Pearl Abyss has apparently put CCP Games – and EVE Online – up for sale

According to reporting on Korean financial news site Money Today, CCP Games – and therefore EVE Online – are back on the market.

Readers will surely recall that Korean games company Pearl Abyss, then best known for the massive “big five” MMORPG Black Desert, bought CCP Games all the way back in 2018, stunning players of its long-running sci-fi sandbox MMO.

But now, MTN says that the companies have “selected an underwriter for the sale of CCP and are sounding out multiple game companies for their interest in acquiring it,” Pearl Abyss having originally purchased it for a whopping 250B KRW ($180M US) to acquire its playerbase and mobile platform, though apparently in PA’s eyes it “fell short of initial expectations.”

Naturally, the EVE Online playerbase is taking this all extremely well. In seriousness, it’s not really the EVE Online playerbase that is the problem to begin with. We cover Pearl Abyss’ financials every quarter, so we know EVE Online brought in nearly $60M in revenues in 2024 alone. For a quick comparison, that’s only slightly less than Guild Wars 2 brought in for NCsoft ($67M) over the same period; all of Daybreak’s games together pulled in $80M. EVE Online is more than carrying its own weight.

CCP Games’ problem is what CCP Games’ problem has always been, the same problem that led to the buyout in the first place: CCP’s leaders overextend and overspend on developing new games that simply do not pan out. Last year, MOP’s Justin compiled a top 10 list of all the weird EVE Online spinoffs and other projects CCP Games has attempted: DUST 514, EVE Valkyrie, EVE Gunjack, Project Legion, EVE Echoes, Project Nova, and EVE Galaxy Conquest – and that’s without even mentioning Sparc and CCP’s other VR failed ambitions (a reader reminded us about World of Darkness, too!). Of those, only EVE Echoes, developed in conjunction with NetEase, is still functioning. And right now, the studio is pouring EVE Online’s revenues into upcoming MMOFPS EVE Vanguard and its blockchain monstrosity EVE Frontier, which makes CCP’s balance sheet look dreadful as it slowly loses money. If Pearl Abyss couldn’t get CCP to turn that around, maybe another company would have better luck.