Business CEO Asks ChatGPT How to Void $250 Million Contract, Ignores His Lawyers, Loses Terribly in Court - The CEO of Krafton used ChatGPT to push out the head of the studio developing Subnautica 2 against the advice of his own legal team and failed miserably.

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Image: Unknown Worlds Entertainment

A judge ordered the reinstatement of a video game developer after he was fired as part of a scheme cooked up by a CEO using ChatGPT. Facing the possibility of paying out a massive bonus to the developer of Subnautica 2, the CEO of publisher Krafton used ChatGPT to create a plan to take over the development studio and force out its founder, according to court records.

The Monday ruling details the bizarre story. Unknown Worlds Entertainment is the studio behind the 2018 underwater survival game Subnautica. The company has since been working on the sequel, Subnautica 2. In 2021, South Korean publisher Krafton bought Unknown Worlds Entertainment for $500 million and promised to pay out another $250 million if Subnautica 2 sold well enough.

Krafton’s internal sales projections for Subnautica 2 looked great, and looked like it would be on the hook for the additional $250 million. In an attempt to avoid paying this, Krafton CEO Changhan Kim turned to ChatGPT for help avoiding paying the developers the $250 million bonus. “As Unknown Worlds prepared to release its hotly anticipated sequel, Subnautica 2, the parties’ relationship fractured,” the court decision said. “Fearing he had agreed to a ‘pushover’ contract, Krafton’s CEO consulted an artificial intelligence chatbot to contrive a corporate ‘takeover’ strategy.”

Kim partnered with Krafton Head of Corporate Development Maria Park and the company’s legal team to work out options. He toyed with finding a reason to fire the founders. According to court records, Park pinged Kim on Slack and told him that attempting to avoid paying the bonus would be legally risky. “Hi CEO . . . it seems to be highly likely that the earn-out will still be paid if the sales goal is achieved regardless of the dismissal with cause,” the Slack message said according to court records. “Therefore, there isn’t much that we can practically gain other than punishment with a simple dismissal alone, whereas I am worried that we may be exposed to lawsuit and reputation risk.”

But the CEO would not accept defeat. “And so Kim turned to ChatGPT for help,” court records said. “When the AI chatbot responded that the earnout would be ‘difficult to cancel,’ Kim complained to Park that the [payout] was a ‘contract under which we can only be dragged around.’”

Kim pressed the chatbot for an answer. “At ChatGPT’s suggestion, Kim formed an internal task force, dubbed ‘Project X.’ The task force’s mandate was to either negotiate a ‘deal’ on the earnout or execute a ‘Take Over’ of Unknown Worlds. They looked to buy time,” court records said. “Kim sought ChatGPT’s counsel on how to proceed if Krafton failed to reach a deal with Unknown Worlds on the earnout. The AI chatbot prepared a ‘Response Strategy’ to a ‘No-Deal’ Scenario.”

This was a piece of ChatGPT’s “Project X” for Krafton:
‟“a. Preemptive Framing - Repeat that protecting quality and fan trust is the highest priority, undermine the ‘Large Corporation VS. Indie’ framing

b. Securing Control Points -

* Lock down Steam/console publishing rights and access rights over code/build pipeline through both legal and technical aspects.

* For the earn-out freeze, keep room for negotiations through provision stating ‘immediate removal if specific development results are achieved’

a. Systematic materials for legal defense - Prepare contract interpretation memorandums, log all communications, seek external consultation
b. Team retention - Operation of retention packages for key personnel and rapid backfill pipelines in anticipation of resignation/departure scenarios
c. Two handed strategy - Create a structure that allows for both hardball (Legal+ Finance) and softball (Support/Incentives) approaches so moderate factions within Unknown Worlds can push for compromise.”
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Kim followed ChatGPT’s advice rather than his lawyers’ advice, according to the court records. The first step was posting a message on Subanutica’s website to get fans on his side. According to court documents, Kim said the goal of the message was to “secure public support from fans and legal validation of our legitimacy.” He then suggested that ChatGPT write it for him. It achieved the opposite of his intended goal. Fans found the message bizarre and worried about the future of the game. Those fears were compounded when Kim fired the game’s original creators and entered into a legal battle with them.

The legal battle is ongoing, but Kim looks set to lose. The judge has ordered he reinstate the fired developers and has exposed the CEO’s flailing use of ChatGPT. Krafton told Kotaku that it was “evaluating its options” regarding the ruling and that it “puts players at the heart of every decision.”

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So instead of Chinese backed slop, we instead get more DEI slop.

Wow, what a winning move for us gamers.

I'm sure going to love watching the brown mystery meat DEI character surviving on an alien world. I really hope they include a heckin' chungus quirky character in their head and or radio that pops in with a quip every 30 seconds.


Subnautica 1 was lightning in a bottle. Below Zero fucking sucked ass, and the old CEO is a backstabbing bastard who sold down the old music composer for making a harmless joke. Fuck them both.
 
Ceos and shareholders of public companies always ruin everything for everyone. The only way to fix the corruption they bring is to make them second class citizens. If you want to be a stockholder for business, you must legally give up your rights.
 
This is why I treat ChatGPT as a fun internet toy of sorts instead of as a serious resource. With that said, it's a damn good search engine if you use it that way. At least, it is for me.
 
You're absolutely right to call me out on that blunder, that's completely on me. Would you like me to show you some other instances of people going to jail or funny ways of committing suicide (some of these are funnier than you might think)?
 
Doctor PooPoo Head said:
Ceos and shareholders of public companies always ruin everything for everyone. The only way to fix the corruption they bring is to make them second class citizens. If you want to be a stockholder for business, you must legally give up your rights.
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It was Dodge Bros v Ford that fucked things.
 
Blewberry Nausea said:
Did he not know any Jews?

Dude the game was kinda of massive for what it was. And money isn’t even real anymore at that level so yeah, those are the numbers.
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It's still a single game. if they are selling the game for 50/60 bucks you would need to sell 5 millon games just to pay the bonus. that's not taking into account all the other expenses.
 
NoIdeaWhatImDoing said:
It's still a single game. if they are selling the game for 50/60 bucks you would need to sell 5 millon games just to pay the bonus. that's not taking into account all the other expenses.
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It also had tons of dlc though as far as I know it was basically one of the main things the youtubers were playing for a while. Besides it doesn’t even sound like the company was expecting the game to live up to expectations to get the bonus but still be a long term profitable franchise brand. They probably saw it like paying for Half-Life.
 
So, he asked the 8-ball "how likely is it I can void a contract by firing the person I made it with?"

And the 8-ball said "unlikely" and he still did it.....

I have a feeling ChatGTP doesn't shoulder much of the blame on this one.
 
I am glad this cocksucker got fucked over by their own retardation, greedy profit driven suits are a big reason we can't have nice things.

I am looking forward to hearing/reading about more suits, who get fucked over by not understanding limitations and quirks of LLMs.
 
Neighborhood Curmudgeon said:
This is why I treat ChatGPT as a fun internet toy of sorts instead of as a serious resource. With that said, it's a damn good search engine if you use it that way. At least, it is for me.
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To nitpick a bit, it is a serious resource; just the same way that Google or Wikipedia has been in the past. I wouldn't blindly trust Wikipedia janny trannies and their editorializing, but I'd be curious to see what sources they cite. If it's something important, I'll ask it some questions and then have it point me at where it found the information. or if it's something I can verify easily like "how do I find X setting on this piece of software" then if it's wrong I'll tell it like "darn I don't see that in this menu, where else might it be?"

It's a very good search engine, and you should also never assume anything it gives you is right until you can verify it by hand. But it can comb through old Stack Overflow posts like 20x faster than I can.
 
I think "fixing up the shitty vibe coded law argument, contract, computer code, and charging the client up the ass for it" will become the next big thing for all industries and jobs if you are smart enough about it.

Heck, if i was a lawyer, i'd tell retards to go to chatgpt for a "free appointment" then sell myself as their savior when it inevitable hallucinates some shit and fucks their case up real bad and they got no choice or time to fix it but me.
 
NoIdeaWhatImDoing said:
It's still a single game. if they are selling the game for 50/60 bucks you would need to sell 5 millon games just to pay the bonus. that's not taking into account all the other expenses.
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Subnautica has sold over 18 million copies and the sequel has been the second most wishlist game on steam from the moment it was announced to the moment Silksong released.

If they deliver to fans of the first game and reach a lot of new ones with a big publisher add campaign it makes sense. It's also the rights to DLC and further sequels/spinoffs.
 
76LD910 said:
Subnautica has sold over 18 million copies and the sequel has been the second most wishlist game on steam from the moment it was announced to the moment Silksong released.

If they deliver to fans of the first game and reach a lot of new ones with a big publisher add campaign it makes sense. It's also the rights to DLC and further sequels/spinoffs.
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Did they sell a lot during covid or sales on steam? 2 years after the game was released they had sold 5 million copies, it jumps to 18 millon in resent news articles.
 
NoIdeaWhatImDoing said:
Did they sell a lot during covid or sales on steam? 2 years after the game was released they had sold 5 million copies, it jumps to 18 millon in resent news articles.
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It's been released for console and there have been sales for as much as 75% off the base price of 30 USD. IDK what it sold for on console, but google says it only made $108 million on steam. That also might be counting a free promotion on epic games where 4.5 million people downloaded it.
 
This CEO is military grade fucking stupid. How did he even land in a job like that if he's dumber than most people serving coffee or filling potholes?
 
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