Crimson Desert, the new game from developer Pearl Abyss of Black Desert Online fame, launched today with a surprising caveat – the game doesn’t support Intel Arc graphics, one of which ranks among the best GPUs. It doesn’t seem like it will any time soon, either, with the game’s official FAQ suggesting that Intel Arc users seek out a refund. Intel has fired back, saying that it has reached out to Pearl Abyss “many times” and even provided the studio with early access to hardware and drivers across multiple Intel products.
“We’re aware that Crimson Desert currently doesn’t launch on systems with Intel GPUs and we’re hugely disappointed that players using Intel graphics hardware can’t jump into the world of Pywel at launch,” wrote Intel’s developer team in an email sent to Tom's Hardware and other outlets. "Over the past several years, we’ve reached out to Pearl Abyss many times to help test, validate, and optimize support for Intel graphics, providing early hardware, drivers, and engineering resources across multiple generations, including Alchemist, Battlemage, Meteor Lake, and Lunar Lake."
Currently, if you try to launch Crimson Desert with an Arc GPU, you'll be presented with an error message that reads, "the graphics device is currently not supported." Although Pearl Abyss has said that Arc graphics aren't supported officially at this time, other users have encountered similar errors.
On the Steam discussion boards, there are over 100 posts that reference this specific error, many of them seeing the error on AMD or Nvidia GPUs.
It's unclear if Pearl Abyss will add Arc support in the future, but the company's guidance for Arc users to consult the return policy of the platform they purchased the game on suggests support isn't coming soon. Intel, for its part, has put the blame back on the developer: "For details on the choice not to enable Intel support at launch, please reach out directly to Pearl Abyss."
Intel's discrete GPUs make up only a sliver of the total market. In JPR's most recent AIB report, Intel cracked just 1% of market share against AMD and Nvidia. However, Intel graphics extend far beyond the discrete desktop market, with Arc GPUs in Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, and Panther Lake laptops.
"Our teams are deeply committed to helping all studios deliver the best experience possible, providing open tools, documentation, and direct engineering support to make sure their games run well for everyone, including the tens of millions of players using Intel GPUs. We remain ready to assist Pearl Abyss however we can," wrote Intel.
