Chief Human Resources Officer — Interactive-Entertainment Division

The mandate

This interactive-entertainment division has expanded its development slate across original titles, licensed properties and live games. Investment is now being concentrated behind fewer new launches and the long-term operation of franchises with proven audiences. The choice is commercially necessary but has deep organisational consequences: project teams have specialist identities, key employees hold tacit knowledge, live operations require different rhythms, and title closures can damage trust far beyond the affected studio.

The company is creating a Chief Human Resources Officer role to lead the workforce and leadership side of the reprioritisation. The CHRO will own people strategy, organisation, workforce planning, leadership, talent, reward, culture, employee relations and people operations for the division. They must help executives decide where capability should move, where it should be built or acquired and where roles will end, while respecting creative work and local employment obligations.

This urgent appointment is not an invitation to treat headcount as a balancing figure in the content plan. The board expects an executive who will connect investment choices to skills and workload before teams are committed, challenge production plans that rely on chronic overtime and preserve the knowledge needed to operate games and complete responsible closures.

Scope and operating context

Based onsite in Seoul, the role influences approximately 925 employees and material partners across South Korea and a wider international region. The perimeter includes game development, art, design, engineering, production, publishing, quality, localisation, community, analytics and live operations. Contractors, outsourcing studios, co-development partners and intellectual-property owners form part of the workforce ecosystem.

Capabilities are not interchangeable. A gameplay engineer, economy designer, cinematic artist, network specialist and live community leader may all be classified within broad families while requiring different tools, portfolios and working patterns. Moving people between titles succeeds only when the receiving work, leadership and technical context fit.

The division also spans cultural and employment environments. Expectations around hierarchy, feedback, working time, consultation, severance, intellectual property and representation vary. The CHRO must create consistent principles and lawful local execution, especially where a global slate decision affects teams in several countries.

First-year agenda

The first sixty days will create a title-to-capability map. The CHRO will connect each active game and platform commitment to milestones, workload, critical roles, external partners, location, cost and likely duration. The review will distinguish nominal allocation from actual contribution, reveal employees spread across too many projects and identify knowledge concentrated in one person or vendor.

The executive will join slate governance before investment decisions are final. Every greenlight, continuation or closure recommendation should include leadership capacity, skill availability, hiring lead time, outsourcing dependency, workload risk and closure obligation. A title cannot be considered fully funded if its people plan assumes unavailable talent or sustained exceptional hours.

For projects being stopped or narrowed, the CHRO will establish a humane and controlled pathway. Teams will receive direct communication once decisions are authorised, with clarity about work remaining, redeployment, selection, support and timing. Portfolio and performance evidence will be assessed fairly; participation in a cancelled title will not be treated as individual failure. Local consultation and notice requirements will guide execution.

Redeployment will be demand-led. Receiving studios will define the actual work, skill and onboarding required before employees are moved. Short capability sprints, technical pairing and manager support will improve transitions. People will not be parked indefinitely on vague internal assignments merely to postpone a difficult decision, and managers will not hoard scarce talent while priority teams remain exposed.

Live-operations capability will be strengthened deliberately. Roles in reliability, content cadence, player support, community, security, economy and experimentation require always-on coordination and fast judgement. Career and reward structures will recognise this craft rather than position it as maintenance after the prestige of launch. Rotations from development will be designed around aptitude and sustainable coverage.

Workload and production health will receive board visibility. The CHRO will combine milestone movement, overtime, leave, quality defects, attrition, incident duty and employee voice to identify teams relying on chronic intensity. Production and studio leaders will be accountable for replanning scope or capacity. Exceptional push periods must be bounded, compensated appropriately and followed by recovery.

Critical-talent retention will be selective and transparent in principle. The division will identify knowledge needed for launches, live services, engine continuity and closure, then use role, work, leadership, development and time-bound financial measures. Broad counteroffers after resignations will not substitute for addressing workload or career problems.

Leadership expectations will change with the smaller slate. Studio heads and creative directors must make trade-offs, communicate uncertainty and share talent across portfolio priorities. The CHRO will assess pivotal leaders against the future work, coach those able to adapt and recommend change where status or title ownership repeatedly overrides enterprise value.

By year-end, the division should have a workforce plan aligned to funded titles, stronger live-operations coverage, credible redeployment outcomes and lower dependence on hidden overtime. Employees may not agree with every portfolio choice, but they should understand how decisions were made and experience consistent, respectful treatment.

Leadership responsibilities

The CHRO will serve the group sponsor and division executive as both people advocate and enterprise officer. They will bring capability, workload, legal and cultural evidence into investment decisions and will not endorse a timetable that cannot be executed responsibly. Sensitive individual matters will be separated from broad programme governance.

They will lead an international people team, clarify accountability between studio partners and centres of expertise and strengthen people analytics without monitoring creative work intrusively. Managers will receive practical tools for staffing, feedback, transition and workload, supported by expert escalation for complex cases.

The role will maintain constructive relationships with employees, representatives, universities, creative communities and specialist partners. Employer reputation will be managed through actual practice and credible communication, not image campaigns detached from studio reality.

Measures of success

The executive committee will track funded demand against capacity, pivotal-role coverage, redeployment quality, regretted attrition, hiring interval, partner dependency and live-operations coverage. It will review workload by team, sustained exceptional hours, leave, production defects and employee-relation cases.

Transition measures include communication timeliness, lawful consultation, placement, support, knowledge transfer and closure completion. Leadership measures cover successor readiness, cross-studio mobility, representation, manager effectiveness and employee confidence in decision fairness. Headcount reduction alone will not constitute success.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring 22–28 years in human resources leadership across games, software, animation, media production or another project-and-live-service environment. They must have shaped a portfolio workforce through project cancellation, redeployment and scarce-skill retention. International employee-relations responsibility is essential.

The board will seek examples of challenging an under-resourced greenlight, moving specialists between dissimilar teams without losing performance and addressing a culture of chronic overtime. Candidates should understand creative leadership, production milestones, live operations, outsourcing, reward, consultation and workforce analytics.

The successful CHRO will respect creative identity without allowing project affiliation to override fair enterprise decisions. They must be trusted with difficult news, precise about legal and ethical process and willing to confront celebrated leaders whose practices damage sustainable output.

Compensation and appointment terms

The indicative base range is KRW 510,000,000–700,000,000, plus annual incentive and long-term participation. Reward will reflect sustainable capability, slate execution, responsible transitions, talent depth and organisational trust. Final terms will consider comparable creative-workforce scale, international remit and verified forfeited awards.

Confidentiality

The division is unnamed because unannounced titles, investment changes, studio plans and individual employment matters are sensitive. Detailed information will follow identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Applicants must not submit unreleased game materials, employee records, title budgets or confidential partner information from another organisation.