NewJeans has once again become the subject of unexpected video game related news. But it still isn’t good news.
Last June 2024, PUBG had a NewJeans collaboration event, which let you play as the idols and earn themed items. At the time, intrigues had already started between the Korean girl group and their manager, Min Hee-Jin, vs. ADOR, their agency, and HYBE, their parent company.
In September of that year, NewJeans held a livestream where they multiple allegations against ADOR and HYBE, threatening to cancel their contract with the company. To cut a long story short, this conflict has gone to the courts, and in one of those cases ADOR is currently winning over NewJeans and Min Hee-Jin.
As reported by JoongAng Daily, an appellate court has denied NewJeans’ appeal, so that they will have to keep working with ADOR if they want to continue activities as a girl group. The courts have decided that ADOR’s exclusive contract with NewJeans remains valid, and so they have to keep working with ADOR if they want to continue working as idols, and especially as a group.
In the middle of all this, the PUBG collaboration event unexpectedly sprung up on NewJeans again, but to seemingly add to the bad news. As reported by Sportskeeda, the Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has fined PUBG’s publisher, Krafton, for misleading advertising surrounding the gacha for the NewJeans collaboration items.
Krafton promised that they implemented a pity system, so that if you failed to get a NewJeans skin after four tries you were guaranteed to get one on the fifth try. The FTC found that they actually implemented a 9 % success rate with no pity system in place.
As a result of FTC’s penalties, Krafton was forced to refund ₩ 1.1 billion (Korean won) to approximately 380,000 users, as well as give away ₩ 9.8 billion in compensation.
Based on Sportskeeda’s report, neither NewJeans nor ADOR themselves were directly investigated, but this just adds to the bad press for the group. We also reported on rumors that they were unannounced DLC for Fortnite, but seemed to have been completely replaced by Hatsune Miku.
This all adds up to the bigger picture of NewJeans’ unofficial hiatus. As the group refuses to renew work with ADOR, they have dropped out of making new music and holding new performances altogether. While they may eventually win out in their court case vs. their agency, as longtime kpop fans know, their industry is fickle and unforgiving. It is no exaggeration to ask if they will still have enough fans to support them when these cases are finally resolved. We wouldn’t be surprised if PUBG players have already forgotten about this event entirely.
