"Employee's Illegal Item Creation" Nexon 'Super Account' Controversy [Buaeri's Game Dictionary]

[Asia Economy Reporter Buaeri] The so-called "super account controversy" surrounding Nexon's long-running game "Dungeon & Fighter (DNF)" is spreading like wildfire.

On the 12th, according to Neople, a subsidiary of Nexon that operates DNF, it was found that an internal employee abused their authority to create accounts and committed fraudulent acts by generating items through abnormal methods.

Director Kang Jeong-ho of Neople announced this fact and issued an official apology through the official website.

The Suddenly Appeared Super Account in 'DNF'

A super account refers to an account used by operators in the game. Usually, operator accounts clearly indicate that they belong to operators, but super accounts are characterized by having no such indication, appearing like regular users.

The details of the incident are as follows. The account named "Gungdaengi Maendan" possessed multiple job characters within the game. This account held high-level items enhanced to +12 or above, and some top-tier items were even enhanced to +14.

The problem arose from the timeline of this account. In DNF, the acquisition or enhancement of high-level items can be checked chronologically on the official website, but the acquisition routes or enhancement information for this account’s items were not displayed. This led DNF users to raise suspicions of internal employee misconduct, sparking controversy.

It was revealed that the "Gungdaengi Maendan" account belonged to an internal employee. The employee is suspected of abusing their authority to fraudulently generate items and leaking them externally for sale.

According to Director Kang, the employee was found to have added their own account and the items to be generated to the tool work list whenever tool work tasks occurred. Tool work refers to tasks that directly and collectively modify data information such as warehouse and inventory (item storage space).

The employee later deleted the misuse records from the tool work logs to prevent other employees from noticing the misconduct.

Among the items generated and leaked externally by the employee were many rare items in the game, including 40 "90% +12 Equipment Amplification Coupons" and 50 "90% +11 Equipment Amplification Coupons." DNF users estimate the value of these items to be around 50 million KRW.

It was also confirmed that this employee was involved in the pre-leak incident of the enhancement frenzy event that took place last January.

Nexon Moves to Resolve the Situation

As dissatisfaction grew, with some users declaring they would quit the game, the company hurriedly moved to resolve the situation. Director Kang stated, "We are preparing all possible measures, including the highest level of disciplinary action allowed by law, as well as civil and criminal lawsuits for breach of trust and obstruction of business," expressing a firm stance on strong response.

He added, "We are considering various measures to prevent recurrence, including improving the management system, establishing 'employee personal account play regulations,' 'monitoring plans for abnormal item occurrences,' and regular employee ethics education."

A Nexon official also said, "We deeply apologize for the occurrence of this problem and will do our best to establish a strong internal recurrence prevention system to ensure that the same incident does not happen again."