Crimson Desert Gets Denuvo DRM Ahead of Launch, Dev Confirms Day-One Patch and No Cross-Save

Pearl Abyss’s Crimson Desert is just over a week away from its March 20 launch, and in a recent Steam News post, the studio behind the game has provided additional information about the release, while the Steam Store page now reflects that the game will launch with Denuvo DRM. The news update confirms that players jumping into the world of Pywel will be able to preload the game 24-48 hours ahead of the official launch, starting on March 17 or 18, depending on which part of the world they’re in—the game goes live on March 19 at 10 PM UTC, so the exact launch date differs by region. Pearl Abyss also confirmed that Crimson Desert will not support cross-platform save, and there appears to be no plan to add it in at a later date. While Crimson Desert will be playable completely offline, Pearl Abyss warns that the game will need an internet connection on day one in order to install a day-one patch.

It’s unclear how the addition of Denuvo DRM will affect gameplay, especially since Pearl Abyss set a pretty low barrier to entry with the minimum hardware requirements that it published earlier this week. Denuvo, and other DRM services, have, in the past, been known to cause performance degradation, even on higher-end hardware, but if the game was tested for the minimum requirements with the DRM in place, players can likely expect little to no performance hit. While Denuvo doesn’t necessarily lock Linux users out of Crimson Desert, its use is generally frowned upon by the Linux gaming community. Pearl Abyss has not mentioned Steam Deck or Linux compatibility in any of its communications surrounding Crimson Desert.

In the FAQ post on Steam, Pearl Abyss confirmed that Crimson Desert will support FSR 3 and 4, DLSS 4 and 4.5, with Ray Regeneration and Ray Reconstruction on PC, as well as Upgraded PSSR and FSR 3 on the PS5 Pro and PS5, and FSR 3 on the Xbox Series consoles.