Pearl Abyss shares success of 'Black Desert' with employees
Poster for Pearl Abyss' online role playing game “Black Desert” / Courtesy of Pearl Abyss
By Baek Byung-yeul
Pearl Abyss, a local game firm known for its popular online role-playing game “Black Desert,” has given each of its employees an average incentive of 7.8 million won ($7,261).
The game firm said Wednesday it will sell 13,215 of its shares worth about 3 billion won ($2.79 million) to pay the bonus to its 428 employees. The firm added the trade will begin June 1 and end on June 8.
Given that the stock price of Pearl Abyss was 228,500 won as of Wednesday, the amount the company will earn from selling its stock will be at 3 billion won. The company said it also put together 300 million won for the bonuses, so the total amount of incentives will be 3.3 billion won.
The bonus each employee will receive will differ depending on contribution levels, but on average, each employee will be paid about 7.8 million won.
Pearl Abyss said it decided to give out incentives as rewards for its employees who contributed a lot in making one of the world's most popular online games.
Founded in September 2010, Pearl Abyss began servicing its only game “Black Desert” in December 2014. Since then, the online game has 9.4 million registered players here.
Thanks to the game's popularity, Pearl Abyss recorded an operating profit of 33.5 billion won in the first quarter of this year, a 30 percent increase from the previous year.
The game is not only popular in Korea, but has been well-received in other regions too. Sales in North America and Europe have reached 1.2 million copies through the world's largest computer online game distribution platform Steam as of May.
“Black Desert” has also been popular in Taiwan. Since it was launched in January of last year, the online game has topped the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) chart in Taiwan's largest game news media Bahamut.
The firm also rolled out the mobile version of “Black Desert” this January.
Following NCSOFT's Lineage M, Black Desert Mobile logged the second highest daily sales of around 2 billion won.