Why Crimson Desert Took 7 Years: Pearl Abyss' Extreme Performance Focus And BlackSpace Engine Secrets

Crimson Desert, which is releasing later this month, has been in development for over 7 years, and we recently got a bit of a hint as to why it took so long. An alleged former member of the Pearl Abyss engine team left a comment on the game’s official YouTube channel offering some details on why the game has taken so long.

"The reason development took 7 years is that they basically overhauled the engine every single year to optimize performance and push more polygons. For example, while most engines optimize through culling (simply not rendering what's unseen), the BlackSpace engine actually deletes the vertices. They also try new methods to shift tasks typically handled by the CPU over to the GPU."

The former employee would go on to say that the team at Pearl Abyss is obsessed with performance, which has caused the game to use no scripted code in the final build.

They use all sorts of 'old-school' techniques like integer-based data, bit-level data, and simplified data structures, stuff you don't really see in modern games anymore. To put it simply, they are absolutely obsessed with performance. It’s on a completely different level compared to your typical mass-produced Unreal Engine 5 games.

The employee did stop short of crowning the game prior to the launch, even commenting that they themselves struggle to play Black Desert for long amounts of time.

I wasn't on the content team and I left a while ago, so I can't say for sure if the gameplay loop itself will stay engaging for hundreds of hours (personally, I couldn't play Black Desert for very long). However, I can guarantee the performance, the graphics, and the sheer volume of content. The whole reason they built an in-house engine was to churn out massive amounts of content with a small team.

It is not all good news for Crimson Desert. The game recently added confirmation that Denuvo DRM will be required to play the game on Steam. Denuvo DRM is an anti-piracy software that has a poor reputation in the gaming community. For one, it requires players to be online for DRM to work, adding Crimson Desert to the growing list of single-player games that require an internet connection for an otherwise offline game. DRM is also rumored to sometimes cause performance issues. In some cases, games having performance notably improve after the DRM is removed.

What is your hype level for Crimson Desert? Does the inclusion of a DRM change your mind about the game? Let us know in the comments and come join us in our DRM-free GamerzTheory Discord.