Europe and North America sales
While most of the buzz from Black Desert Online in recent years came from its character creator, it seems like it’s actually buzzworthy in the west now, because a ton of people bought the thing. Daum Games has announced that Black Desert has sold 400,000 units in its first month — and that’s just for the European and North American markets.
CEO Min Kim notes that they expect upwards of one million in sales in the west alone by the end of the year. Interestingly enough, they claim this success came by shying away from the free-to-play model, allowing players to access all content updates with a premium version.
Of course it also has a cash shop just for some extra monetization, and that it is seeing a “much higher pay ration” than the typical 11% figure in free-to-play titles. So yeah, the game is doing well, and will probably be around for a while. I’ve been meaning to get into it but I haven’t had the time.