Rumors have spread online that NewJeans collaborated with the online game MapleStory for its 20th-anniversary event.
In the famous game MapleStory, there is an upcoming event in March called “Strawberry Farm” with a concept related to a farm. Coincidentally, NewJeans’ SNS recently published a promotional content containing the episode of “Please Take Care of Strawberry Farm”, while the official Instagram account of Pink Bean, a MapleStory character, used a hashtag that resembles NewJeans’ “Cookie” lyrics.
These coincidences lead to speculations that NewJeans will collaborate with MapleStory, gaining huge attention on Korean online forums as of March 20th.
However, the collaboration between NewJeans and MapleStory turns out to be untrue. In particular, NewJeans’ gallery operator posted a direct message they received from the official Instagram account of Min Hee Jin, who is the representative of the NewJeans’ agency, refuting the collaboration rumors.
“A game collaboration? That is completely fabricated. I think you don’t have to worry because there are so many baseless rumors”, Min Hee Jin said.
In addition, NewJeans’ agency ADOR has also confirmed with media outlet wikitree that “there is no truth to the MapleStory collaboration rumors.”
Recently, MapleStory has been caught up in controversy regarding client tampering. As a result, general director Kang Won Gi had to appear on a broadcast to apologize and announce future countermeasures, but the anger of game users has not easily subsided.
The situation started when some top users of the MapleStory competitive content “The Seed” were caught using hacks. Various bug-related videos such as “Hunting Hack” and “Boss Hack” were uploaded, making the situation uncontrollable. As scenes of users clearing game content using abnormal methods were spread, the voices of long-time fans’ dissatisfaction grew. On March 20th, Nexon (production company of MapleStory) announced that it is addressing client tampering and illegal program use issues, as well as conducting prevention methods.
Source: wikitree
