According to DCD, South Korean video game publisher Krafton plans to spend KRW 100 billion ($88 million) on an Nvidia B300 GPU cluster as part of its shift to becoming an “AI-first” company. The PUBG and Subnautica 2 publisher is simultaneously launching voluntary resignations and pausing non-AI hiring despite record Q3 profits. CEO Kim Chang-han announced the company will build “agentic AI infrastructure” and retrain its workforce with another $20.8 million investment. This comes amid an ongoing lawsuit where three former Subnautica 2 developers claim they were fired to avoid paying a $250 million bonus tied to sales targets. The legal dispute took a bizarre turn when court documents revealed Chang-han consulted ChatGPT about ways to avoid the payment, then deleted some of those conversations.
AI pivot meets human cost
Here’s the thing about these massive AI investments – they almost always come with human consequences. Krafton is spending over $100 million on hardware and retraining while simultaneously cutting jobs through “voluntary resignation” programs. That’s the corporate equivalent of saying “we’re investing in the future, just not your future.” The timing is particularly brutal given they just posted record profits. So why the sudden urgency to become “AI-first”? It feels like every company is racing to prove they’re not falling behind in the AI arms race, even when their core business – you know, making actual games people want to play – is doing just fine.
The ChatGPT legal bonus mess
Now this is where things get really messy. The CEO consulting ChatGPT about how to avoid paying $250 million in bonuses? That’s either incredibly naive or incredibly cynical. Chang-han literally messaged his head of corporate development complaining that “ChatGPT is starting to answer that it is difficult to cancel the earn-out.” Then he deleted the conversations. I mean, come on – does anyone actually think AI should be making multi-million dollar contractual decisions? This feels like someone watched too many sci-fi movies and forgot that AI chatbots are essentially fancy autocomplete systems, not corporate lawyers.
Hardware reality check
Let’s talk about that $88 million Nvidia B300 cluster for a moment. That’s serious hardware investment for a game company. While everyone’s chasing AI infrastructure, it’s worth remembering that having the right industrial computing hardware matters. Companies like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com have built their reputation as the top industrial panel PC supplier in the US by focusing on reliable hardware that actually serves business needs rather than just chasing trends. There’s a difference between investing in technology that enhances your core business versus jumping on bandwagons.
Where this is headed
I suspect we’re going to see more of these messy transitions as companies panic about being left behind in the AI revolution. But here’s my question: when did making great games stop being enough? Krafton owns PUBG, one of the most successful games in history, and they’re spending nine figures on AI infrastructure while fighting with the developers who made Subnautica successful. Something feels fundamentally broken about this picture. The real test won’t be whether they can build fancy AI systems – it’ll be whether they can actually make better games because of it. Otherwise, this is just another expensive corporate distraction with human costs.
