Pearl Abyss Has Sold CCP Games Back To The Studio's Leadership Team For $120M USD

Communications Center General Discussion
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"Almost a decade after purchasing the Icelandic game studio in 2018, Pearl Abyss has sold the studio back to its leadership team for the sake of ‘financial health.’

The Korean game giant bought the EVE Online developer for a final price of $225 million USD (as chronicled by MMO blogger The Nosy Gamer), which was well short of the proposed $425 million USD the sale could have been worth had CCP Games hit certain bonus metrics. Now, the sale back to its management team results in a loss, but Pearl Abyss has reason to feel optimistic by the overall experience.

According to Korean outlet Inven Global, while EVE Online itself has been a positive in this relationship, the studio has always reported operating losses since the acquisition. This is due to the CCP Games team seeking further avenues to grow New Eden, whether through projects like the now-canceled Project Nova, its VR ventures, or the ongoing development of EVE Vanguard and EVE Frontier.

Inven Global states that the “persistent operating losses at CCP Games” placed a “significant burden on Pearl Abyss’ financial structure.” By divesting from the studio in this way, the outlet reports that analysts view it as a positive, as the company has now shed a “key source of uncertainty.”

The potential sale of CCP Games from Pearl Abyss has been floating around since rumors first started to circulate last summer, and it’s interesting to see CCP Games themselves gain total control of their company once again.

In a statement to Inven Global, a Pearl Abyss spokesperson said the following:

“Both companies have consistently worked to strengthen their global competitiveness under an independent management structure. After exploring various mid-to-long-term growth strategies, we concluded that selling the company to its current management is in the best interest of both parties’ futures.”

Pearl Abyss has reason to celebrate as it’s coming off the heels of Crimson Desert, which has sold over 5 million copies of the open-world adventure game since launching in late March. CCP Games, for their part, is gearing up for next month’s EVE Fanfest, which will see capsuleers of all stripes descend on the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik to learn what all is coming for New Eden in the future."

Basically, PA just dumped CCP like a hot, non-profitable potato.

Not sure how they plan to continue EvE: Vanguard with PA’s money now gone.

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Or, PA paid $225m to Hilmar, and he bought it back for $120m. Going forward, we can’t say PA is covering for CCP at least.

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Noone sells anything at a loss unless keeping it will result in a greater loss.

And yeah, CCP can’t hide behind PA anymore.

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Nuking Abyssals into oblivion is a nice start. No more Korean overlords demanding bot space.

I’m not saying it’s going to happen, just showing CCP creates their own hell, people can project their anger at me, Idc, I’m not a developer, I speak as I see.

It’s an instanced bottable ISK printer that should never had being put in the game.

Good ■■■■■■■ bye. Or keep trying shenanigans to sell PLEX, whatever… Watch me care in 3, 2, 1 …

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Annoying thing is, EVE is actually fairly profitable.

It’s just Hilmar keeps wasting money on projects that never work out. The Vampire game they got to alpha was apparently extremely boring, Dust was exclusive to a console just as the next generation released, Valkyrie was played by so few people I can’t even find what was wrong with it, Frontier is a front for some sort of crypto scheme, which would have been fine if it didn’t release after everyone figured out NFTs are scams which poisoned the whole crypto projects market, and Vanguard is an extraction shooter coming out after there already are a tonne of extraction shooters and that market is kind of drying up anyway.

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If I was a billion dollar, or even million dollar, business looking to aquire CCP when Hilmar tries to offload it again, I would not make the mistake PA made. Closure of the deal would be contingent on the departure of all current CCP leadership. And that will be the contingent the next buyer will have, guarantee it. Which means there will never be another buyers because Hilmar will never give up his “baby” no matter how much he’s slowly and surely killing it.

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Now you got it right, Hilmar pulled an EVE on PA. PA mistake, business is business.

@Anna_Dyneaux also very correct. WoD was such a huge mistake, I don’t believe I lived to see it corrected. WW may not be so happy tho. kewk.

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Without WoD you wouldn’t have had such a good character editor in EVE which was a ported asset and fresh and praised at the time it was introduced. Quite groundbreaking, but aged now.

Also Walking in station was developed on the WoD engine it seems.

So in theory this was set up in a good way with many synergies between EVE and WoD.

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Is CCP a one pony show that wants to be something else?

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aiui there was nothing particularly wrong with Valkyrie it’s just not that many people play VR games.

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Always has been, always will be.

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even removing the VR option didn’t help.

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Yeah, but they also marketed Valkyrie heavily as a VR game when it was originally released. They didn’t get the uptake they expected (because duh, VR was a bubble), so CCP backpeddled and later opened Valkyrie to PC play. However, they never really marketed that platform shift, so a lot of folks who might have been interested in Valkyrie if it didn’t require a $2000 VR rig, never even knew it was available on PC until after CCP decided to cancel the game. If they had done a re-launch on PC with the same fanfare as they did for VR, they might have gotten more adoption.

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As far as I am understanding it, vr is still in its infancy. CCP wanting to get in early makes sense since it has a lot of potential. I think it is the future of gaming, just might take another 20 years.

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Adoption of any tech is sort of a bell curve. Ahead of the peak is where you’ll find the majority of the risk.

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I’m in this group. VR doesn’t appeal to me one bit, but I would have played Valkyrie if I’d known it no longer was VR-only.

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Now that Hilmar is at the helm again, we can expect even worse stuff for EVE.

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I’m not sure he left the helm anytime, it’s more like he received a list of stuff to be accomplished, and he failed magistrally. Not sure now if it was on purpose tho.

It also does not mean at this point they not aiming higher, like Microsoft, Exordium seems a lot like MS kind of stuff.

That’s just conjecture.

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Case in point, this is the first I am hearing about this too.

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Already been waiting 30 years, I saw this in 94 at a convention running Hexen

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