The Subnautica 2 community received quite a shock in July when it was announced that Unknown Worlds co-founders Ted Gill, Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire had all been let go by publisher Krafton. We've since learned that the main reason was a massive $250 million bonus payout to co-founders and other employees.
A subsequent lawsuit by the co-founders revealed much more information, with Krafton saying that the co-founders abandoned their responsibilities, while the original developers are still adamant that the bonuses were paid out. A new filing in the court case has now revealed that Krafton even consulted ChatGPT on how to avoid paying out the bonus.
Krafton may have asked ChatGPT for help in the middle of the Subnautica 2 bonus edition
The filing stated that Krafton was looking for various ways to avoid or reduce the payout owed to the co-founders and the studio (thanks, Kotaku). “The smoking gun documents show that Krafton was looking for ways to 'de-monetize' and that its secret 'Project X' was designed to either make a 'deal' for monetization or perform a 'Takeover'. When the founders disagreed with Krafton's monetization demands, Krafton decided that a 'takeover' would be the 'easier' way.”
The filing goes on to say that the publisher even went so far as to ask an AI chatbot to help with the matter. “[CEO, Kim Chang-han] he turned to artificial intelligence to help him figure out ways to avoid paying his earnings. ChatGPT also advised that it would be 'difficult to unearn'.” Krafton then reportedly refused to provide transcripts of the chatbots, saying they no longer existed.
Krafton denied the allegation in a statement to Kotaku, saying, “No. This claim simply distracts from their own efforts to destroy evidence, such as Charlie reminding other key employees (Max and Ted) to delete anything 'incriminating' from their own ChatGPT accounts.”
Coincidentally, Krafton recently announced that it was becoming an “AI first company” and offered compensation to employees in exchange for voluntary resignations. In between all of this, Subnautica 2 released its first developer update since the original story broke, however, all the comments on the video are about the $250 million payout.
