Black Desert Online RU No Longer Shutting Down

In a turn of events nobody saw coming, Pearl Abyss released a statement on the 17th regarding Black Desert Online’s Russian version and their failed negotiations with the Russian publisher, GameNet.

Before proceeding, allow me to quickly get you up to date if you weren’t already on the topic: Pearl Abyss had given GameNet local publishing rights for Black Desert Online in Russia up until recently, with Pearl Abyss choosing to opt out of renewing their license with GameNet. The two companies had made promises to players that they would work alongside one another to make sure the transfer of all data went over successfully.

However, negotiations fell through and Pearl Abyss released a statement letting players know that they had “failed to acquire their game data from GameNet” and further that they had lost all Russian localization. They blamed GameNet and GameNet rebutted, claiming that they were fully ready to transfer over all player data and localization files but Pearl Abyss were not going through the correct legal channels to get that information under Russian law.

Pearl Abyss stated that there was no ETA on when the Russian version of the game would come back as they had to translate everything from scratch – until the 17th, where another statement was made pertaining to the transfer: Pearl Abyss and the company behind GameNet, Vebanaul Holdings Ltd had developed a legal solution to ensure all player data along with localization files would successfully be transferred over to Pearl Abyss, meaning once the process if complete, players should be able to log back in as usual.

While quite the debacle, it is reassuring to Russian players to know that their characters and money invested into the game did not go down the drain.