CCP Games becomes Fenris Creations again, partners with Google DeepMind

CCP Games has broken away from Pearl Abyss’s corporate shadow and returned under a new identity, Fenris Creations, in a move that could reshape how one of PC gaming’s longest-running online worlds is built and studied. The studio said the change restores a structure closer to its pre-2018 setup, complete with its own Board of Directors, while keeping the same leadership, studios, products and development plans in place.

The deal carries a disclosed value of $120 million, mixing cash and non-cash consideration. Google has also taken a minority stake as part of the transition, but the more striking piece is the research partnership attached to it: Google DeepMind will work with an offline version of EVE Online running on a local server to explore long-horizon planning, memory, continual learning and other forms of intelligence in a complex, changing system.

For EVE players, the significance is bigger than a logo swap. Hilmar Veigar Pétursson framed the change as a way to give the studio direct ownership and clearer accountability, with a governance model built for persistent live games that can grow over decades. That matters for a universe like EVE, where decisions do not just affect one season or one expansion, but a living economy, alliances, wars and years of player investment.

The move caps a longer arc for the Reykjavik studio. CCP Games was founded in 1997 in Iceland and launched EVE Online in May 2003, putting the game into its third decade. CCP’s own description of EVE still leans on the attributes that made it famous: scale, complexity and world-record-breaking in-game battles. Pearl Abyss bought CCP Games in 2018, a deal CCP described as the biggest acquisition in Iceland’s tech history to date, and Pearl Abyss said then that the studio would keep operating independently with teams in Reykjavik, London and Shanghai.

CCP has also kept pushing outside the usual MMO business model. In 2023, it raised $40 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with backing from Makers Fund, Bitkraft, Kingsway Capital, Nexon and Hashed, for a blockchain-based AAA title in the EVE universe. Put together, the 2018 acquisition, the 2023 financing and the 2026 return to independence show a studio repeatedly adapting to survive, and now positioning EVE not only as a live game, but as a platform for serious AI research.