r/pcgaming: Crimson Desert reportedly nears 400,000 Steam sales before launch

Crimson Desert appears to be entering launch week with serious momentum on PC. A March 18 report shared on r/pcgaming says the upcoming Pearl Abyss action-adventure had already moved close to 400,000 copies on Steam before release. The numbers come from Alinea Analytics through Insider Gaming, so they should still be treated as third-party estimates, but even with that caveat the scale is hard to ignore.

According to the report, Crimson Desert had sold roughly 363,000 pre-launch copies on Steam as of March 16, 2026. Insider Gaming framed that as close to 400,000 units and more than $20 million in gross revenue ahead of launch. It also said about 10% of those sales landed on March 16 alone, adding roughly $2.6 million, and that the game was sitting near 2.2 million wishlists on Steam. For a title that was still two days away from release, those are substantial demand signals.

Strong demand, but still not an official total

The timing matters. Pearl Abyss is scheduled to launch Crimson Desert on March 19, 2026, and the company had just released base PS5 footage after players spent weeks asking for a better look at console performance. That means the game is going into launch with strong pre-order momentum while still answering last-minute performance questions across platforms.

The report also notes that Denuvo Anti-Tamper created some concern among would-be buyers. According to Insider Gaming, Pearl Abyss responded by saying the performance footage and benchmark material already shown to players used the same version of Denuvo that will ship. That response seems to have prevented the anti-tamper discussion from overwhelming the launch conversation. Insider Gaming also pointed out that the game will support upgraded PS5 Pro PSSR at launch, which adds another technical selling point on the console side.

The biggest caveat is that these figures only cover Steam and come from analytics rather than an official Pearl Abyss statement. They do not tell us how the game is tracking on PlayStation or Xbox, and the final first-week result could still shift once reviews, performance impressions, and launch stability hit the market. Even so, if the estimate is close, Crimson Desert is heading into March 19 with the kind of pre-launch commercial weight most new premium releases would gladly take.