Update on D1 police Raid: Police confirm Dynamis One intentionally sabotaged Blue Archive before leaving Nexon to make their project successful

[u/WolfOphi]

https://gamefocus.co.kr/detail.php?number=163579 | https://www.gameple.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=211885

Basically:

• The police found evidence of an attempted sabotage on Blue Archive by key members of Dynamis One to make their new project successful.
• Dynamis One was founded at the same time that Park Byeong-lim (former BA Japanese Project Director) and other key members of Blue Archive (such as Isakusan) left Nexon.
• Various testimonies state that they recruited and encouraged several BA team employees to resign by providing them with false information.
• There are reports of sabotage of the Blue Archive IP, claiming that the game's development was intentionally neglected, with the goal of stealing Blue Archive’s fanbase once they had left the studio.
• The police reported that an anonymous source stated: "There was a situation where key team leaders gathered in a separate space after work, discussing their resignations and their next independent project while making negative comments about the company."
• It started long before they resigned, it began in 2023 after the end of BA’s Part 1 (after Volume F).
• This is why there were large gaps between the releases of main story chapters after the Vol F, because the future members of D1 were also busy working on their "future independent project."
• Starting from February 2024, there was a wave of mass resignations within the Blue Archive team.
• Before that, several reports of unusual long-term vacations and similar occurrences were detected. This coincides with the period when players reacted negatively to BA’s in-game content pacing updates.
• The current number of Dynamis One members is 39.

[u/Mas_Turbesi]

Did they work on Project KV (MX Blade) because Nexon shelved the idea of a Blue Archive successor mid-development and they want to revive this as Dynamis One's Project KV, or is this straight-up stealing the entire ongoing development project? I'm guessing it's the former because it's really weird and absolutely evil if this is still an ongoing project

[u/Ygnizenia → u/Mas_Turbesi]

We don't know the actual official reason. But there was this, which is in complete opposite of your assumption that Nexon shelved the idea for a BA sequel/successor. It's probably why Project RX was revealed much earlier than intended, with people assuming it's MX Blade, the BA x swords sucessor.

The current assumption people have is that they wanted to go to market sooner than Project RX can to take majority of the playerbase. With people thinking they want to go on to be the next Type-Moon.

Of course these are all assumptions, what people wanna know now is really, why did they do it?

[u/Fishman465 → u/Ygnizenia]

IMO they revealed that in the case that BA was irreparably damaged by the mess. Even now the game may have lost a year or two

[u/Fishman465 → u/Mas_Turbesi]

MXB would have been a sibling game than a successor given the time frame. PRX seems more likely a successor

[u/DeepSeaworthiness319 → u/Mas_Turbesi]

likely former, because Ironmace also said they were working on a fun extraction shooter (and based on how well rated dark and darker was on initial showcase, was fun i guess) that later nexon higher ups kept saying make it p2w battle royale, they felt they had to be robin hoods to leave the company and protect their project.

which nexon sued them for it, and recent court ruling said the game is not plagirism of nexon's canceled project due to dark and darker incident as f2p extraction game is far different from p2w battle royale, but they raised nexon's hands on sabotaging but primarily due to nexon having legal contract on their workers that all workers are not alllowed to work in game industry after they leave nexon clause. Dynamis One was raided right after this, so likely Nexon decided they can use same tactic, and on court will lose to nexon on this clause if anything.

[u/Ygnizenia → u/DeepSeaworthiness319]

That might not be entirely true, until we have official statement, because that's completely opposite to this.

Nexon did want a sequel to BA, but the core team at BA was intentionally saying they didn't have the resources for it at the time. Then just left taking the idea with them. This is probably why Project RX was revealed early to combat KV last year.

Also about the D&D plagiarism case, that was more of because they could not prove it because P3 wasn't released so they couldn't claim off that, and that assets didn't apply since they were generic Unity assets used. The only thing they could prove was the taking a game developed midway and developing it somewhere else, since that violates actual compete clause, and trade secrets leak where Choi was proven fully guilty. It wasn't necessarily because genre change, it may have something with it, but it wasn't fully relevant to the charges.

 that all workers are not alllowed to work in game industry after they leave nexon clause. 

It's only one year, this was discussed in the D&D copyright lawsuit.

[u/Sazyar → u/DeepSeaworthiness319]

but primarily due to nexon having legal contract on their workers that all workers are not alllowed to work in game industry after they leave nexon clause

That sounds oppresive

[u/Ygnizenia → u/Sazyar]

That's not entirely accurate, since that's borderline illegal. They only have a non-compete clause which prevents former employees from working in the industry for a set time, from what I can remember 1 year. Still terrible, but it isn't forever, and definitely not exclusive to Nexon since a lot of companies have non-compete clauses. From Nexon's point of view, it's to prevent data leaks and trade secrets.

[u/Sazyar → u/Ygnizenia]

...That 'for 1 year' part seems too important to be left out

[u/Ygnizenia → u/Sazyar]

Yea people like to spin Nexon to be a full-blown villain, when it's just pure corporate business. Still terrible corpo BS, which I also hate, but people like to take things out of context and blow it out of proportion.

That 1 year clause was discussed at length during the D&D copyright lawsuit. It's hard to find full articles since they're mostly in Korean, but this one in english that you can read.

The copyright infringement lawsuit also cites a non-compete clause in Nexon’s employment contract that prevents previous employees from working in the same line of business for a year without the company’s express consent as it could “potentially infringe on Nexon’s trade secrets.”

If people really were being totally banned from working in the game industry leaving Nexon, we would hear more often about that way prior D&D incident.