EVE Online Studio Breaks Away From Pearl Abyss, Rebrands as Fenris Creations, and Lands Google DeepMind Partnership
The studio behind EVE Online has officially entered a new era. CCP Games has confirmed that it is now an independent company again and will operate under the new name Fenris Creations, following its separation from Pearl Abyss. The company says the move came after a joint strategic review between both parties, which concluded that independent ownership was the better fit due to “broader differences in operating context, current strategic focus, and long term priorities.” The sale value was disclosed at 120 million dollars in cash and non cash consideration.
Fenris Creations says the new ownership group includes senior management and long term investors, with Omega Ventures co founder Birgir Már Ragnarsson becoming chairman of the board. CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson also stressed that the transition does not involve layoffs, office closures, or restructuring. That is an important detail because studio independence stories often come with cuts, but Fenris is signaling continuity rather than contraction.
Financially, the timing looks strong. Fenris Creations says EVE Online posted record revenue in November 2025, delivered its second highest revenue quarter ever in Q4 2025, and finished the year with more than 70 million dollars in reported revenue. Ars Technica separately noted that the company described itself as profitable in 2025 with strong reserves, which gives the studio a much firmer foundation for independence than many similar buyout stories in the games business.
Alongside the rebrand, the company also announced a research partnership with Google DeepMind, with DeepMind taking a minority equity stake in Fenris Creations. The two sides say the collaboration will focus on long horizon planning, memory and continual learning, and intelligence in complex, dynamic, player driven systems. DeepMind will work with an offline version of EVE Online running locally so it can evaluate models in a controlled research setting without affecting the live game.
That makes EVE Online a particularly interesting choice. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said the game’s complexity and emergent behavior make it a compelling environment for AI research, tying it to DeepMind’s longer history with game based AI work such as Atari, AlphaGo, AlphaStar, and SIMA. Fenris and DeepMind also say the partnership will explore possible future gameplay experiences enabled by these technologies, though neither side has announced any product level features for players yet.
For Fenris Creations, this is more than a name change. It is a reset that gives the studio more direct control over its long term direction while keeping EVE Online as the financial and creative anchor of the business. The company also continues to work on EVE Vanguard and EVE Frontier, so the split from Pearl Abyss arrives at a moment when Fenris is trying to expand the broader EVE universe rather than simply maintain the core MMORPG.
From an industry perspective, this is one of the more unusual studio transitions in recent memory. A veteran MMORPG developer has regained independence, kept its leadership and operating structure intact, posted some of its best financial results in years, and immediately paired that shift with a high profile AI research deal. That combination gives Fenris Creations a very different post acquisition story than the usual survival narrative. This last point is an inference based on the company’s announced financial position, ownership structure, and DeepMind partnership.
Do you think Fenris Creations will be stronger as an independent studio again, or will the real test be whether it can turn EVE beyond the main MMO into something much bigger?
