CCP Games And Cloud Imperium Have Reasons To Be Happy This Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! While a lot of game companies have had a down year, a couple studios I follow have a lot to be thankful for this U.S. holiday. Perhaps not Square Enix, which is engaged in a global reorganization pulling itself back into Japan. But both CCP Games and Cloud Imperium are witnessing good news over the past 3-4 weeks.

First, let's start with CCP. The month of November started off well with the news that its parent company Pearl Abyss experienced both an operating profit and net profit in the third quarter of 2025. The last time that had happened was the first quarter of 2024. Hopefully the news that Crimson Desert has a solid release date of 19 March 2026 will help squash any rumors of the South Korean game maker needed to sell off CCP Games for cash.

But that's not all. CCP released its winter expansion for EVE Online, Catalyst, on 18 November. If the average concurrent numbers are any indication, the mining and exploration themed expansion was well received.

The first week peaked at over 41,000 accounts logged in

While not precise, Chribba's EVE-Offline.net shows an average of 28,000 logged in at any one time over the past 7 days. The average before was approximately 23,000. The peak number of users logged in occurred on Sunday, with 41,322 accounts online at one time. Combined with the dissolution of Pandemic Horde Sunday saw the highest PCU since 41,562 were logged in on 10 May 2020.

Despite the nice episode of The Scope, I'm not really sure how much of a war the conflict really was. I get the impression the campaign was more chasing Pandemic Horde and shooting their structures more than a proper full-scale war. I did check to see that the bubble-camp of the R-AG7W keepstar occurred before the launch of the expansion because that would definitely have inflated the numbers. Which is a good thing because major null sec conflicts tend to reduce player counts in the long run. I'm not really sure what will happen if a major null sec leader just walks away. Bobby Atlas departing EVE was over a decade ago.

The other game company is Cloud Imperium Games. Depsite what white knights might claim, at this time last year things weren't looking too good. But at the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025 Chris Roberts instituted a leadership shakeup and a new software release schedule. Combined with an injection of cash from Keith Calder, CIG's second largest shareholder, CIG is once again setting financial records.

From the Roberts Space Industries website

On Tuesday the funding stats page on the RSI website passed the $900 million mark. As of 1800 UTC today the figure was up to $905.4 million. The surge in revenue is due to the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo, an annual event that begins the Thursday before Black Friday and ends the Thursday after perhaps the largest shopping day of the year. 

If CIG exceeding the $900 million lifetime amount isn't enough, the company also surpassed its record yearly total with six weeks to go in the year. As of the end of the day Wednesday, the CCU Game dashboard showed $130 million in sales so far in 2025. The previous record for a single year occurred in 2023 with a total of $117.6 million in sales. The company has an excellent chance to end the year with $150 million in online sales.

The other thing going right for CIG is the success of the sales despite dropping patch 4.4 the day before the IAE kicked off. I know, the event has the expected lag when so many people log into the game at once. Server meshing apparently hasn't solved that issue yet. But through day 7 of the 14 day event CIG recorded $18 million in sales. The record, set in 2023, was $24.5 million. With today looking like another day of $2 million in online sales, I really don't think the IAE will average less than $1 million/day during the event's second week.

I'll end this post with the lifetime revenue numbers for Cloud Imperium Games. I usually provide them in my monthly post on CIG's sales but with all the numbers flying around I thought I'd add the ones I've come up with.

Overall, the company has recorded $1.030 billion in confirmed revenue (the funding page & the 2023 financial report).

• Sales/Pledges: $905.4 million (through 27 November 2025 @ 1800 UTC)
• Other cash shop revenue: $2.3 million (through 31 December 2023)
• Subscriptions: $39.5 million (through 31 December 2023)
• All other sources: $82.6 million (through 31 December 2023)

In addition, the company has received a total of $68.25 million in outside investment, making the total amount raised through all sources for the project as $1.098 billion. I expect to start using the figure $1.1 billion starting tomorrow.