Subnautica 2 launches soon after lengthy legal dispute

After some protracted legal drama, Subnautica 2 is finally about to launch. The game, which is currently Steam’s most-wishlisted title and was caught up in a dispute between top executives at developer Unknown Worlds and its owner, Krafton, will be available in early access on PC and Xbox Series X / S starting May 14th.

Subnautica 2 was originally set to enter early access in 2025, but was delayed last July to 2026, at least publicly, due to feedback from playtests. However, the delay happened days after Krafton pushed out Unknown Worlds’ previous bosses, Ted Gill, Charlie Cleveland, and Max McGuire — a move that Bloomberg reported happened ahead of a promised $250 million bonus if the studio met certain performance targets by the end of 2025. That bonus would have been shared with the game’s development team. The executives sued, and in March, a judge reinstated Gill as Unknown Worlds’ CEO and extended the eligibility period for the $250 million bonus to September 15th, as reported by Kotaku.

Despite all of that, two developers on the Unknown Worlds team say that they’ve just been pushing through it. The team has been making “the best game they possibly can” while working to “keep the noise out of the way,” creative media producer Scott MacDonald tells The Verge.

“We all just kept working on the game while all of the legal stuff happened around us,” says game design lead Anthony Gallegos. “Which isn’t to say that it was always easy, but I think we always had the strong support of the fans and that helped us carry on and focus on making the game.”

Krafton isn’t totally out of the picture. Although Krafton was removed as publisher on the game’s Steam page after the March ruling, with Unknown Worlds taking its place, Krafton is “co-publishing” the game, Gallegos says. (Earlier this month, Krafton said it’s “currently focused on successfully supporting the Early Access launch of Subnautica 2” in a statement to Eurogamer.)

As an early access game, the Unknown Worlds team will be continually iterating on Subnautica 2 after launch. Gallegos suspects that the team will release minor updates every four to six weeks and that there will be “several months” between big updates that change the game’s world and add new story content and major features. Unknown Worlds expects that early access will last “about two to three years,” according to the Subnautica 2 Steam page, and that timeline “feels pretty accurate,” Gallegos says.

This cadence is familiar to Unknown Worlds; both Subnautica and Subnautica: Below Zero were also early access games. Like with those games, Subnautica 2 will be cheaper to start — initially, it will cost $29.99 — and the price “may rise during early access,” MacDonald says.

The extra time from the delay and the legal scuffles gave the team time to get the game ready. “I think in the end, we’ve ended up with a more polished, more accessible game than potentially it would have been previously,” MacDonald says. “So I think we’re in a really great spot for players who maybe even haven’t tried a Subnautica game before can just jump in now without needing to know any other lore.”