In a news post released today, CCP Games announced they are to be acquired by Pearl Abyss, the company behind Black Desert Online. The deal will allow CCP to continue to operate independently, with Pearl Abyss bringing its development expertise to the table.

The chairman of CCP, Birgir Már Ragnarsson said in the press release:

“As lead investor in CCP for over 13 years alongside General Catalyst and NEA, we’ve seen CCP go from being a few dozen people strong to employing hundreds all over the world, with an ever-increasing customer base and multiple titles. CEO Hilmar V. Pétursson and his dedicated team have built a company that Novator and its partners are proud to hand over to Pearl Abyss and we wish them the best of luck in their future ventures.”

Hilmar, CEO of CCP had this to say:

“I have been seriously impressed with what Pearl Abyss has achieved ever since I first visited their website for Black Desert Online and subsequently became an avid player of the game. Pearl Abyss is a fast-growing company with lots to offer in terms of technology, capability and vision. I believe our two companies have a lot to learn from each other. We are very excited to join forces with them and achieve great new heights for our companies, our games and – above all – our players.”

The new owners of CCP Games, Pearl Abyss, said that for their part, they were looking forward to working with CCP because “They have done an incredible job of engaging and maintaining their playerbase, which we aim to learn from and hope to integrate natively into Pearl Abyss’ general practices across all our games.”

INN will bring you more information on this as it becomes available.

UPDATE: According to an article on Venturebeat, the acquisition deal is worth $425 million US. “We saw a lot of synergy between our plans and their plans and between our cultures and backgrounds and DNA. It might not be obvious of the synergy between an Iceland private company and a Korean public company, but through our games we found we had a lot in common,” said Hilmar in an interview with GamesBeat, adding “We have always looked to Korea and China, where services and online games are popular. The industry was born in Korea. Another aspect is that Asia’s public markets value gaming companies quite high at multiples versus the West.”

UPDATE 2: Hilmar has addressed the community in a dev blog regarding the acquisition. In it, he announced that there will be an “AMA on the official EVE Online forums with CCP Falcon and CCP Guard, who’ll be on hand to answer questions” on September 7, at 16:30 UTC.

Addendum: A transcript of the previously mentioned interview can be found here. Hilmar noted that the monthly active users count of EVE lies between 200,000 and 300,000 users.

UPDATE 3: Venturebeat have now released an interview with the CEO of Pearl Abyss, Robin Jung.