Subnautica 2 Sells 2 Million Copies in 12 Hours After the CEO Krafton Tried to Fire Got His Job Back

Subnautica 2 launched into Early Access on May 15 and sold one million copies in its first hour. By the 12-hour mark the number had reached two million. PC Gamer noted that the scenario Krafton humiliated itself to avoid now appeared to be coming true very quickly.

The backstory is one of the cleaner corporate villain narratives in recent gaming history. Krafton, the South Korean publisher that acquired Unknown Worlds Entertainment in 2021, fired CEO Ted Gill and co-founders Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire in July 2025. The timing was immediately suspicious. The terminations came just before Subnautica 2’s planned Early Access launch, which would have triggered a $250 million performance bonus tied to the acquisition agreement. Gill, McGuire, and Cleveland alleged that Krafton had deliberately delayed the game and removed them from the studio to avoid paying the earnout.

The case went to trial. A particularly damning detail emerged during proceedings: Krafton’s CEO had explicitly sought to avoid paying the earnout and had consulted ChatGPT for a strategy to do so. The Delaware Court of Chancery found in favor of Unknown Worlds on Phase 1, ruled all three terminations invalid, ordered Gill reinstated as CEO, and extended the earnout window by 258 days. Krafton was subsequently removed as publisher from the Subnautica 2 Steam page, with Unknown Worlds listed as both developer and publisher. Krafton still owns Unknown Worlds but issued a statement saying it was “supporting the early access launch.”

The game launched under the studio’s own name. It sold two million copies in half a day. The earnout bonus that Krafton spent a year engineering its way around is now almost certainly triggering anyway.

The legal case moves to Phase 2, which will determine financial damages from Krafton’s conduct on top of the earnout. Krafton fired its own developer’s leadership to avoid paying $250 million, asked ChatGPT how to do it, lost in court, watched the game launch without its name on it, and may now owe the earnout plus damages regardless.

The players sided with the developers throughout. After Krafton’s name was removed from the Steam page, fans flooded social media with wishlist additions as a show of support for Unknown Worlds. When the game launched, they backed it up with purchases.

Does the Subnautica 2 situation change how you think about publisher-developer relationships in the gaming industry? Let us know in the comments.

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