Crimson Desert developer yet to decide on PC mod support: "we need to have those conversations"

I’ve been pretty amped about Crimson Desert since the turn of the year. After playing an hour or so at Summer Game Fest 2025, I was left equal parts impressed and maddened by it, but Pearl Abyss’ deep dives into the open-world game in recent weeks. This game looks stunning, the world of Pywel is one I want to explore, and whether it’s mastering ferocious combat in sprawling battles or partaking in the slower, life sim elements, it looks like there’s plenty to do. Now, Crimson Desert’s director of marketing has just ticked a few more boxes, ramping up my excitement even more. However, it appears that Pearl Abyss is still on the fence about whether it’ll officially support modding – something that’s helped the likes of Skyrim and The Witcher 3 achieve such long-lasting legacies.

Of course, Crimson Desert is not as deep in the RPG trenches as those aforementioned classics. While there is choice-based progression, visual character customization, and a wide-reaching gear system, this is more of an action-adventure game. There are defined playable characters and a “fixed” main story without multiple endings or branching narratives, according to director of marketing Will Powers, who was speaking on the Dropped Frames podcast. However, a combat sandbox this big, and a world this vast, still feels ripe for modding.

From what Powers says on the topic of mods, it sounds as if Pearl Abyss hasn’t made its mind up yet on whether it’ll officially let fans create new experiences in the game. He cites the studio’s past experience as a MMO developer as one of the reasons why it hasn’t deeply considered mods. The fact that Crimson Desert started life as a prequel to Pearl Abyss’ massively multiplayer Black Desert Online before transitioning to a single-player experience likely has something to do with the lack of mod support at launch too. However, Powers does say that “conversations” need to be had to cater to PC players after the game drops next month.

“Historically, this has never even been a conversation at the studio,” he explains. “I think that it makes sense, specifically for the PC audience, and we need to have those conversations about what it looks like post-launch. But I can’t guarantee our stance of where we’re going to end up, from a studio standpoint, on whether we’re fully supportive of PC modding – because I don’t know. I know historically where we have been, because of that live service standpoint, but this is a different conversation and I don’t think we’ve fully had it yet.”

Later, he adds: “There is enough content to last you at launch, and let’s revisit this conversation after launch and we can see, because personally I don’t hate the idea of modding. But does it make sense for this game? Or have we added enough features to allow for someone to do that? Or do you just want to play as Shrek in this world? I don’t know.”

While that may come as a disappointment for some PC players, Powers has plenty of other pieces of good news. For a start, he confirms there will be no in-game store packed with microtransactions – this was somewhat expected, given that Crimson Desert is a premium, single-player release, but considering Pearl Abyss’ past expertise with MMOs, there was always an outside chance. In a follow-up exchange with a fan on social media, Powers says “the overall point is that we’re not holding back content to sell separately.”

One of my biggest frustrations in games that offer excellent, dynamic combat is weapon durability – if I’ve worked hard to find, unlock, or craft a beast of a weapon, I want to be able to use it limitlessly, please. Well, despite what past screenshots of Crimson Desert suggested, Powers confirms that there will be no durability on your actual weapons. However, some tools that you use for “utility” purposes will have durability, but it sounds like it’s fairly straightforward to buy or craft heaps of these. There will also be some “single-use” items, but your actual weapons won’t break or deplete in power in Crimson Desert.

It’s also been confirmed that there is a “single difficulty curve” in the game, with no options to make it a harder or easier experience at launch. “That plays into the set, not scaling, difficulty of the enemies in the world,” Powers explains. “If you get stuck on an encounter, you’re able to over-prepare and scale up past it.” He says that Crimson Desert is “not meant to be incredibly easy, it’s not meant to be incredibly hard, it’s meant to have a variety of content and give you a ton of options within the world.” I’m sure there are some action RPG and soulslike sickos who will be disappointed that there isn’t some intense, high-difficulty mode, but with such a big sandbox of weapons and abilities, there’s probably room for some impressive, self-inflicted challenges to keep you entertained.

There are plenty more great nuggets in this interview, but these are the biggest things to come from it. Powers also says Pearl Abyss will have a “better answer before launch” on how it’s tackling button mapping on gamepads (some overly complicated controls were my main grumble when I previewed the game last year), so I’ll be eagerly awaiting that communication.