The company Pearl Abyss will no longer own CCP Games. It has announced that it is selling the studio back to its management.More details: https://gameworldobserver.com/2026/04/30/pearl-abyss-sold-the-creators-of-eve-online-for-much-less-than-it-purchased-them-for
The impact of generative AI upon PC gaming has proven controversial, which is my balanced journalist way of saying it’s been horrible. Players are widely repulsed by genAI material, developers and even some publishers are increasingly wary of its temptations, and in a rush to build the requisite infrastructure, component shortages have ravaged the hardware market. Nonetheless, EVE Online devs Fenris Creations – formerly CCP Games – have become dead keen on robot brains, and what they might be might be able to think up for EVE itself.
Earlier this month, a newly independent Fenris announced a "research partnership" with Google DeepMind, the search giant’s AI research division, that would see DeepMind take a minority stake in the company while training its AI agents on a separate, offline version of the longstanding space MMO. Days later, Fenris CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson sat onstage with DeepMind co-founder Adrian Bolton at the annual EVE FanFest conference to discuss the partnership, in a presentation that left the concrete plans of what it means for EVE still broadly vague – yet seemingly against the run of wider sentiment, escaped any significant backlash from the game’s historically outspoken playerbase.
There's something special about MMOs. Unlike other multiplayer titles, they consistently create that sense of community; that feeling of homeliness. Final Fantasy 14 does it the best: I've spent many a day whiling away the hours chilling and chatting in Limsa Lominsa, and when I was a little sprout (new characters have a green plant icon next to their names, hence 'sprout') I had random players approach me offering tips and tricks, and in one instance, a pretty cool mount. That organic mixing of people doesn't happen in other games - you jump on League of Legends with your pre-established pals, you don't really make friends typing in the chat. In MMOs you're either helping, or being helped, by real people, and that's how I'd argue it should stay. CCP, however, has different ideas for Eve Online.
Read the full story on PCGamesN: Eve Online's new in-game chatbot "is not generative AI," but I'd still rather ask randomers for advice
Eve Online - the sci-fi MMO space-faring epic - saw a surge in players at the tail end of 2025. The game had over a million players take to the stars in 2025, and it has benefited from the largest influx of new and returning players in years.
