In late October, Krafton–publisher of games like PUBG, inZOI, and the embattled Subnautica 2–announced it would be going “AI first,” an increasingly common buzzword for companies looking to get in on the AI boom before it goes bust. You’ll never believe this, but that move involves people losing their jobs.
Krafton said its pivot to AI would involve a “complete reorganization of the company's operational development system, placing AI at the center of problem solving,” according to a machine translation of its Korean announcement. The move also included a $69.7 million investment in a GPU cluster, and an additional $20.8 million to support employees in “directly utilizing and applying various AI tools to their work.”
In early November, Krafton instituted a hiring freeze, though this excluded departments working on original IP or AI. Krafton CEO Bae Dong-geu said at the time that “rather than reducing costs through AI First, individual productivity must increase at the company-wide level.” Well yeah, that makes sense; your company invests in the hot new tech that its creators keep promising will revolutionize your work, so of course you need to work harder to help it get there.
Today, Business Korea (as spotted by Eurogamer) reported that the company has “begun offering resignation support to all employees.” Business Korea writes that the resignations would be voluntary, with severance based on years of employment.
A Krafton rep told Business Korea:
The core purpose [of the reduction] 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… [T]he company plans to support members in autonomously deciding whether to continue the direction of change internally or expand externally.
This is some spectacular business bullshit language. Framing those unwilling to turn their current jobs into whatever bastardized version of them would exist at an “AI first” company, or who cannot or will not bow to these increased productivity demands, as “embarking” or “expanding” on new “external” challenges is a great way to put the rug-pulling onus on employees rather than the company. And while I can appreciate buyouts as an alternative to layoffs, this “if you don’t like it, there’s the door” inherently acknowledges that Krafton is making a move it knows will be unpopular with its employees–you know, the people who did the work that gave Krafton “record-high cumulative performance in the third quarter” of this year.
But all of this is simply how AI is manifesting in the real working world, from Duolingo to The Washington Post to YouTube and beyond. If AI doesn’t outright replace your job–or, more accurately, if your boss doesn’t decide to try to replace you with AI whether or not AI can actually do your job–then its inclusion turns your job into something unrecognizable. At which point, maybe seeing yourself out is a better option, though in this current age of tech layoffs probably doesn’t feel nearly as sunny as “embarking on external challenges” makes it sound.
Meanwhile, we’re all still waiting on that AI-powered utopia Sam Altman and his ilk are promising while their software is convincing people to kill themselves. Everything is going great!
