South Korean Pearl Abyss continues its expansion into the Western market. The company known for MMO Black Desert Online is opening a new office in Europe. A few years earlier, she acquired CCP Games.Pearl Abyss CEO Junghee Jin told about his plans in an interview with VentureBeat.
The company intends to double its investments in business development outside of South Korea.
To do this, Pearl Abyss is expanding its staff in Los Angeles and opening a new office in Amsterdam. It will be headed by the CEO of the European division Dae Ra Kim (Dae Ra Kim). Now the company’s representative offices in the USA and Europe have 47 employees. This is insignificant compared to Pearl Abyss’ total staff of 900 people.
The company began to explore the Western market in 2018, opening its first office in the USA. At the same time, Pearl Abyss acquired the Icelandic studio CCP Games for $ 425 million. If the developers of EVE Online continued to develop their project independently, then the new offices will have to serve the publisher’s future titles.
Among the main tasks of Western offices are localization, marketing, customer support, community management, PR and creation of server infrastructure. Pearl Abyss also plans to open offices in Latin America.
The new strategy should also contribute to the development of the company’s main project on the global market — the Black Desert franchise, whose audience exceeds 40 million people. Last September, Black Desert Online’s revenue reached $1.7 billion.