I haven’t been following this one much at all but learned that Krafton’s CEO Chang-han Kim (aka CH Kim) did testify (under oath in a Delaware court) in recent months about the “breach of contract” lawsuit that resulted from Subnautica 2’s leadership being improperly terminated by Krafton (once they acquired the games studio, Unknown Worlds Entertainment which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Krafton).
But that Delaware court judge has now ordered Krafton to reinstate Ted Gill as CEO of Unknown Worlds Entertainment.
“Krafton breached the EPA by terminating the Key Employees without valid Cause and by improperly seizing operational control of Unknown Worlds,” she wrote. The judge ordered Krafton to not obstruct Gill’s “authority over the early access launch of Subnautica 2.”
The judge also ordered the $250 million bonus payout window to be extended until September 15 (with the possibility of a further extension). This payout was another part of what led to the breach of contract lawsuit filed by the founders of Unknown Worlds.
Backing up a bit, part of this blog has covered Krafton from its days when it was known as Bluehole especially after PUBG turned them into a massive juggernaut in South Korea’s gaming industry. Along with that came a huge dose of corporate idiocracy including some crazy PUBG related lawsuits (covered in the PUBG category).
From my brief information gathering, Kim did confirm that he consulted ChatGPT (of all things, one of the WORST AI’s to use) how to avoid paying the Subnautica 2 payout agreement which he himself helped to broker with the founders of Unknown Worlds Entertainment. Besides pushing mostly PUBG (which is now the companies money maker especially in certain Asian demographics), the company also went “all in” on AI (their investor relations material briefly highlights this stuff).
Note that their website “buries” this information (since going directly to their top level “IR” investor relations link redirects to show their corporate governance stuff while making finding their investor presentations and earnings information much less easier to find). Digressing…
I’ve also briefly written about CH Kim; absolutely smart as an engineer (KAIST graduate) but well out of his league as a CEO (perfect example of someone having a “bag of gold dropped on their head” where all of a sudden, the sheer luck they encountered [in his case with PUBG] ends up giving them influence where he was eventually elevated to become CEO of the entirety of Krafton).
The court transcripts of his deposition (under oath) highlights this incompetence as a corporate executive (plus Krafton’s own corporate legal idiocy) where Kim’s own reasoning for consulting ChatGPT (and it takes a real moron to do that when it comes to something that has legal proceedings under way). The fact that he also had to be advised to remove those queries (because yes, anyone who has capability for actual critical thinking, knows OpenAI will be capturing information that can be considered confidential to that corporation).
IMHO, CH Kim should be outright terminated as Krafton CEO for heavily utilizing ChatGPT to make actual business decisions in violation of the companies own non disclosure and confidentiality clauses (but we know that won’t happen because everyone in the chain of executive leadership there knows that his gamble to take a chance on what became PUBG, ended up saving the company and their executive positions a decade ago).
Krafton’s response also isn’t surprising (because their cracked corporate legal has shown their true colors in past litigation when it came to their PUBG IP); I won’t be surprised if/when they come up with some wild accusation when they appeal the ruling. There is a reason why I’ve long referred to them as KRAPTON.
