The messy Subnautica 2 legal dispute between publishers Krafton and three former lead developers on the game rumbles on. The lawyerly wranglings about Krafton’s decision to delay Sub 2’s early access, leaving a $250 million bonus to developers Unknown Worlds up in the air, then fire Charlie Cleveland, Max McGuire, and Ted Gill, are still wrangling.
A pre-trial briefing released earlier this week saw the three leads claim Krafton CEO Kim Chang-han consulted ChatGPT about ways the company could get around paying the much-discussed $250 million bonus, which the leads claim they would have shared with the rest of Unknown Worlds. Krafton subsequently said in a statement to Kotaku that this allegation from the ex-leads was “simply a distraction from their own efforts to destroy evidence”. Now, testimony from Chang-han has emerged, in which the exec concedes he did consult ChatGPT about aspects of the Subnautica 2 situation.
Upon learning that Cleveland and McGuire weren’t directly involved in Subnautica 2’s development, Chang-han said “I started discussing this matter with various teams within the company to find – to figure out what we could do,” in testimony spotted by cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer.
The CEO said he chatted to various teams within the company about this, then “searched on ChatGPT to get faster answers to figure out what kind of rights we have”, adding that he used it “just like Google search”. Lawyers for the former Unknown Worlds leads subsequently brought up a message Chang-han sent to Krafton head of corporate development Maria Park in June, in which he wrote: “Now, ChatGPT [is] start[ing] to answer that it is difficult to cancel the earn-out. If so, this is a contract under which we can only be dragged around.”
Asked why that and another conversation the CEO had with ChatGPT about the situation were subsequently deleted, Chang-han cited concerns about what OpenAI might do with their contents, saying “what I learned is that – from OpenAI, is that if you use certain important information concerning your company, then that type of information can be used by OpenAI for learning purposes.”
Basically, the exec’s stance is that he was simply using ChatGPT in this scenario in the same way he now uses it “dozens” of times a day when dealing with Krafton’s usual business, as he would a regular search engine. Krafton haven’t been shy about sharing how much they’re generally embracing the use of AI as a business. The question is whether it’s really appropriate for a CEO to be turning to an AI chatbot for help with a situation of this gravity.
As we’ve seen depressingly often, when company heads like Chang-han make bad decisions, lots of people suffer, making it rather terrifying to think that a technology still very prone to churning out errors or inaccuracies could now be relied on as part of that decision making. Meanwhile, the deletions obviously risk adding to the impression that Krafton aren’t being transparent about their motivations. If Chang-han is being honest about the reasons for the deletion, it’s also interesting to hear the CEO of a company this committed to generative AI as a tool expressing anxiety about what these tools do with our data.
I’ve reached out to Krafton for comment. In their latest statement on the case in general, the company said the following:
We are grateful to the court for its thorough commitment to understanding the facts, and we are confident we have demonstrated our commitment to delivering the best game possible to our fans. We made clear to the court that we were forced to make a change when the former leaders showed little interest in the development of Subnautica 2, which has always been our top priority.
Now, this trial comes down to plaintiffs asking to be restored to jobs they were not doing, said they had no interest in doing, and had previously declined requests that they come back and do those jobs. We look forward to receiving a decision. We have made incredible progress in the past few months, and we are excited to share with all the Subnautica fans.”
You can almost certainly expect plenty more news to follow as this saga continues to get deeper and deeper into the legal waters.
