EVE Online Will Train Google DeepMind's AI Models

Buried inside what should have been a straightforward independence story is a detail that's going to make a lot of EVE players uneasy: Google DeepMind now has a minority stake in the studio behind EVE Online, and an offline copy of the game will be used to train its AI models.

The headline news, announced by the newly rebranded Fenris Creations, is that Pearl Abyss has sold CCP Games back to its own management team for $120 million, roughly $300 million less than it paid in 2018. The studio has renamed itself Fenris Creations, and CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson says nothing changes operationally: same teams, same offices in Reykjavík, London, and Shanghai, same games in development. EVE Online closed 2025 with over $70 million in revenue and some of its strongest months in years. In a memo to the EVE community, Pétursson stressed that EVE Frontier, EVE Vanguard, and EVE Galaxy Conquest all remain on track.

Then comes the Google part. Fenris has entered a research partnership with Google DeepMind, the artificial intelligence division headed by Demis Hassabis, who started his career helping Peter Molyneux design Theme Park. DeepMind will run an offline version of EVE Online on local servers to "test and evaluate models in a controlled setting," focusing on long-horizon planning, memory, and continual learning. Google has taken a minority stake in Fenris as part of the deal, though financial terms weren't disclosed. The partnership will also "explore new gameplay experiences enabled by these technologies."

I get why Fenris sees this as a win. Independence is expensive, and Google's money helps fund the "EVE Forever" vision without another Pearl Abyss situation. But there's something deeply uncomfortable about one of the most player-driven games ever made becoming a training environment for a company whose DeepMind workers recently voted to unionise over concerns about military AI applications. EVE's complexity is exactly what makes it valuable to DeepMind, and exactly why players should be asking hard questions about what "explore new gameplay experiences" actually means in practice. More details are expected at EVE Fanfest 2026, which starts May 14.