You might remember the recent big waves of takedowns on Mangadex. Kakao is believed to be the company largely responsible (I don’t think it is official anyway); and now they are completely leaving the North American market.
Setting aside the absurd sounding investment claim (maybe they did waste such mountain of money, I don’t know), good riddance. I really wish companies learned from Steam in regards to combating piracy - providing good service is the best way to get people to spend money.
You compete with a sea of trash machine translations, how can you lose to that?
Genuinely surprised by this (but also not really: everything is just a line on a spreadsheet to CEOs), as it seemed to tick all the boxes for monetised serial media: locked in, free stuff, paid stuff, freemium (pay to unlock sooner, timed wait for the next chapter under some circumstances, etc), endless nudges to buy their unlock currency, etc, and the mobile app is surprisingly good.
They’ve built a platform begging to be abused by its owners, but they’re axing it instead of turning the screws. (That’s the surprising bit for me.)