Krafton, the publisher behind PUBG, Hi-Fi Rush 2, and Subnautica 2, has launched a voluntary resignation program for employees who are not aligned with the “era of AI transformation.”
This move comes amid Krafton’s ongoing legal dispute with Subnautica’s original developers. In October, the company announced that it is now an “AI-first” organization and pledged to invest over $70 million in AI-related initiatives. The company has now taken its AI focus to a nearly militant level, essentially asking developers who aren’t on board to leave.
According to a Krafton spokesperson speaking to BusinessKorea (machine-translated from Korean), the voluntary resignation program “is to support members in proactively designing their growth direction and embarking on new challenges both inside and outside the company amid the era of AI transformation.” The spokesperson added that “the company plans to support members in autonomously deciding whether to continue the direction of change internally or expand externally.”
Employees who choose to leave Krafton under this program will receive varying levels of financial support depending on their tenure, with a maximum of 36 months’ salary for those with more than 11 years at the company.
The debate over generative AI in video game development remains one of the industry’s most hotly contested issues. Major companies such as Krafton, EA, Ubisoft, and Take-Two have publicly signaled varying levels of support for AI, while many, particularly in the indie scene, argue that AI can never replace human creativity. Meanwhile, the new extraction shooter Arc Raiders has faced scrutiny for using text-to-speech AI for dialogue, a practice developer Embark has employed since its previous title, The Finals.
