Pearl Abyss shares fell sharply on March 19, following investor disappointment tied to early reviews of its long-awaited title, Crimson Desert. The decline reflects a broader market reaction to a reception that appears to have missed internal and external expectations.
According to a report from SE Daily, the company’s stock was trading at 46,600 KRW as of 11:27 AM, down 19,000 KRW or 28.96% from the previous session. The drop comes amid a wave of selling pressure after initial critic scores for the game surfaced.
Review aggregator Metacritic currently lists Crimson Desert with a score of 78 based on early reviews. While some outlets, including Forbes and MMORPG.com, praised the game’s technical execution and overall scale, others were more critical. Publications such as Game Informer, GameSpot, and Eurogamer assigned scores in the 60s and 70s, pointing to issues with narrative depth, control responsiveness, and complex systems.
Although a score above 75 is generally considered positive, market expectations had reportedly been set higher, with analysts anticipating results closer to the mid to high 80s. The gap between those expectations and the actual score appears to have influenced investor sentiment significantly.
Crimson Desert represents one of Pearl Abyss’ largest projects to date, developed over roughly seven years with a budget of 200 billion KRW. The open-world action-adventure title is scheduled for a global release across PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X S, Mac, and GeForce NOW.
Despite the market reaction, the game has shown early commercial traction, with reports suggesting over 400,000 pre-orders and approximately $20 million in revenue on Steam prior to launch.
