Crimson Desert has slowly but steadily become one of 2026’s open world games to watch out for, and with a March release date now locked, lots of people are seriously starting to consider making a trip to Pywel soon. At the same time, veterans might have reservations about jumping in at launch based on Black Desert Online’s MTX-heavy model.
Of course, large numbers of microtransactions and optional cosmetics are to be expected any time a game’s model is free-to-play, and Pearl Abyss’ PR and marketing director Will Powers reminded everyone of that during his appearance in episode 457 of the Dropped Frames podcast (hat tip to GamesRadar): “It’s a monetization model: if you do free-to-play, then you need to make up the revenue in a different way.” Easy to understand if you’ve been playing video games in the last 20 years or so, but we all know we often need to make things as clear as possible.
You can’t blame veterans for thinking even a strictly single-player game like Crimson Desert (which did start off as an online project) could be filled with microtransactions à la Assassin’s Creed though. After all, it’d be easy for Pearl Abyss to pull the trigger on those if the game is a massive success, as we know for a fact players typically like putting more money into the experiences they greatly enjoy.
Powers shot such thoughts and comments down quickly: “This is made to be a premium experience that you buy and enjoy the world, and not something for microtransactions.” Here’s where we underline such decisions are above his pay grade and anything could happen post-launch, but it seems that’s where Pearl Abyss officially stands right now. If you’re picking up Crimson Desert, you’re getting a traditional, fully featured open-world adventure with no cosmetics or mounts earned via MTX. “This is a premium experience. That is the transaction. Like, full stop.”
That said, Crimson Desert has three different editions (both digital and physical) up for pre-order at the time of writing, each of which with extra items and cosmetics, so you’re definitely missing out on some stuff if you simply pick up the cheaper version. Powers has acknowledged those on X/Twitter though: “The overall point is that we’re not holding back content to sell separately.”
In any case, I doubt anyone was fearing Crimson Desert could be short on content, as every piece of footage from the game we’ve seen suggests it’s trying to do almost everything the devs came up with during the concept and planning stage. Will it pay off? It won’t be long before we find out, as the game launches on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and even Mac on 19th March.
