The Subnautica 2 lawsuit has been officially unsealed.
At the start of the month, Krafton fired the heads of the studio making Subnautica 2. Unknown Worlds Entertainment was founded by Charles Cleveland and Max Mcquire, and the two alongside CEO Ted Gill were fired by Krafton. After some back and forth between the two parties in public, Cleveland, Mcguire and Gill decided to sue Krafton for breach of contract.
That lawsuit was filed last week, but it has just been unsealed now. As reported by Jason Schreier for Bloomberg, the lawsuit alleges that Krafton did not want to payout the $ 250 million contractually obligated to Unknown Worlds. As a result, they have been acting in bad faith against Unknown Worlds, with the intention of delaying the game.
Interestingly, they also added that they expected higher revenues from a planned Switch 2 port. Subnautica 2 is planned for PC and Xbox Series X|S, and has not been announced for the Switch 2, or for that matter, the PlayStation 5.
As we reported before, Krafton’s publishing deal was to reward Unknown Worlds with the $ 250 million earnout bonus if they reached certain revenue goals. If the lawsuit is to be believed, Krafton figured out that the studio would rather lose out on or delay making money on Subnautica 2, because they didn’t want to pay the money out. They allege that Krafton’s claims in public, and the leaked report alleging that the game’s development was behind schedule, were also all made in bad faith, in service of their plans.
In our opinion, the narrative laid out by this lawsuit doesn’t entirely make sense. If Krafton lost interest or got cold feet on Subnautica 2, they could actually just delay or even cancel the game. Krafton could also simply just drop out of publishing the game, which would put Unknown Worlds in a bad situation if they can’t find a new publisher. But it would have been complicated and a huge hassle to manipulate the studio as is described here.
This scenario could only make sense if Krafton wanted to wrest control from the studio heads, and they didn’t have a good reason to do so. If this is a scenario where, beyond the money, Krafton wanted to more closely control the studio, they could have set up an intricate conspiracy to force them out. This certainly would not sound that wild for fans of Hideo Kojima, though there are considerably easier ways to force a studio’s founders to leave.
We reported on fans discovering that Cleveland does have a film production company called Abyssal Films. Krafton alleged that Cleveland was neglecting his work producing Subnautica 2 to make these films. This lawsuit alleges that Krafton commissioned Abyssal Films to make a Subnautica movie, presumably unannounced since it isn’t mentioned in the site. These details may seem petty, but they’re likely to resurface as points to prove or refute certain claims in the lawsuit itself.
At this point, we would caution fans in taking their own sides in this lawsuit and overall conflict. It still does seem to be a he said, she said situation, which isn’t helped by how both sides are withholding information. The developers at Unknown Worlds Entertainment themselves have not leaked anything, and they’re unlikely to do so now. We’ll definitely learn more information in the course of this lawsuit, but we should definitely be mindful that both sides will want to win in the court of public opinion as well.
We do feel for the 40 developers still making Subnautica 2, and the fans of the franchise who definitely don’t know what to think now. We hope, regardless of what happens in the courts, that the gamers do get the Subnautica 2 that they want, and these developers get proper compensation for their work.
