Intel suggests it was snubbed by Crimson Desert dev after reaching out "many times" about Arc GPUs – company says it provided "early hardware, drivers, and engineering resources" to studio

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Intel say it’s helped “test, validate, and optimize support for Intel graphics” in Crimson Desert

A screenshot of the Crimson Desert startup screen displaying an error message.
(Image credit: Future)

Crimson Desert, the new game from developer Pearl Abyss of Black Desert Online fame, launched today with a surprising caveat – the game doesn’t support Intel Arc graphics, one of which ranks among the best GPUs. It doesn’t seem like it will any time soon, either, with the game’s official FAQ suggesting that Intel Arc users seek out a refund. Intel has fired back, saying that it has reached out to Pearl Abyss “many times” and even provided the studio with early access to hardware and drivers across multiple Intel products.

Currently, if you try to launch Crimson Desert with an Arc GPU, you'll be presented with an error message that reads, "the graphics device is currently not supported." Although Pearl Abyss has said that Arc graphics aren't supported officially at this time, other users have encountered similar errors.

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On the Steam discussion boards, there are over 100 posts that reference this specific error, many of them seeing the error on AMD or Nvidia GPUs.

It's unclear if Pearl Abyss will add Arc support in the future, but the company's guidance for Arc users to consult the return policy of the platform they purchased the game on suggests support isn't coming soon. Intel, for its part, has put the blame back on the developer: "For details on the choice not to enable Intel support at launch, please reach out directly to Pearl Abyss."

Intel's discrete GPUs make up only a sliver of the total market. In JPR's most recent AIB report, Intel cracked just 1% of market share against AMD and Nvidia. However, Intel graphics extend far beyond the discrete desktop market, with Arc GPUs in Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, and Panther Lake laptops.

"Our teams are deeply committed to helping all studios deliver the best experience possible, providing open tools, documentation, and direct engineering support to make sure their games run well for everyone, including the tens of millions of players using Intel GPUs. We remain ready to assist Pearl Abyss however we can," wrote Intel.

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Jake Roach
Jake Roach
Senior Analyst, CPUs
2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • chaos215bar2
    Of course the blame is on the developer. The entire reason we have standardized graphics APIs is so that any game can run on any hardware meeting minimum support requirements without having to be built to run on specific GPUs. First, you build out the baseline functionality to the standard. Then, maybe, you add on extra bells and whistles for specific GPUs with proprietary extensions:

    Something seems to be fundamentally backwards about Crimson Desert's engine design if it's just giving up when running on hardware that hasn't been explicitly whitelisted.

    If the game was running, but hitting weird glitches or crashes, then maybe the blame could lie with Intel.
    Reply
  • usertests
    chaos215bar2 said:
    Something seems to be fundamentally backwards about Crimson Desert's engine design if it's just giving up when running on hardware that hasn't been explicitly whitelisted.
    They have their own bespoke engine: https://wccftech.com/crimson-desert-different-level-unreal-engine-5/
    I agree with your sentiment. There shouldn't have to be driver updates just for games to run or even be optimized.

    It's a bad situation that certainly isn't making it easier for competition in the GPU market. What if a game was released and it just ran on Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Apple, Imagination, Lisuan, etc.
    Reply