Thank you , this was an interesting read. I found another article, this time could explain a bit onwhat might be happening with the team and the deal. http://massivelyop.com/2016/08/29/new-report-says-south-korean-mmorpg-companies-are-facing-a-crisis/
Not a surprise, they have focused to much on graphics and not enough on innovations to even the pacing out. They are likely facing the problem hard games began to face in the mid-late 1990s: The earlier customers are getting older, have jobs, lives and more money to spend on other titles. All the while production costs skyrocket with advanced graphics.
In the early nintendo-hard days, the average customer was a kid who wouldn't get new games often, so something with a huge amount of playtime through extreme difficulty was perfect as they could get 50+ hours of gameplay out of a game with only really 4-5 hours of gameplay. But as production costs rised with graphics quality and gaming technology in general became more complex and required more bodies and minds, the number of customers had to increase, meaning studios for a time had to lower the difficulty and the bar for a wider audience.
The same is likely happening in South Korea. MMORPG's which could keep players playing for a long time can no longer do so anymore because those players are tired of the skinner box and are enjoying quicker paced games. Good mobile games can be fun and fast games, so they are on the rise there. But so are other game genres.
So mmorpgs, which had been refusing to adapt for over a decade, are finally seeing the true consequence of a lack of innovation combined with skinner box tactics; suffering sales and ever lower profits. The only difference between a bad MMORPG in the year 2016 and a bad mmorpg in the year 2010 is the graphics quality, and that is likely true of the genre for the year 2010 and the year 2005, the year WoW came out.
11 years of stagnant innovation and exclusive graphics development will do that to an industry.