Pearl Abyss Gives Every Employee a £2,700 Bonus After Crimson Desert Hits 5 Million Sales

Five million copies. That's the number that's now paying people's bills at Pearl Abyss. South Korean outlet MTN reports the studio handed every single employee a 5 million Won bonus, roughly $3,400 (about £2,700), as a direct thank you for Crimson Desert's extraordinary run since its March launch.

All 733 of them. That's a total payout sitting at around 3.7 billion Won, which works out to approximately $2.5 million USD in one go.

CEO Heo Jin-young reportedly addressed staff in an internal statement: "I express my deep respect and gratitude for the hard work of each and every one of you who created a product that the world is enthusiastic about, and I am paying a celebratory bonus for achieving 5 million sales to all employees who have silently fulfilled their roles in their respective positions."

He added: "Our journey does not end here. The potential we confirmed today will be the most powerful driving force to overcome any challenge we face in the future."

Worth noting, this isn't even the full picture. MTN says another bonus is already scheduled for early 2027, tied to overall financial performance across 2026. So the team may well be looking at a second windfall on top of this one.

Crimson Desert reached 5 million sales in under a month. To put that into context, it hit 2 million within its first 24 hours, climbed to 3 million within the week, passed 4 million not long after, and then crossed the 5 million mark before most players had even finished the main story. For a brand new IP from a studio whose reputation is built largely on the online game Black Desert, those numbers are a real statement.

The game's success has attracted attention beyond the gaming press too. South Korea's Prime Minister Kim Min-seok praised Crimson Desert last week, pointing specifically to the fact it was built using Pearl Abyss' own proprietary technology rather than a Western engine. He described it as opening "a new chapter in K-content" and called the result "a crucial turning point, demonstrating that the domestic game industry can expand and leap forward across diverse platforms, including consoles."

That kind of government-level recognition is rare for any game studio, anywhere.

South Korean developers have been on a proper run recently when it comes to single-player console games. Shift Up's Stellar Blade on PS5 and Neowiz's soulslike Lies of P both carved out real audiences in the West. But Crimson Desert has moved faster than either of them.

It's been a rocky ride in places, mind you. We covered the Intel Arc GPU situation at launch, where players with Arc cards couldn't even start the game. There were also questions raised early on about suspected AI-generated artwork found on manor walls inside Pywel, which Pearl Abyss never directly addressed. Neither issue seems to have slowed the sales much.

Pearl Abyss has since kept patching aggressively. The biggest update yet added difficulty settings, storage improvements, and even birds as pets, which tells you everything you need to know about the pace of post-launch support.

If you're still getting into Crimson Desert, we tracked its launch week closely from those first Steam numbers right through to the 3 million sales milestone. The game is in a noticeably better state now than it was at release.

IGN has reached out to Pearl Abyss for comment on the bonus reports.