EVE Online Developer CCP Is Being Bought Out By BDO Developer Pearl Abyss

Okay guys, this isn't particularly F2P news, but it's kinda big news so we decided to go ahead with it anyway. Today CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson published a post on the EVE Online blog revealing to players that CCP is being acquired by Korean developer Pearl Abyss.

According to the post, the acquisition is a result of a few things -- the first being that the group of financial investors who currently own CCP are ready to sell their shares. Despite outward appearances, CCP has never really been a stand-alone company. Yes, they operate on their own, but the money to do so came from the companies mentioned above. So, it makes sense that they would be in the market for new backers. And, with Pearl Abyss, they've found a company that can offer more than money.

What this means in full, we'll likely find out later on. For now, however, we've been told that CCP will continue to operate independently and retain its current studios while combining their knowledge with Pearl Abyss' for future endeavors. No mention has been made as to whether this will result in a change to things like monetization on EVE Online, but considering Pearl Abyss' primary game Black Desert Online is one of the rare buy-to-play offerings out of Korea, I'd wager nothing will change there.

One thing we do know, however, is that there was recently a report on PCGamesN that CCP is working on a new "action-MMO". We're pretty sure this isn't anything to do with Project Nova, but don't know too much about it other than than the action-MMO bit, that it's being developed in the London studio, and that it will apparently be built in Unreal Engine 4, possibly taking advantage of UE4's cross-platform support.