Krafton has fired one other shot in its legal battle with former executives of Subnautica 2 studio Unknown Worlds, who filed a lawsuit final month, claiming the South Korean writer undermined the sport’s launch to keep away from paying them a bonus. In its response, Krafton claims that the three plaintiffs, Ted Gill, Charlie Cleveland, and Max McGuire, had “misplaced curiosity in creating Subnautica 2.”
The story informed by Krafton’s legal professionals within the submitting is that after promoting Unknown Worlds to Krafton for $500 million and promising $250 million extra in earnout bonuses, Cleveland and McGuire primarily checked out of engaged on Subnautica 2 to concentrate on private initiatives.
“In 2024 and 2025, Cleveland said that he was ‘not engaged on video games however […] engaged on a few movies,’” whereas “McGuire began ‘engaged on initiatives that fall exterior of [the Company’s] important improvement actions.’” As for Gill, “And Gill, who remained, targeted on leveraging his operational management to maximise the earnout cost, reasonably than creating a profitable recreation.”
They allege that with out the management of Cleveland and McGuire, improvement on Subnautica 2 suffered to the purpose {that a} delay of the sport’s early entry launch was mandatory.
…as the tip of the carnout interval drew nearer, the sport was nonetheless nowhere close to its deliberate scope. Certainly, as late as March of 2025, solely two months earlier than the Key Workers claimed the sport was prepared for the primary Early Entry (“EA”) launch, the event lead for Subnautica 2 at Unknown Worlds famous that the primary EA and second EA (deliberate for December 2025) would solely be “about 12% of our meant 1.0 scope” and joked that “at that fee we’d be in improvement for 30 years.”