Crimson Desert celebrates its release in March 2026 and looks really stylish. Behind the graphics is not the Unreal Engine, but a proprietary product of the team.
Crimson Desert will be released on March 19, 2026, and is already highly anticipated by many players. So far, they are particularly impressed by the beautiful graphics. The graphics offer many details and effects in the first previews.
However, it is surprising that for all the stunning graphics, no high-end system is needed: The system requirements for Crimson Desert are moderate, even though the game utilizes ray tracing and other effects that usually require fast hardware.
The secret behind it is also the in-house engine that Pearl Abyss is using for Crimson Desert, which could show that it is worth investing in a proprietary engine instead of using the widely adopted Unreal Engine. Because it repeatedly causes problems and criticism due to lack of optimization and high hardware requirements.
Crimson Desert relies on proprietary engine and forgoes Unreal Engine
While many games rely on the Unreal Engine and regularly fail, Pearl Abyss is using a self-developed engine for Crimson Desert: the BlackSpace Engine.
Previously, the system was called Black Desert Engine, but it has been steadily rebuilt over the past few years and is now called BackSpace Engine. At its core, it is still the same system. The special thing about it is that it is a model optimized for large game worlds and MMORPGs. So it is perfectly designed for a game like Crimson Desert, which offers a huge game world.
This is also an advantage that the own developed engine has over other systems: The Unreal Engine is not inherently tailored to a specific principle or game. This makes optimization rather sluggish and difficult, but also comparatively easy to handle.
BlackSpace offers similar many technical features as one knows from other engines (via Pearlabyss.com), such as effects-rich water effects, volumetric fog with fluid simulation, or hair simulation, and looks just as stylish as the widely used Unreal Engine.
Are there also disadvantages? Yes, such as the long development time. After all, we have been waiting for the action-adventure, which was initially supposed to be an MMORPG, for 7 years now. And such a long time is something that a team must also be able to afford.
Thus, the developers presented their engine at the Game Developers Conference in 2025 and explained that they deliberately decided for a proprietary engine (via YouTube.com). This would make development take significantly longer, but they would have full control over the optics and performance. For example, specific tasks could be assigned to the GPU to relieve the processor.
The low distribution of the engine is occasionally a topic: Kingdom Come: Deliverance also does not rely on the Unreal Engine and looks great because of that. However, it involves quite a bit of extra work for the team, as everyone needs to be trained.
Crimson Desert is an action-adventure with RPG elements and an open world. It comes from the developers of Black Desert and will be released in March 2026. MeinMMO reveals everything about the release date, editions, trailers, and more: Crimson Desert: Release, Trailer, Demo and Editions – All information about the RPG hope for 2026
