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Pearl Abyss preps IPO as Black Desert Online tops $300m revenue

Korean publisher rolled out its MMO to Steam this year, selling 500k units since

The Korean publisher Pearl Abyss is prepping for an IPO, based on the strong commercial performance of its hit MMO Black Desert Online.

Black Desert Online has been on the market for almost three years, in which time it has earned the equivalent of $300 million in revenue. The figures were released by Pearl Abyss at an IPO meeting, in which the company also revealed that it had 7.65 million registered users as of July 2017.

According to IvenGlobal's account of the IPO meeting, Black Desert Online has sold 530,000 units on Steam since it launched in May this year, reaching second place in the top sellers chart in June. The game was also featured in the Xbox E3 press conference as an Xbox One console exclusive, though no firm release date has been set.

Pearl Abyss plans to expand into other regions, specifically SE Asia, Turkey and the Middle East, in the near future. In China, Black Desert Online will be published by Snail Games, where it has already been pre-ordered 200,000 times.

With Black Desert Online performing well and four other projects in development, Pearl Abyss is now preparing for an IPO with an expected value as high as $164 million.

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Matthew Handrahan

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Matthew Handrahan joined GamesIndustry in 2011, bringing long-form feature-writing experience to the team as well as a deep understanding of the video game development business. He previously spent more than five years at award-winning magazine gamesTM.