Additionally, controversy has begun to swirl around Pearl Abyss‘s game due to its use of generative artificial intelligence.
Crimson Desert was released on March 19, and it took less than 24 hours to reach its first sales milestone. The developer, Pearl Abyss, announced on Twitter that Crimson Desert sold two million copies on its first day: “We are humbled to announce that Crimson Desert has sold 2 million copies worldwide. Thank you so much to our fans, community, and everyone who has joined us in Pywel. We will listen closely to the wide range of feedback shared by the community and work to make improvements quickly, doing our utmost to make the journey ahead even more enjoyable for our players.”
We are incredibly humbled to share that #CrimsonDesert has sold through 2 million copies worldwide. Thank you so much to our fans, community, and everyone who has joined us in Pywel. We will listen closely to the wide range of feedback shared by the community and work to make… pic.twitter.com/AivMESKWpu
— Crimson Desert (@CrimsonDesert_) March 20, 2026
The game’s day-one update fixed several bugs the press encountered and added a fast-travel point to one of the main areas. This feature wasn’t available during testing. Pearl Abyss is working to resolve more issues. However, the game’s mixed critical reception has already dealt a blow to Pearl Abyss; the company’s stock price plummeted 30% when reviews were not uniformly positive.
Additionally, the game does not run on Intel Arc graphics cards. It’s unusual to see such a major title limited to AMD and Nvidia hardware exclusively. What could the real reason be? Pearl Abyss confirmed in the FAQ section of its official website that Crimson Desert will not work on Intel Arc. Even worse, the developer hasn’t revealed whether they plan to support Intel Arc graphics cards in the future.
According to Pearl Abyss, anyone who purchased the game expecting Intel Arc support should request a refund. Although Intel Arc GPUs do not dominate the market, many users own them, including those with dedicated and integrated versions. Intel recently launched the Panther Lake series, which offers one of the most powerful integrated graphics solutions for portable platforms. However, the game still won’t run on them. When users try to run the game, an error message appears stating, “The graphics device is currently not supported.” This means that many upcoming handheld devices equipped with Panther Lake SoC processors will not support the game. Intel is already planning to launch an SoC series tailored specifically for handhelds later this year. Intel issued a statement to WCCFTech regarding the lack of Arc GPU support in Crimson Desert:
“We’re aware that Crimson Desert currently doesn’t launch on systems with Intel GPUs, and we’re disappointed that players with Intel graphics can’t jump into the world of Pywel at launch. Ensuring that games run smoothly is a collaboration between developers and hardware manufacturers. Over the past several years, we’ve reached out to Pearl Abyss many times to help test, validate, and optimize support for Intel graphics. We’ve provided them with early hardware, drivers, and engineering resources across multiple generations, including Alchemist, Battlemage, Meteor Lake, and Lunar Lake. Our teams are deeply committed to helping all studios deliver the best possible experience, providing open tools, documentation, and direct engineering support to ensure their games run well for everyone, including the tens of millions of players using Intel GPUs. We remain ready to assist Pearl Abyss in any way we can. For details on the choice not to enable Intel support at launch, please reach out directly to Pearl Abyss,” wrote Intel.
The game was already facing heavy criticism in the week leading up to its release for adding Denuvo to Crimson Desert as yet another burden. Now, another wave of criticism is brewing as players have discovered graphics in the game that appear to be generated by artificial intelligence, particularly in an element intended to resemble a historical painting. The image is clearly not what one would expect from a human attempting to depict a historical battle scene, even in a fictional world. Unless, of course, in Crimson Desert, Pywell is a place where human faces no longer have features and horse legs grow out of people – or human bodies grow out of horse legs, it’s hard to tell.
I found this in game piece of artwork. Is this AI generated?
byu/Due-Perspective9206 inCrimsonDesert
This isn’t the only example, but it’s the most striking. Similar examples of paintings that look as if they were generated by AI have been shared in other Reddit posts. These paintings lack key details that a human artist wouldn’t omit. Online gamers have begun to criticize Pearl Abyss for using these types of assets in the game. However, the game’s Steam page does not indicate that generative AI tools or AI-generated assets were used in its development or that they appear in the final product.
Although Valve changed its policy in 2024, requiring developers to disclose this information, it is ultimately up to the developers to be honest about it.
Source: WCCFTech, WCCFTech, WCCFTech, Pearl Abyss
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