Is Crimson Desert multiplayer? Your options explained

While the open-world action RPG is on everyone’s lips, you’ve probably been seeing a fair amount of hype towards Crimson Desert and want to learn more about the game, including whether it is multiplayer or not.

Considering the game comes from South Korean developer Pearl Abyss Corp, who brought us massively-multiplayer online RPG Black Desert Online, it’s understandable if you thought Crimson Desert is a multiplayer game.

In fact, it started life as a prequel to Black Desert Online (although as development continued it moved away from this and is now not even set in the same universe).

Read on to find out if Crimson Desert is multiplayer or not.

Is Crimson Desert multiplayer?

No, Crimson Desert is not multiplayer. It is a single player game only.

This may come as a bit of a surprise considering the game originally began life as a prequel to MMORPG Black Desert Online. It was originally in development as an MMO but it drifted into becoming a single player action RPG.

Speaking in an interview with playday.one, marketing and PR director Will Powers from Pearl Abyss confirmed that “Crimson Desert was originally announced as not only a prequel to Black Desert, but also an MMO".

But now it is “a completely different genre".

He added that: “Through its development, it’s really like you hit a crossroads in development where do you want to maintain what the original trajectory of the game was, or do you want to let it become its own thing and really blossom? Obviously, they chose the latter of those two and let it blossom into its own thing, its own brand new IP.”

Will there be multiplayer in Crimson Desert?

While there is no multiplayer in Crimson Desert at launch and the game was designed to be a single player only experience, we can never say never when it comes to multiplayer modes being added in the future (officially or unofficially).

Thanks to the interview with playday.one (linked above), we know that the development team will “continue to improve” on the game “post-launch”.

It’s unlikely that these future improvements to the game mean multiplayer modes but time will tell, ultimately.

If the development team doesn’t add in any multiplayer modes to the game, perhaps plucky modders will on PC.

It always surprises us what modding communities are able to put out and add to games, so maybe, perhaps, we could see an unofficial Crimson Desert multiplayer mod on the PC version of the game at some point in the future.

Of course, if anything changes in terms of multiplayer modes in Crimson Desert, we’ll update this page.

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