Amid Subnautica 2 Turmoil, PUBG and Hi-Fi Rush Owner Krafton Bets $70 Million on an AI-First Future

File this under bold or desperate, depending on your mood: Krafton just rebranded itself as an 'AI First' company. Yes, that Krafton — the PUBG and The Callisto Protocol outfit, currently knee-deep in a legal mess around Subnautica 2 — is now promising to weave AI into almost every corner of the business.

So what did they actually announce?

The company dropped a press release today saying it will build an AI-centered operating standard across the entire organization. In plain English: management tools, internal infrastructure, research labs, and even stuff inside the games themselves are getting an AI makeover. The in-game part is still frustratingly vague — lots of 'we will innovate for players' energy without concrete examples.

Krafton CEO Kim Chang-han pitched this as both a creative unlock and a culture shift. The stated goal is to give employees more ways to grow, push player-focused experimentation, and, yes, position Krafton as a model for how game studios should use AI going forward. (Translations credited to Infostock Daily.)

• Scope: AI folded into management systems, company infrastructure, R&D, and future gameplay/production features
• Upfront spend: 100 billion won (about $70 million)
• Ongoing spend: starting next year, about 30 billion won annually (roughly $20 million) to promote AI use internally and train employees on the tools

What this could mean for the games

This is where things get murky. The announcement leaves the door open for AI-generated art, music, or writing to appear in upcoming releases — maybe as early as Subnautica 2, which is slated for next year. People are already wondering about other high-profile sequels too, like the impending Hi-Fi Rush 2. If AI-generated content does creep in, it could feel especially weird in a series whose first game has a pretty loud anti-megacorporation streak.

Why now?

The timing is not subtle. Krafton has been coming off some notable misses and is currently in an ugly back-and-forth with Subnautica 2's original lead developers. That fight has only gotten spicier in recent filings, with former studio leadership accusing the publisher of changing its reasoning mid-lawsuit for why it fired the founders.

'To say Krafton's new theory is a Hail Mary would be an understatement'

So yeah — the company is planting its flag on AI at the exact moment it could really use a clean, forward-looking narrative. Whether this becomes a genuine reinvention or just another buzzword phase, we will have to wait and see.