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. …