Game News Lost Ark: Very bad news for the Korean MMORPG!

While May’s big update with a new class (The Destroyer) Lost Ark is about to arrive, and the debates about the DPS meter are raging, much more important news has just fallen. The game director leaves. We explain why, and the reasons are not happy.

Game director Gold River leaves Smilegate RPG

Why was Gold River so popular with players?

Let’s start by explaining why Gold River is a respected figure among Korean Lost Ark players. When the game was released there, it was heavily criticized for quite a few content-related reasons, but also because of some decisions. With his real name “Keum Kang Seong Hyung”, he is for Lost Ark what Yoshi-P is for FFXIV, namely a director who knew how to listen to the community, and go in their direction.

This is how, little by little, Lost Ark became more and more qualitative, and experienced a real “second life” in Korea. Many memes concerning him exist, in particular that of rotating a photo of him on his screen before trying to improve his equipment to have more luck (we are not making this up). To sum up, he was a respected person, who even allowed himself to question certain choices made by Amazon Games Studios, in particular in terms of the new names chosen for certain classes. Today was a stream in Korea to talk about some aspects of the game, and that’s where the bad news was announced.

Why is Gold River quitting?

Gold River spoke during the stream to announce that due to health problems that did not get better, he tendered his resignation to the company. To put things into context, during the LOA, a stream in December, he was hospitalized just before, came to do the 8 hours of stream on painkillers, then returned to the hospital. His situation deteriorating more and more, according to him, it was a logical decision to listen to his body and not make things worse.

The Korean community is currently very sad, obviously over the well-being of someone they saw as someone who respected them, and had a real vision for Lost Ark. And the global community is also asking questions about who will replace Gold River, and especially if this medium/long term vision that the director had will last.

Gold River, however, wanted to be reassuring on this last point, stating that it had confidence total to his team, and that he believes Lost Ark can be enjoyed for years to come. He also wanted to thank all playersand that according to him, his dream came true when he was able to work on a game that everyone could enjoy.

We obviously wish good things for Gold River, and we assume that his replacement will be announced in the coming weeks.