Crimson Desert Will Have Multiplayer, But It's Not An MMO (2025)

During an investor meeting in September this year, Pearl Abyss revealed a lot of details about its upcoming game, Crimson Desert, which you can read more about in our report. The game should be released in 2025, offer around 50–80 hours of singleplayer content, and, the part I’m really excited about, feature a GTA-style online multiplayer mode that extends the lifespan of the game with live-service features.

Pearl Abyss has a storied MMO heritage. Its long-running MMO Black Desert recently celebrated its tenth birthday, and while the game may have dropped in player numbers over the past couple of months (likely because of the launch of Throne And Liberty), there’s no denying its success over the years. It’s also been one of the better-supported MMOs on the scene, propped up with frequent content updates.

Crimson Desert looks like an amalgamation of everything Pearl Abyss has learned from developing a successful MMO, streamlined into a much less grindy single player game. While we’re not sure if there’s any direct crossover between Black Desert and Crimson Desert, the design influences are obvious - and it’s likely many members of the Black Desert development team have worked on Crimson Desert and vice versa.

Over the past year, Black Desert has received a range of quality-of-life updates designed to make the experience more welcoming for new players. The most important of these has been to slowly remove some of the more egregious pay-to-win elements, as Black Desert has always had the reputation of a credit-card-swiping grindfest. Once that sort of reputation is established it will forever hang heavy like a black cloud over a game, and from many people I’ve spoken to in the community and at events, it’s one of the main reasons why they’ve never tried the MMO.

That being the case, the news of Crimson Desert’s GTA-style multiplayer mode has me unbelievably excited. If Pearl Abyss has really learned from the Black Desert experience, it’ll know to do it differently this time. I doubt the multiplayer will be like an MMO where you have to grind for everything, but rather be a platform for a variety of content to be enjoyed with other players. Co-operative missions, PvP, horse racing, mini-games, group fishing trips, battles, exploration…the idea of chaotic GTA multiplayer set across the backdrop of the beautiful world of Crimson Desert is just an intoxicating concept.

By far one of the best features of Black Desert is its combat. No other MMO has even come close to the fluidity and snappiness of its flashy abilities and movement. There’s a reason most classic MMOs are tab-targeting, because it severely reduces the load on the server when there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of players independently casting abilities. Pearl Abyss somehow cracked the magic formula, and while it hasn’t always been utilized in the best ways - at least according to the PvP-hungry community who always complain about a lack of features for their favourite type of gameplay - the technology works. It works extremely well.

From my own experience of playing Crimson Desert at Gamescom 2024, it’s clear that everything Pearl Abyss learned from crafting satisfying combat in Black Desert has been brought across to their new title. If it can also bring this to the multiplayer mode, I can see this being a massive hit. Providing players with 50-80 hours of singleplayer content without the pressures of microtransactions or unbelievable grinding is the perfect way of lowering the barrier of entry for a new audience across console and PC.

In many ways, it feels like a fresh start for the studio. As more marketing material begins to roll out over the next few months, I can see this being one of the most hyped games of 2025. Will it go toe-to-toe with GTA 6? Probably not. Not many games can. But I’ve met the developers and spoken at length about the passion the team has for the game, and their excitement about the project gets me excited as well. Crimson Desert has already nestled itself firmly at the number one spot for my most anticipated game.