Pearl Abyss's Crimson Desert reviews are now out, and it failed to meet shareholders' expectations, leading to a drop in the company's stock price.
The South Korean video game developer and publisher Pearl Abyss's stock plunged nearly 30% (~29.88%) on Thursday, March 19, following a "below expectation" review and low Metacritic scores for its latest premium IP, Crimson Desert.
Update on March 26: The stock is now up by around 14.41%.
Below you can find our original report under the old title "Pearl Abyss Shares Plunge More Than 40% and Hits Lower Limit as 'Crimson Desert' Reviews and Metacritic Score Disappoint."
Update on March 20: The stock has now crashed more than 40%.
Original story:
As mentioned in the report from News 1's Park Seung-hee, "Domestic users and shareholders had expected a high score of around 90, but this fell far short of that."
However, the game's Metacritic Score is 78/100, with major publications giving it between 6-8 out of 10, citing a weak narrative, clunky controls, and such.
Publisher Pearl Abyss' stock plunges nearly 30% following Crimson Desert reviews
— Shinobi602 (@shinobi602) March 19, 2026
https://t.co/gqcSKaZYsX#CrimsonDesert pic.twitter.com/YZymQSkwb9
Now, even though a majority of Korean News Outlets are assuming the review scores to be the sole reason, we think there's more to this story than just review or Metacritic scores.
According to Alinea Analytics, Crimson Desert had already sold around 400k copies on Steam, generating around $20m from pre-orders alone.
Moreover, Pearl Abyss's Q3 2025 earnings were up by +34.44% YoY and the Q4 2025 by +7.58%. There's definitely a picture we're all missing that led the Shareholders to dumb the stock.
So far, we haven't heard anything from Pearl Abyss on this. However, we are tracking the story and will update once we have new details.
Crimson Desert is now available on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, PS5, Mac, and Xbox Series X | S.