Crimson Desert has passed 5 million copies sold worldwide less than a month after launch. Pearl Abyss said the game reached the milestone on April 15, just 26 days after its March 19 release, making it the fastest Korean console game to hit that number.
Pearl Abyss had already said on April 1 that Crimson Desert sold 4 million copies in 12 days, after earlier hitting 2 million on day one and 3 million in four days. That means the game added another million sales in the two weeks after that early burst and kept enough momentum to clear 5 million before the end of its first month.
Crimson Desert has already outpaced two of 2025’s biggest RPG releases, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. The former needed five months to reach 5 million sales after reaching a symbolic 3.3 million copies in 33 days. The latter also sold more than 5 million copies, but it took a whole year.
Still, Crimson Desert is not the leader this year, as Resident Evil Requiem reached 5 million in a staggering six days after its release, confirming that Capcom’s Resident Evil franchise still has brand appeal and staying power.
This is, nevertheless, a phenomenal result for Pearl Abyss. The studio was known only for its MMO Black Desert Online before, and reaching such a number so quickly with a new single-player open-world action-adventure IP is a dream scenario even for established studios, let alone an MMO dev.
The studio hasn’t been resting on its laurels either. Crimson Desert is a massive game, so it had a fair share of issues on release, but with the help of community feedback, the developers have been steadily fixing the biggest pain points, adding quality-of-life features, polishing the visuals, and generally sanding off the roughest edges.
The game may not win any awards this year, but it still left its mark with the people who wanted a new single-player “forever game.”
