A judge ordered the reinstatement of a video game developer after he was fired as part of a scheme cooked up by a CEO using ChatGPT. Facing the possibility of paying out a massive bonus to the developer of Subnautica 2, the CEO of publisher Krafton used ChatGPT to create a plan to take over the development studio and force out its founder, according to court records.

The Monday ruling details the bizarre story. Unknown Worlds Entertainment is the studio behind the 2018 underwater survival game Subnautica. The company has since been working on the sequel, Subnautica 2. In 2021, South Korean publisher Krafton bought Unknown Worlds Entertainment for $500 million and promised to pay out another $250 million if Subnautica 2 sold well enough.

Krafton’s internal sales projections for Subnautica 2 looked great, and looked like it would be on the hook for the additional $250 million. In an attempt to avoid paying this, Krafton CEO Changhan Kim turned to ChatGPT for help avoiding paying the developers the $250 million bonus. “As Unknown Worlds prepared to release its hotly anticipated sequel, Subnautica 2, the parties’ relationship fractured,” the court decision said. “Fearing he had agreed to a ‘pushover’ contract, Krafton’s CEO consulted an artificial intelligence chatbot to contrive a corporate ‘takeover’ strategy.”

Kim partnered with Krafton Head of Corporate Development Maria Park and the company’s legal team to work out options. He toyed with finding a reason to fire the founders. According to court records, Park pinged Kim on Slack and told him that attempting to avoid paying the bonus would be legally risky. “Hi CEO . . . it seems to be highly likely that the earn-out will still be paid if the sales goal is achieved regardless of the dismissal with cause,” the Slack message said according to court records. “Therefore, there isn’t much that we can practically gain other than punishment with a simple dismissal alone, whereas I am worried that we may be exposed to lawsuit and reputation risk.”

But the CEO would not accept defeat. “And so Kim turned to ChatGPT for help,” court records said. “When the AI chatbot responded that the earnout would be ‘difficult to cancel,’ Kim complained to Park that the [payout] was a ‘contract under which we can only be dragged around.’”

Kim pressed the chatbot for an answer. “At ChatGPT’s suggestion, Kim formed an internal task force, dubbed ‘Project X.’ The task force’s mandate was to either negotiate a ‘deal’ on the earnout or execute a ‘Take Over’ of Unknown Worlds. They looked to buy time,” court records said. “Kim sought ChatGPT’s counsel on how to proceed if Krafton failed to reach a deal with Unknown Worlds on the earnout. The AI chatbot prepared a ‘Response Strategy’ to a ‘No-Deal’ Scenario.”

This was a piece of ChatGPT’s “Project X” for Krafton:

“a. Preemptive Framing - Repeat that protecting quality and fan trust is the highest priority, undermine the ‘Large Corporation VS. Indie’ framing

b. Securing Control Points -

* Lock down Steam/console publishing rights and access rights over code/build pipeline through both legal and technical aspects.

* For the earn-out freeze, keep room for negotiations through provision stating ‘immediate removal if specific development results are achieved’

a. Systematic materials for legal defense - Prepare contract interpretation memorandums, log all communications, seek external consultation
b. Team retention - Operation of retention packages for key personnel and rapid backfill pipelines in anticipation of resignation/departure scenarios
c. Two handed strategy - Create a structure that allows for both hardball (Legal+ Finance) and softball (Support/Incentives) approaches so moderate factions within Unknown Worlds can push for compromise.”

Kim followed ChatGPT’s advice rather than his lawyers’ advice, according to the court records. The first step was posting a message on Subanutica’s website to get fans on his side. According to court documents, Kim said the goal of the message was to “secure public support from fans and legal validation of our legitimacy.” He then suggested that ChatGPT write it for him. It achieved the opposite of his intended goal. Fans found the message bizarre and worried about the future of the game. Those fears were compounded when Kim fired the game’s original creators and entered into a legal battle with them.

The legal battle is ongoing, but Kim looks set to lose. The judge has ordered he reinstate the fired developers and has exposed the CEO’s flailing use of ChatGPT. Krafton told Kotaku that it was “evaluating its options” regarding the ruling and that it “puts players at the heart of every decision.”

The original Slay The Spire was one of those rare games that created an obvious, almost immediate change in the industry. Before it came out, digital deckbuilders were mostly niche oddities for those suffering from Magic: The Gathering draft withdrawal. Afterwards, deckbuilders rapidly became a usual suspect on best-seller pages, with everything from small-scale studios to AAA Marvel releases trying to get in on the action. While Slay The Spire definitely wasn’t the first of its kind (video game or otherwise), it took something familiar to tabletop regulars and translated it to a different medium while maintaining its depth. Basically, it created a whole new generation of people who now spend way too much time looking up rule clarifications on card game message boards.

This trick of translating the fun of one medium to another while inspiring a wave of copycats seemed like the kind of thing you can only pull off once. So, while the announcement of Slay The Spire 2 was met with fanfare, it made sense to wonder if the sequel could innovate in the same way. It’s been almost a decade, and there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of games in this mold since 2017, so any follow-up would be hard-pressed to make the same kind of impact.

It turns out that Slay The Spire 2 has already reached about 10 times the concurrent player count compared to the original on Steam, with more than half a million people logging on at once. Right now, it’s sitting in third place on the site’s most played charts alongside Valve’s evergreen duo of Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2. There are plenty of reasons why the game is doing so well: positive word of mouth thanks to its predecessor, the genre’s increased popularity, a long lead-up time that helped build hype, etc. But there’s also something more salient at play: The game didn’t just settle for more of the same, it added an ingenious touch that brings it back to its tabletop roots. Now you can play co-op.

As it stands, roguelike deckbuilders are mostly like really complicated solitaire. The player tries to put together a strong deck and outpace escalating challenges from an AI adversary. It’s a lot of fun, and one of the big upsides is the convenience factor compared to its physical counterparts: Unlike Dominion (the grandfather of the genre), you don’t need to plan a tabletop night and then convince your friends to play a bespoke German deckbuilding game about feudalism (there’s a Steam edition now where you can play against randos, but still).

It’s nice that roguelike deckbuilders let you scratch that card freak itch, but like with many digital conveniences, this comes with tradeoffs. For one, you don’t get to see the look of horror in your friend’s eyes as you hand them their 13th curse card after playing another Witch. Instead, the standard operating procedure for most deckbuilding video games is plugging away at your computer or console (usually until some ungodly hour), battling Act 4 nightmare bosses all by yourself. Slay The Spire is amazing, but, for good and bad, it took an inherently social style of game and turned it into a solo activity.

As for Slay The Spire 2, you can very much still go it alone, but it also lets you cooperate with up to three teammates. Upfront, things play out pretty similarly with a crew. Each player constructs a deck by drafting cards. Between battles and events, you pass through modules on an overview map to work towards the top of a tower. You’ll encounter high fantasy flora and fauna, treasure chests, and randomized events that sometimes feature a giant talking whale who gives you presents.

The main difference in co-op is that every time you take a turn, the rest of your party is doing the same thing. Since everyone plays their cards in unison, this mercifully gets around the long sequences in many other card games where you don’t get to do stuff. Smart little details smooth out the other problems that plague a lot of co-op board games. For instance, you can’t see every choice your partners are making, which makes it much harder to backseat drive. If you’ve played cooperative tabletop games before, you’ve probably run into cases where one or two people will commandeer the ship, giving everyone else marching orders. Here, you’ve got to make your own choices.

At the same time, coordination can make a massive difference, and being part of a team changes the context of almost every card in the game. Strategies that work great solo, like applying buffs to yourself, don’t have the same weight, while many otherwise neglected cards get a bump. An interesting balancing act comes into play, where on top of individually building a ramp to dish out big damage, you’re also thinking about your group as a whole and what cards or relics will complement everyone else’s decks. Maybe you pick up a few high-energy cost cards because a teammate can give the party some extra mana. In terms of strategy, turn order can be a big deal, and you’ll want someone applying debuffs like Vulnerable (which causes enemies to take more damage) before everyone else starts swinging in extended sequences that play out like beating a piñata. Or maybe another partner can afflict a monster with Weak, meaning you won’t need to use as many defensive cards because your enemy won’t be hitting as hard. It turns into a rare communal puzzle that requires everyone’s input.

Beyond all the crunchy design reasons why the co-op lands, this game reintroduces the social elements that its predecessor inherently leaned away from. From traditional 52-card decks to modern incarnations involving superheroes and wizards, card games have historically brought people together (even if you’re regretting that after getting stomped by a cheap meta deck or losing cash in a disastrous round of poker). In that tradition, this game’s turn-based monster slaying makes it a great way to hang out, shoot the shit, and build an unstoppable monsters-smashing engine: There’s something very satisfying about showing off your positively busted combos to your friends. It may not be the first co-op deckbuilder—Across The Obelisk and Aeon’s End did it earlier for video games, while Marvel Legendary and a bunch of others did this for the tabletop—but like its predecessor, it took a somewhat niche concept and honed it into something special. Slay The Spire 2 continues the tradition of wreaking havoc on sleep schedules, but now at least you won’t be the only one rolling into work with bloodshot eyes and a hankering for the next deep run.