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CCP Games Bought Back from Pearl Abyss by Management
Image: CCP Games / Pearl Abyss · (c) CCP Games (used under CCP fan-content policy)
Pearl Abyss sold CCP Games back to its own management team (led by CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson) for around $120M - a substantial loss on the 2018 acquisition price.
CCP Games Bought Back from Pearl Abyss by Management
On 30 April 2026, Pearl Abyss announced the sale of CCP Games back to a management group led by CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson for approximately $120M USD (a $100M cash payment plus $20M in token acquisition rights). The deal was set to close on or about 6 May 2026, just ahead of EVE Fanfest 2026.
Pearl Abyss had paid up to $425M for CCP in 2018 (around $225M up-front + up to $200M in deferred performance payments that largely never triggered), so the buyout represents a substantial financial loss. Pearl Abyss had publicly put CCP up for sale in June 2025 and cited "financial health" as the rationale; persistent operating losses at CCP through 2019-2024 had been a drag on Pearl Abyss's overall books.
For EVE players, the immediate practical impact is small - Hilmar remains CEO, and CCP continues to operate from Reykjavik - but CCP is once again an independent Icelandic studio for the first time since 2018, with a meaningfully different long-term strategic incentive structure than under the Pearl Abyss period.
The corporate situation is fluid as of late April 2026. The high-level summary is: Pearl Abyss owned CCP from 2018-2026, EVE was relatively untouched gameplay-wise but corporate strategy increasingly went through Korea; with the buyout, CCP is independent again. On 6 May 2026 the company completed the move and re-emerged under a new name, Fenris Creations, alongside a research partnership with Google DeepMind.