The upcoming Subnautica 2 has really been blowing up in the headlines recently. Mostly due to the legal fallout from Krafton’s attempted (and very much illegal) takeover of developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment. When a judge is ruling that Krafton reverse their firings of the Unknown Worlds founders and handing complete control of Subnautica 2‘s development back to them, you know that Krafton has messed up badly. Krafton then proceeded to make their own mess worse by announcing the game’s release window without Unknown Worlds’ approval, and likely violating the judge’s ruling to boot. Thus, it’s very like that Krafton and Unknown Worlds are on very thin ice with each other. And honestly, it looks like Unknown Worlds has had enough.
Rock Paper Shotgun has just reported that Krafton is now no longer listed as the publisher for Subnautica 2 on the game’s Steam page. Indeed, you can see for yourself there Unknown Worlds Entertainment is now not only the developer of the game, but the sole publisher as well. According to SteamDB (a free, independent database for the entirety of the Steam catalogue), the publisher change occurred just recently in April 7, 2026. There has been no additional official announcements from either Unknown Worlds Entertainment or Krafton about this as of this writing.
Unknown Worlds Now Solely Helming Subnautica 2?
In the absence of any official explanation from either Unknown Worlds or Krafton, we can only speculate as to what went on behind the scenes for this decision. Has there now been an official split between Unknown Worlds and Krafton? If that’s the case, then what of their original contract and the $250 million payout? Does it even still apply when Krafton is no longer the publisher?
Moreover, this raises further questions as to which party is behind that decision. You would think that Unknown Worlds would normally be the one to officially make the split. However, it’s also entirely possible that Krafton did this in a last ditch attempt to get around the judge’s ruling. This would be an incredibly bizarre and frankly stupid way to go about it though. Then again, we now know that Krafton’s CEO regularly took legal advice from ChatGPT and used it to run the day-to-day workings of his company. If this is still the case even after such an epic legal failure, then who knows what kind of advice ChatGPT gave him?
Alas, all this is just speculation until we get official word on this. Take it with a grain of salt harvested from 4546B’s seafloor until we get that official word.
What do you all think? Do you think this is good news for Subnautica 2, or bad? Tell us your aquatic thoughts in the comments section below.
Source: Rock Paper Shotgun, Steam, SteamDB
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