Subnautica 2 has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately, as not only the leadership of Unknown Worlds gutted, Krafton also made the very controversial decision to delay the game until 2026 despite claims from the founders that it was “ready for early access release”.
Following almost immediately after that was speculation and accusations online that Krafton had deliberately delayed the game to avoid paying the Unknown Worlds developers a hefty $250 million bonus for releasing the game this year. Krafton denied this, stating that “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. 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.”
But it seems that the spat between Krafton and the Unknown Worlds founders is only going to get uglier as studio co-founder Charlie Cleveland confirmed on Reddit that they had filed a lawsuit against Krafton.
Charlie repeated that despite Krafton’s claims to the contrary, Subnautica 2 is ready for early access release –
“We’ve now filed a lawsuit against Krafton: the 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.”
Charlie also went on to deny the statement from Krafton which stated that 90% of the $250 million bonus would go to “the three former executives” saying; “As for the earnout, the idea that Max, Ted and I wanted to keep it all for ourselves is totally untrue. I’m in this industry because I love it, not for riches. 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.”
As Charlie himself said, a lawsuit like this against a company of this size is going to take a very long time and is probably going to get very ugly by the end, and it’s safe to say that it’s a real shame the launch of the highly anticipated Subnautica 2 has been mired like this.
