while i get the honor code and all as a translator myself for games, this comes off as genuinely perceiving as if this manhwa is owned by whoever translates it first, and that people should mindlessly worship you for your service (rather than gratefully appreciate). at the end of the day, people translate differently, and that includes different variations of a manga. notice that popular/mainstream manga with several people pushing out chapters doesn't suffer this kind of ridiculousness? hard work goes into translating but this, more than sniping, makes such a mockery of what is genuinely a great skill to have. not only that, it ruins the original work and how people perceive it by extension!
this series, at this point, would be better off reported to the original creator and left to be handled officially by some company. paying a dollar or two to avoid this kind of bullshit is worth it. in fact, if devil and angel scans is really behind all this (whether or not other named groups are joining in or not) then i wouldn't weep for them if the original author sues them for putting their work on here, lol.
from the start, NNG definitely could have handled this better, but they are new to this and everyone has undoubtedly had a time on the internet where they probably pissed someone off by not knowing the social cues. knowing this, and knowing they are not native speakers, i do believe d&a should have been more mature. they did send a dm and then NNG mentioned they were afraid to respond. people got upset by this, but truly imagine being that group, not knowing english perfectly, and then getting jumped so hard? we don't even know how old they are, and that might be a factor into their reaction. they don't get it, they haven't been around long enough to get it, and people were telling them to not worry and that their attempts at this work were appreciated.
now, i'm certain it's so frustrating to work on something and be taken for granted. but d&a should have just let this end a long time ago. "be the bigger person," so to speak and just walk away. dust their hands off, work on anything in their backlog, so forth. they won't lose anything by dropping something and continuing onto other projects. unless this really is, to them, just something they do for the adoration and not truly wanting to translate out of shared enjoyment. i mean, even some readers don't understand the social faux pas committed by sniping. again, not everyone gets these unspoken rules because they're so unspoken (and presumably a western thing). so if all of this really is d&a (and whatever other groups mentioned), it does nothing for anyone. in fact, i even saw some supporters of d&a laughing about how NNG is in china where the ongoing virus is. i'd rather be on the side supporting some clueless group (that's currently, understandably, not working right now and explained why: chinese new years, and by extension, possibly the virus) that wanted to practice and people just wanting to read, than the team and their fans reacting with such vitriol. so make no mistake, it takes two to tango and the people participating in this circus act of "sniping" and whatnot should know better. i doubt NNG would even care if other people did other chapters, in fact i'd bet they'd appreciate it and update with whatever goes next.
i'm also fairly certain this isn't just some random people trying to stoke this further, personally speaking. (edit: i forgot d&a also added a "spoiler" to their final chapter done, which, whether it was obvious or not, speaks to how they operate as well.) i've seen this kind of sniping drama before and it's never gotten to this level. i've seen groups get petty and angry, be it over a manga or a game, but it's always over within, at most, 3 days. this has been going on for, what, 2 weeks? the translators doing this should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves. for me, i'd only want to know to avoid wasting my time and i'd gladly let someone else translate whatever i'm working on, whether we both push out our own versions, combine our forces, or i quit/they quit. i've never really gotten why people get so mad about "stealing/sniping" a translation outside of wasted time and effort. if someone can put something out faster than me, good. if i can put out something better, fine. whatever works. i'm not losing any sleep from reading some foreign language text and typing it out in english. it takes absolutely no fucking time at all. for fun alone i've translated like 10 different things in a couple hours for my friends. sure, cleaning and redrawing and quality checking adds to the time spent, and that's where i understand getting upset, but that's it.