Fuck krafton
I finally got to read this article and the situation is even better/dumber with more context. I didn’t realize the layering at first.
This CEO used AI to avoid paying human lawyers to help him figure out how to avoid paying human game developers.
This asshole needs to get some kind of “Yo Dawg I heard you like AI” anti-award.
Jail would be nice. Someone shouldn’t be able to drag that many people through that much pain without repercussions beyond having to do the thing they were avoiding to begin with. Banning his stupid ass from running any more companies would be a decent outcome.
You can have punitive damages too.
OP if you’re gonna post a paywalled article, can you at least copy the full text of it into the thread? Most of us cannot read more than two paragraphs of this piece, ensuring that most participants here are talking around the headline only.
Paywall bypass: https://archive.is/yIkXA
Block java on the page :p
Dad you’re on the internet again, you know you’re not supposed to be on the internet, because you say dumb things and then people laugh at you.
You missed the part where that site is using client side code to run a ddos attack against whomever.
I don’t know any CEOs, but I’ve known many business owners in my life and I’ve been one. The majority absolutely despise payroll as their biggest expense. They hate their employees, which will be replaced as soon as technologically and financially possible.
This is why there is a huge push for AI, every one of these greedy bastards would be perfectly fine with replacing every single employee. They see it as an improvement.
We as a society in the USA have gotten businesses backwards and put the cart before the horse, in my opinion. Our goal shouldn’t be “shareholders will get the cream of the crop!”, that road simply leads to a small group of people being fabulously wealthy, they see their employees as a middle man that they would rather eliminate.
We can change how corporations work at any time, but we’ll need to get rid of our government first. They won’t legislate themselves out of generational wealth, it’s a fantasy to think otherwise. Never, ever in the history of Earth has the ruling class decided “hmmm I’m starting to feel guilty about rolling around in a pool full of gold Krugerands maybe this is a little much”
Thanks for articulating it this way for me. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me, at least in my situation. I reported my boss to the directors. He was (still is) planning to cut a guy from our team, claiming he costs too much. But when I did the math, I found that my boss’ personal expenses on food, gas, phone, vehicle, etc. (with increasingly unaccounted-for amounts) are more than that guy’s pay.
My boss isn’t worried about the financial health of the organization, he’s worried he won’t be able to keep spending it on himself if he has to pay the workers.
I’ve seen “the director” lay off employees on a whim whilst buying a new end table for 30,000 USD. Not a typo, I cut the check.
They’ll take all they can, shareholders will let it go as long as the returns are good. In my opinion, a national minimum wage is stupid, but instead workers should be owners.
The profits shouldn’t all go to a table full of vultures.
If many had their way,they would be perfectly fine with slavery
100% accurate. I ran a family owned grocery and the owners never shut up about payroll. As soon as I started managing a department it was “you’re overstaffed” every flipping week. I explained my plan to use the extra hours to have the employees trained on how to make more prepared food instead of buying the premade junk. They complained and complained until the end of the second month when my numbers for prepared food in that single month grossed enough to pay for the extra staff need for over half the year.
They still complained I was overstaffed.
It’s worth pointing out that the company and CEO in question are South Korean.
It’s a global issue that should be tackled, but American flavour capitalsm is definitely spreading through the world.
I liked subnautica quite a lot anyway, but I would buy the second one either way just to contribute to them paying the 250.
Its free on PS plus right now. Or was that last month? Either way I have way too much Thalassophobia for that game.
My first reaction is: lmao fuck Krafton
My second reaction is: you absolute fucking idiot, what did you expect when you sold to a mega corpo??
To be fair, $500 million is a lot of money.
You can barely blame them for not wanting to turn that down.
Should it pan out as planned, they’d get another quarter of a billion. That’s money enough that if you’re halfway sensible with it, you and your descendants would never have to work again.
Even when evenly divided across the entire company, it’s still a life-changing amount. ($1.6 - 2.3 million per person)
Where was that half billion going to come from? Each of the previous Subnautica games sold around 5 million copies at $30 a pop, so their entire gross revenue was $300 million, tops. And that’s gross revenue, not net profit.
So, where’s that kind of money going to come from? 5 million people bought copies of Subnautica in better economic times than this, you planning on raising the price or selling the game to more people?
Is that not on Krafton for buying Unknown Worlds for $500 million, and then offering an additional $250 million if they achieve particular goals?
If it was unrealistic, then don’t buy the company for that much, and provide a contract with those terms.
From Unknown Worlds’ perspective, it would have been irresponsible not to take the deal, assuming no other conditions.
That Krafton’s CEO got buyer’s remorse isn’t their problem to deal with. Caveat emptor and all that.
If you’re the CEO of a company, like Unknown Worlds, it’s your job to steer the company around outright fraud, like offers to purchase the company for far, far more money than you’d hope to generate with every planned project.
I looked up a similar article without a paywall:
“Krafton recently declared itself to be an “AI-first company,” which led Unknown Worlds to issue a statement indicating that Subnautica 2 will not feature generative AI.”
The “AI first” shit is pure gold. I love the instant karma. Why are these CEOs throwing their money, reputation, etc. away on AI? Either they are even stupider than I thought, or the tech bros have some kind of massive blackmail machine they’re using to take over everything and puppet all the CEOs.
Execs in this sort of company are narrative first, facts a distant second. LLMs speak their language, something agreeable that sounds right whether it is or not.
BTW, investors are largely in the same boat, they are investing with having no realistic way to know whether the nice things being said are backed by reality up front. They only know if/when it goes down in a blaze.
Further in gaming, maybe they tank some headliner properties with bad reviews if the mess them up, but it’s possible that most of the ‘sold’ games barely even get played, thanks to Steam hoarding. A lot of businesses can coast on past glory for years and years before things blow up, if at all.
The LLM will do whatever they tell it to, including making shit up in order to suit the narrative. They’re the ultimate “yes-man” that’s not even human.
Unfortunately for CEO’s, it turns out that yes-men - or yes-machines - aren’t particularly good developers or legal strategists
Yes, this is the reason it’s so popular with them. While the baseline ass-kissing of chatGPT makes me vomit, they think it’s the greatest invention in the world and don’t understand how somebody doesn’t love it
Yeah, I don’t get why people like the default tone of those LLMs, they are so grating on me. When I get slop emailed that so greatly amused the person who prompted it, I can’t believe they are eager to share rather than repulsed at how cringey it was.
It’s because in order to become a ceo, you have to be a very specific type of person, and the role also attracts this trait of putting money above all else, which fits perfectly to the role.
Imagine if you invested in a company that helmed a ceo that didn’t try to make more money. Right? You’d be upset as the investor-role that your money wasn’t working for you, and would take the guy out.
This is the common, public opinion.
So the same goes for the CEO: that maximum money be made by being different and taking good chances and staying on top of the technology curve. And OpenAI has been, at least what they, themselves, purport, overwhelmingly successful.
This is all to say that the role of CEO draws a ton of people who think a lot of themselves and their abilities, because they think fake it until you make it is the role, because it largely is: you have to make bets on decisions to lead like that. Which makes CEOs this sort of hollow, fake-person sort of capitalist sociopath.
And them betting on AI-first, then, makes a ton of sense if you’re that specific type of person. Because, unless you have your own skills and opinions, you will be beholden to the dumbest, fakest, skewed statistical other bullshitters in the world.
Right now, the companies making all these mistakes that all of us with actual skills and opinions can clearly see, those are just the companies that don’t matter, that are leeching off the backs of real industries. Like a group of kids all cheating off each other in a test, and suddenly a bunch of them get the same wrong answer.
They’re literally the people, and boards of people who put them there, who have no fucking idea what they’re doing, and in my personal opinion, are very clearly illustrating a weak point with society and humanity and our values and structures across the world. We’ll get past this one, for sure. But there will be more. That is the both the curse and the gift of existence.
They’re simply stupider than you thought. They buy into hype so fast without really listening to the experts already on the team.
Either they are even stupider than I thought, or the tech bros have some kind of massive blackmail machine they’re using to take over everything and puppet all the CEOs.
I think it’s a little of each.
The ones not being blackmailed are desperately trying to look like they’re impactful enough to blackmail.
I know the type. They list themselves exclusively on job search sites for high earners like “Ladders”, they don’t listen to their employees ever because they’re a subhuman resource, they are first in line at every ceremony or circle jerk meeting, but nowhere to be found when actual work needs done, they spent the last few years bringing up how badly they want to go back to the office full time, and they unironically speak in corporatese even on Christmas. They like sports teams because they’re popular and a good segway, not because they care about the team, they view it as their duty to keep the ranks broken down and working hard in fear of their jobs.
Ehhh 404 still has a bit more to say on
Watching a CEO get fucked by using AI is orgasmic.
LLMs are fly honey for stupid people.
The CEO will be fine at the end of the day.
The workers are going to get fucked, though.
At the moment this is a win for the workers. They should get their full share of the payout, now. The main danger is now their parent company may be hostile to them (or even try to close them) until the parent company CEO gets replaced.
Yep as soon as the game is launched, LAYOFFS!!!
Sharing profits with the people who actually did the work is anti-capitalist.
until the parent company CEO gets replaced.
One would hope pulling such a boneheaded move ought to make that happen rather quickly.
Of course, if this CEO has been there for more than a year or 2, he would probably get a golden parachute for more than the value of his fuckup…
Yeah. These illegal firings happened around 9 months ago. I doubt these guys had the funds to just sit on the sidelines, doing nothing, hoping that the court would rule in their favour. Even if they’re offered their jobs back, it could be that by now they’ve made other commitments.
Even if they’re offered their jobs back, it could be that by now they’ve made other commitments.
Or just don’t want to contribute to an organization that tried to fuck them over in the past. I’d be much more inclined to get a payout and move on with my life. What’s the point of returning to a job and making more money for the people who just tried to get rid of you to save a buck?
With many businesses I’m sure that’s true. But, it might be different when you’re making something artistic. Subnautica has a lot of passionate fans, and it’s a unique kind of game. These guys might really want to finish this game that they poured a lot of themselves into. Maybe not, maybe they just want to move on. But, I think a lot of people who work on games really care about what it is they’re doing.
oh god, sounds like Krafton were already assholes. I bet the put the other 250 in and sell it in pieces.
This is the kind of successful entrepreneur we’re supposed to be looking up to, people.
Exactly, the fact this dude at Krafton can sign 250 million dollars deals but is also dumb enough to think a ChatGPT lawyer knows better than his own lawyers… It goes to show that many powerful people were just lucky or inherited their wealth but are definitely not successful because they are smart.
Yep. And I’d go further. Class mobility in the West is dead. No matter how smart and skilled and competent you are, you will never be one of the ultra-rich - and no matter how ignorant and incompetent one of the ultra-rich is, they’ll never lose enough money to become “merely” well off. The entire broken system, one that’s designed to funnel money from the working class to a handful of ultra-rich families, will keep making the rich richer no matter what they do.
We have a billionaire caste, not a billionaire class, and this story makes it painfully obvious.
Throughout pretty much all of human history it’s been apparent that the “nobles” class has been, at best, more trouble than they’re worth; and at worst, the instigating spark that creates a nation-destroying blaze.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who has read a history book that the American nobleman is equally as useless and destructive as his counterpart anywhere else.
While undoubtedly true, this story is about a South Korean CEO of a South Korean company.
Sure. This comment thread is about class mobility in the West though.
But, fact is, it seems it’s the same everywhere.
You just further proved his point
Thomas Piketty agrees with you in Capital
This is why the LLMs are so popular with execs, they are the ultimate yes men. They will feed ego and purport to give a strategy that will support any dumbass idea without challenging them.
That’s half of it. The other half is that these execs think that everybody under them is some kind of replaceable cog in the machine with no special skills. They don’t think their job could be replaced by AI. But, they think everyone under them is so unimportant that their job can be done by AI. They’re managers. They don’t know how to do the work of the people they’re managing. They can’t tell the difference between an accurate result given to them by someone with knowledge and expertise vs. one created by a slop machine that generates plausibly realistic text.
If their $1000/hour lawyers tell them one thing, but the bullshit machine tells them something different, they trust whichever one gives them the answer they prefer.
definitely not successful because they are smart.
I mean, “smart” is a relative term. They were smart enough to find the money hose and latch onto it. But the skills necessary to schmooze $250M out of a creditor are fundamentally different than the skills necessary to manage a workforce or meet the terms of the contract.
You can call it the Peter Principle or the Principle-Agent Problem or any number of other business short-hands for “skills mismatch”. The bottom line is that “meritocracy” in a capitalist system boils down to rent-seeking effectiveness. That’s the skill set that is rewarded. And it produces legions of people who train and compete for the opportunity to maximize rent-seeking returns.
This guy fumbled the ball in a spectacular fashion. But I have no doubt he’ll get back on his horse and find another pool of labor to extract wealth from. Because, if he’s a CEO, he’s honed the skills needed to do exactly that.
What we get to mock him for is his failure, not his decision. If he’d retrieved a useful answer from the ChatGPT answer lottery, or the courts had been stacked with his friends such that any answer he pulled was considered the right one, he’d be hailed as a business genius on the front page of the WSJ rather than scoffed at in the back pages of 404media.
Exactly “being smart” and “acting smart” are two different things. Usain Bolt is the “fastest” man on Earth, but if he’s just chilling on the couch watching TV, I can run right past him.
Same with these ivy league CEOs, they probably (not necessarily) were smart when taking their tests in school, but if they just leave the fate of their company to chatgpt responses, they’re acting as dumb as possible at the current moment.
You have no idea how ceos work do you…
Share your insights! Or be quiet, contributing “nah” is just lazy.
what’s the point, why bother?
Capitalist Mysticism at its finest.
Luck is a factor, but the differentiator is that they have the. Isplaced confidence and drive to just do what they want first. Then the luck let’s them get away with it. It’s kind of like if you get a million people to flip a coin 50 times. Some of them will get all 50 to be heads. So with billions of people in the world. Some have this drive to be on top, misplaced confidence, luck, and situational oportunities (also a good part luck) to end up able to sign 250 million dollar contract. None of that actually requires they have a clue. Sometimes they do, but it isn’t required.
And no one remembers the failures, except maybe their family with that wacky Uncle that had some crazy get rich quick scheme. In some other timeline, some kids think of their crazy uncle Mark Zuckerberg who dropped out of college because he thought he could do better than MySpace, and now he bounces around chasing various hustles that keep failing.
if you get a million people to flip a coin 50 times. Some of them will get all 50 to be heads.
Flipping a coin 50 times has 1.1 quadrillion possible outcomes, only 2 of which are all heads or all tails. I think you’d need more than a few billion to reliably see those results.
I think though, you get the point.
Now here is a bonus question for you. If I give you a coin and ask you to flip it 20 times, and they all come up heads. What are the odds that if you flip it again it will come up heads?
I think it’s higher than a 50% chance of heads, because you have evidence for it being an unfair coin.
Nice that is in fact what I was going to say. I get a lot of people with that joke.
yeah that’s over a one in a billion chance to get all heads in just a million tries.
I was against ChatGPT, but now I think it could be useful as a moron honeypot.
Who would have thought that the workers weren’t the real drones?!
Anyone who’s met ceos
If there was any justice, he would have to pay out double the entire amount (including bonus) to the devs.
Unknown Worlds is only one of the top tier niche devs of all time.
But teh Computa said no…
Kim: Aw shit I regret my contract. Maybe I can get out of it by lying. I need tons of lies. I need to lie and bullshit like a madman. I need to spout tons of absolute unhinged bullshit with a straight face.
ChatGPT: This. Is. My. Moment.
Sounds like our government. It sounds like our whole fucking modern society.
Too bad ChatGPT lacks the self-awareness (let alone any actual reasoning skills whatsoever) to appreciate it.
This sort of hilarious act of subversion (pun intended) makes me wonder if the loonies who think it’s sentient are right.
Nah chat GPT is just a verbal mirror, so the idiot puts his complete lack of legal knoweldge in and gets a complete lack of legal knowledge out.
Not just a wanker, also a pea-brained gibbering dicksplat.
Atlas
ShruggedShartedpea-brained gibbering dicksplat
That sounds something from one of those “pick 3 insult generator” sites :p
