Before its launch in March, we heard from an alleged former Pearl Abyss developer that Crimson Desert was a different game from the typical modern AAA game powered by Unreal Engine 5, as the Blackspace Engine allowed the Korean developer to do things that would otherwise have been impossible. Interestingly, according to current Pearl Abyss developers, the game and its many updates wouldn't have been released as quickly as they were without the proprietary engine specifically developed for the game.
"Since the Black Desert engine was developed in-house, it would have been unusual to switch to a commercial engine for the new Crimson Desert project," Jin-hwan Kim, Lead Engineer, and Jin-ho Yoon, Senior Leader of the Game Engine Graphics Division at Pearl Abyss said to Mein MMO during gamescom 2026. "While commercial engines are excellent and offer many practical features, we didn't want to rely on external technology for our core competencies in game development."
"Furthermore, our development approach might not have been compatible with that of a commercial engine," they continued. "If we had had to wait for updates to get the necessary features, we wouldn't have been able to release...