South Korean video game developer Pearl Abyss has announced that their flagship MMORPG game Black Desert has surpassed 50 million registered players.
The core game, which originally launched in 2014 and saw its release in the west back in 2016 ,is now played in over 150 countries across various platforms. Black Desert Mobile followed in late 2019. The company will celebrate the 50M registration milestone and its 12th anniversary by offering a week of free play in Black Desert Online starting on the 12th of September.
Back in 2020 Pearl Abyss revealed to us that the mobile version had two-thirds of the series’ total downloads. This was all within a year of the mobile launch, and as of last month Black Desert received 200k downloads on android alone. The franchise currently surpasses more than $2 billion in lifetime revenue.
Future Moves
CEO of Pearl Abyss James Heo spoke on the latest milestone of registrations saying “We are very proud and thankful that our Black Desert franchise has managed to reach so many players across the globe, and we feel humbled by the positive support we received from our community”. He then went on to explain the future of Black Desert and Pearl Abyss “We will strive relentlessly to improve Black Desert and build on our success with new IP that are currently being developed using brand new technical facilities and are running on our proprietary BlackSpace Engine.”
Pearl Abyss has grown the Black Desert franchise in the past by partnering with the likes of Amazon to offer in-game rewards, and we have also seen their expansion in the west over the last year with the opening of new offices and extension of others such as their Los Angeles-base. They have also recently released the first season of their 3v3 mode which will see finals played at TwitchCon San Diego.
Pearl Abyss won a place in our Top 50 Mobile Game Makers 2020 list for their efforts with Black Desert.