Watching A Game And Studio Implode
Subnautica 2 hasn’t been released yet, even in early access, but it is certainly generating a lot of attention. The saga started with the game developer, Krafton, firing three executives including Charlie Cleveland who was one of the co-founders of the studio. This came as a surprise to many, especially to Charlie. This was followed by the announcement that they were delaying early access to the game, even though the fired leads have stated repeatedly that it was ready to be released. Krafton have decided to blame the three people they fired for this delay, ironically claiming their lack of leadership is what is delaying the game.
This has all lead to the ex-employees starting a lawsuit against Krafton and for some strange reason, immediately after that a document contain details of Subnautica 2’s development was leaked to Reddit by a user with this one single post. It lacks any details such as the date it was created, the person who sent it nor whom it was being sent to. What it does detail is reductions in the original scope of the game, which would seem to support Krafton’s claims. Once it started circulating the internets, Krafton confirmed the authenticity of the contents of the document. This is a huge red flag as companies almost always refuse to confirm or deny the accurate of leaks such as this. They’ve refused to offer any more details when sites like Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN followed up with questions. It is rather suspicious that a leak which backs Krafton’s side of this dispute appears out of nowhere, without any corroborating evidence.
There is a very real reason for Krafton to arbitrarily delay the release of Subnautica 2, exactly 250 million of them. As Subnautica 2 is currently the most wishlisted game on Steam, it was fairly likely that the studio would hit a targeted revenue goal for 2025, which was tied to the 40 or so developers working for Krafton splitting a $250 million dollar bonus. The dictate to delay the release of the game, regardless of the reason, means that the goal is now impossible to reach and Krafton won’t have to provide the bonus to the development team. That is generally considered the cause of the split, the three executives who were fired all said that the game was ready for early access and a 2025 release while those that did the firing state the game needs a lot more work and even early access should be delayed, possibly until 2026.
To make this story even more convoluted, today Krafton partially backed down and will be offering a $25 million dollar bonus to the development team if enough copies of Subnautica 2 are sold in 2026. Other team members would receive an unspecified bonus this year, actually an advance on next year’s expected profit sharing pool as opposed to an actual bonus. That is a much smaller piece of the pie, but it is certainly better than nothing. It is hard not to wonder if this is not so much a bonus as an incentive for employees to stay mum about which side of this argument is in the right.
We may have to wait for the court case to find out what has actually happened to Subnautica 2.