Pearl Abyss

Pearl Abyss is the South Korean game studio developing DokeV. The company has been working on DokeV since the project was first revealed as Project V in late 2019, and it is also the studio that designs, builds, and publishes the game itself. For a wider look at the title in development, see the overview article.

Studio Profile

Games

Pearl Abyss has shipped two large MMOs and is actively building three more games. The current public lineup looks like this:

All five projects share the same in-house technology base, which lets rendering, animation, and tooling improvements roll forward from one title to the next. DokeV inherits the shipped lessons of the desert-themed games while pushing the look in a brighter, more stylised direction.

Studio History

Pearl Abyss was founded on September 10, 2010 by Kim Daeil and Youn Jaemin, both of whom had previously worked at the Korean online-gaming companies Hangame and NHN. The pair started the studio specifically to build a next-generation MMO with an in-house engine rather than licensed technology. That decision shaped everything afterwards: every Pearl Abyss title to date has shipped on the studio's own engine, and the same tooling underpins DokeV.

The company's first release, Black Desert Online, launched in Korea in 2014 and rolled out internationally in the years that followed. Its success funded steady expansion and built the engine, animation, and combat foundations that the studio has been iterating on ever since. By August 2024 the company had grown to roughly 1,331 employees, with its primary operations based out of its Gwacheon headquarters in South Korea.

CCP Games Acquisition

On September 6, 2018 Pearl Abyss completed its acquisition of CCP Games, the Icelandic studio behind EVE Online, in a deal valued at approximately 425 million US dollars. CCP retains its independent studios in Reykjavík, London, and Shanghai and continues to operate EVE Online and its related projects under its own brand. The acquisition gave Pearl Abyss a foothold in long-running online sci-fi development and a Western-facing studio network, but it has not redirected DokeV's day-to-day production, which remains a Pearl Abyss home-team effort.

DokeV Leadership

DokeV is led by founder Kim Daeil, who serves as the project's executive producer and is one of the two people who started Pearl Abyss back in 2010. Day-to-day production is handled by lead producer Sangyoung Kim, who joined DokeV after working as the lead animator on Black Desert Online. That combination of founder-level oversight and a senior animator at the wheel matches the look of the project: a long-running passion piece backed by deep in-house craft.

Engine

DokeV is being built on the BlackSpace Engine, Pearl Abyss's proprietary technology stack. The engine has been in development at the studio since its founding, was originally deployed on Black Desert Online, and was substantially expanded for Crimson Desert. Pearl Abyss formalised the BlackSpace Engine name during a 2024 marketing showcase. The same tech now powers every active project at the studio, which is why DokeV's Dokebi, environments, and combat all benefit from features originally built for the studio's other games.

Unconfirmed Details

Some specifics about Pearl Abyss's DokeV team have not been publicly broken out. Open questions include:

• Full DokeV team size

  : how many of the studio's roughly 1,331 employees are assigned to DokeV at any given moment.

• Regional team distribution

  : whether any DokeV development is handled outside the Gwacheon headquarters, including any contributions from the studio's wider network.

• Exact development start date

  : the project went public in November 2019, but the internal kickoff date has not been disclosed.

• Total development time so far

  : full hours, person-years, or budget figures for DokeV have not been broken out from the studio's overall financials.

Until those numbers are reported, anything beyond the figures in the studio profile above should be treated as speculation.