Krafton Launches Voluntary Resignation Program Weeks After Declaring 'AI-First Company' Future (pcgamer.com) 24
An anonymous reader shares a report: In October, PUBG and Subnautica 2 publisher Krafton announced that it would be undergoing a "complete reorganization" to become an "AI-first" company, planning to invest over 130 billion won ($88 million) in agentic AI infrastructure and deployment beginning in 2026. This week, as it boasts record-breaking quarterly profits, the Korean publisher has followed that strategic shift by launching a voluntary resignation program for its domestic employees, according to Business Korea reporting.
The program, announced internally, offers substantial buyouts for domestic Krafton employees based on their length of employment at the publisher. Severance packages range from 6 months' salary for employees with one year or less of service to 36 months' salary for employees who've worked at Krafton for over 11 years. The voluntary resignation program follows a November 4 earnings call in which Krafton announced a record quarterly profit of $717 million. During the call, Krafton CFO Bae Dong-geun indicated that Krafton had also halted hiring for new positions, telling investors that "excluding organizations developing original intellectual property and AI-related personnel, we have frozen hiring company-wide."
The program, announced internally, offers substantial buyouts for domestic Krafton employees based on their length of employment at the publisher. Severance packages range from 6 months' salary for employees with one year or less of service to 36 months' salary for employees who've worked at Krafton for over 11 years. The voluntary resignation program follows a November 4 earnings call in which Krafton announced a record quarterly profit of $717 million. During the call, Krafton CFO Bae Dong-geun indicated that Krafton had also halted hiring for new positions, telling investors that "excluding organizations developing original intellectual property and AI-related personnel, we have frozen hiring company-wide."
Those severance packages are pretty good... (Score:3)
If I was offered something like that, I might take them up on it.
Who knows, maybe I could write a cool indie game during my 18 months off and I'd never need another corporate job again?
Re:Those severance packages are pretty good... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Imagine a truly valued employee watching one of his colleagues scoop up 3yrs of salary on his way out the door having been refused the package themselves because "wouldn't want to lose you". It's going to lead to some resentment unless they are also offering a 36 month retention bonus.
Agree 100% with you. Voluntary severance packages should be offered in a no questions asked first come first served basis.
If manglement* or HR can say no to a request, it means that trust is broken. Manglement KNOWS that the employee wants to leave, and the employees know that they know. This leads to the employee embarking in a mad race to find a new job, for fear of being fired, and manglement trying to replace the employee ASAP (for fear of them leaving). I'v seen it first hand, with a very gifted storag
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You do that and you lose your most experienced and knowledgeable staff because they know they can get another job tomorrow. I've seen this happen first hand at a university.
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It's going to lead to some resentment
I don't think resentment is going to be frequent. you think that possibly because you have not grown a career in places where 1-3 years severance packages are the normal thing. Big Corps (except for the US, apparently) have the values in their rules so you know in advance how the severances packages grow over time, and how long you need to stay for it to be sizeable. If you're interested in leaving, you just wait until your department gets hit by the lay-offs. Sometimes you're unlucky and it's another depar
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Yes, and you'd never see anything this good in the United States. Most companies only give severance in the United States if they think they might be sued if they don't. This is because companies in the United States don't want a severance liability on their books when they report quarterly earnings. Most other second world countries are more generous with severance. Some of them even have statutes requiring severance which increases on a sliding scale as function of the number of years of service.
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Let us know what torrent it's on.
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If they don't put limits on this, they may find themselves with zero employees and no one left to implement their AI future.
Even if I loved a job, it would be hard to say no to that.
3 years' salary for 11 years of tenure!?? (Score:2)
Well done Krafton (Score:4, Insightful)
While I despise AI initiatives in their current form, this is the way to do it.
You declare your AI intentions and lofty goals, then give the employees a decent (or, in this case substantial) voluntary resignation package.
No bad blood, and if you need to re-hire these people in the future, no burned bridges.
I hope more companies idd things like this.
JM2C
YMMV
Disagree, this is the stupidest way possible! (Score:3)
While I despise AI initiatives in their current form, this is the way to do it.
You declare your AI intentions and lofty goals, then give the employees a decent (or, in this case substantial) voluntary resignation package.
No bad blood, and if you need to re-hire these people in the future, no burned bridges.
I hope more companies idd things like this.
It's good for the employees who leave and bad for customers, and coworkers who stay. The smart thing to do is layoff the shitty performers and boost the pay of the best employees. Instead, you're ensuring those with the best resumes will get a great pay package to get a better job. So you like your job at Krafton or can't leave?...well...now the best people quit and you're left with the very worst and least ambitious coworkers.
You're a customer? This is a repeat of the offshore outsourcing rage of th
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now the best people quit and you're left with the very worst and least ambitious coworkers. [...] The CEO must be really clueless.
Yes, but not for the reason you think. He thinks he can have AI do all the work. This is a move to get rid of everyone who will go easily. Paying these severances has surely been calculated to be cheaper than fielding lawsuits for dismissal without "justifiable reasons." [seoullawgroup.com] You can be sure that they will next move on to a just-barely-not-legally-provable hostile work environment in order to convince more people to quit. There is no urgent need for layoffs, just a dumb CEO idea, so doing a layoff isn't viable.
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Stack ranking that you are suggesting is just as stupid.
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Okay but what if you already fired all your "shitty performers"?
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> ... pretty much fails nearly every prompt I give it.
You're holding it wrong
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Please let me clarify that I was tanking about Krafton and their AI innitiative specifically.
Seen many a comment, so I'll respond generically:
Your top performers are separated intwo groups, those who are genuinely excited to work with AI, and those who do not, with a very small group of "don't cares". Guess who stays and who leaves.
In the mid-range and low tier something similar occurs. Also, in those two populations the group of "don't cares" is much bigger.
This will self-select out the people that will e
Who wants to play slop? (Score:2)
This is going to go very badly for them.
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I do. It's annoying that we have close to human level AI in pretty much everything now but videogame bots are still as dumb as they were 20 years ago.
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It's annoying that we have close to human level AI in pretty much everything now
We don't have anything even close to AGI yet.
Re: Who wants to play slop? (Score:2)
What if it becomes endemic? (Score:2)
If it does become endemic, then no one has any salary to piss off on companies' offerings.
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It might become endemic but Krafton is a weird company where management shenanigans have been happening quite a bit recently. To me its like if microstrategy or Intellevision in its last days did this - you'd say "well, they're a strange company, who knows what's going on."
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What if the world blows up? What if a new strain of COVID kills everyone on earth? What if the atmosphere disappears?
All these "what-ifs" are awful, and also impossible. Krafton is buying their own hype. It's going to kill the company all right, but endemic? Hardly. I use AI too much to believe it can really replace people to the degree promised by the crusaders.
TAKE THAT DEAL NOW!!! (Score:2)
This company is going down. If you work for this company, you want to have a big head start finding other work. Take that deal, use the months of pay to keep going while you look for that next *real* job. A company that believes its own AI hype to this degree, is going to blow itself up until it pops. You want to be far, far away when that happens.