The Subnautica 2 $450M ordeal is getting combative

Fans have spent the last few years eagerly awaiting the early access release of Subnautica 2, the sequel to the underwater survival game that was supposed to be playable by 2025. Instead, publisher Krafton announced that the futuristic exploration game would be delayed until 2026. While disappointing, news of this sort is rote: Games get delayed all the time. But the circumstances around the delay involve a lawsuit, an attempt by Krafton defend its reputation and a Subnautica community in complete turmoil.

In early July, Krafton first caused a stir after it revealed that leadership at Unknown Worlds, the developers behind the hit game, were leaving the company. These included Subnautica 2 director Charlie Cleaveland, Unknown Worlds co-founder Max McGuire, and CEO Ted Gill. A new CEO was appointed, and while Krafton promised that the internal changes would help development gain some momentum, things seemed amiss. Charlie Cleveland was calling the ousting “quite a shock” after dedicating much of his career to building the company that would go on to sell millions of copies of a survival game. Cleveland reminisced on his years in the gaming industry in a heartfelt social media post where he also claimed that Subnautica 2 was already ready to hit early access — but that the future of the game was now squarely in Krafton’s hands.

A week later, Krafton posted an update on Subnautica 2 that included the very first gameplay reveal for the upcoming game. There, the publisher said that recent playtests had been encouraging, but that ultimately it did not feel that the game was ready for early access just yet. The playtests “provided some insight that there are a few areas where we needed to improve before launching the first version of Subnautica 2 to the world,” the post reads. “Our community is at the heart of how we develop, so we want to give ourselves a little extra time to respond to more of that feedback before releasing the game into Early Access.” By pushing the game back, Krafton said, the development team would be able to flesh out new biomes, mechanics, and story beats that would not be possible if the game were released earlier.

The discrepancy in the two narratives put forth by the people who had worked on the game and the people who actually own the game is, by itself, enough to raise eyebrows. But what really sparked ire for Subnautica fans is a recent report by Bloomberg that claimed the delay was happening on the precipice of an upcoming $250M bonus payout for the developers working on the game. The money was tied to an unspecified sales target that Unknown Worlds was forecasted to hit had it been able to release Subnautica 2 in early access in 2025 as it originally planned. With a delay, however, there will presumably be no payout.

Since the report, Krafton has released a testy statement on the Subnautica 2 ordeal. “We are deeply disappointed by the former leadership’s conduct, and above all, we feel a profound sense of betrayal by their failure to honor the trust placed in them by our fans,” a Krafton representative told Polygon.

Krafton maintains that the management decisions were made in an effort to create the best possible game and noted that it still intends to honor the rewards it promised the team. The publisher also says that the agreement at the center of it all would have routed most of the $250M toward the three people who recently left the company, meaning that most of the development team won’t benefit from it. As Krafton tells it, and despite the apparent surprise from parties like Cleaveland, the former leadership team reportedly abandoned Subnautica 2 to work on other projects.

Nonetheless, the Subnautica community has been in total uproar, and there’s been rampant skepticism that things are as kosher as Krafton portrays. After all, the people who were seemingly pushed out of the studio were instrumental in building the digital worlds fans have fallen in love with, and their departure inevitably calls into question the larger direction of Subnautica 2. Public statements made by Cleaveland make it sound as if everyone was blindsided by the changes, which makes it harder for people to take Krafton’s statements at face value. Krafton’s assertion that a delay might result in a better game might be true, but if the release was tied to early access, players wouldn’t necessarily be thrown off by a game that is buggy or incomplete — they might in fact expect it. Unknown Worlds could ostensibly update the game as it created the new material, as is standard for early access games.

On social media sites like Reddit, fans are urging each other to not purchase Subnautica 2 in light of recent developments, and to outright remove the game from wishlists on Steam as well in posts that are receiving thousands upon thousands of upvotes. Others say they’d still like to play the game, but that they might resort to piracy now to ensure that Krafton doesn’t benefit from their patronage.

Meanwhile, things are only getting uglier for Krafton and Unknown World’s ex-leadership. In a Reddit post on Thursday evening, Cleaveland announced that he was pursuing legal action against the publisher.

Cleaveland says that, “Details should eventually become (at least mostly) public – you all deserve the full story. Suing a multi-billion dollar company in a painful, public and possibly protracted way was certainly not on my bucket list. But this needs to be made right. Subnautica has been my life’s work and I would never willingly abandon it or the amazing team that has poured their hearts into it.”

The former Subnautica 2 director also disputed many of Krafton’s claims by reiterating that he considered the game fully ready to hit early access, and moreover, the $250M bonus would not have been limited to the three men who recently left the company.

“I’m in this industry because I love it, not for riches,” Cleaveland writes. “Historically we’ve always shared our profits with the team and did the same when we sold the studio. You can be damned sure we’ll continue with the earnout/bonus as well. They deserve it for all their incredible work trying to get this great game into your hands.”