built using a proprietary engine called BlackSpace, as a challenging action-adventure title that many compared to Dragon’s Dogma 2 by Capcom and the latest God of War entries.

The Game Awards 2024 attracted four million concurrent viewers, making it the most watched ceremony in the show’s history, Steam Charts reported. Aside from Crimson Desert, other upcoming titles like FromSoftware’s Elden Ring Nightreign, The Witcher 4 by CD Projekt Red, and a sequel to the PlayStation 2 classic Okami appeared at this year’s event. The December 12 show that was held in Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater had plenty of key industry figures and celebrities as guests, including Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard, legendary Japanese developer Hideo Kojima, Remedy Entertainment creative director Sam Lake, actor Harrison Ford, and rapper Snoop Dogg.