{"id":140957,"date":"2025-08-13T00:01:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T00:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/140957\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T00:01:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T00:01:13","slug":"krafton-claims-former-subnautica-2-devs-lost-interest-in-developing-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/140957\/","title":{"rendered":"Krafton claims former Subnautica 2 devs \u2018lost interest\u2019 in developing game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Krafton has fired another shot in its<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/entertainment\/708676\/subnautica-2-former-ceo-lawsuit-krafton-sabotage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> legal battle<\/a> with former executives of Subnautica 2 studio Unknown Worlds, who filed a lawsuit last month, claiming the South Korean publisher undermined the game\u2019s release to avoid paying them a bonus. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/900707287\/Defendant-s-Answer-to-Verified-Complaint?secret_password=ha0mUjTuK1JQkOU4QaYn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">In its response,<\/a> Krafton claims that the three plaintiffs, Ted Gill, Charlie Cleveland, and Max McGuire, had \u201clost interest in developing Subnautica 2.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">The story told by Krafton\u2019s lawyers in the filing is that after selling Unknown Worlds to Krafton for $500 million and promising $250 million more in earnout bonuses, Cleveland and McGuire essentially checked out of working on Subnautica 2 to focus on personal projects.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">\u201cIn 2024 and 2025, Cleveland stated that he was \u2018no longer working on games but [\u2026] working on a couple of films,\u2019\u201d while \u201cMcGuire started \u2018working on initiatives that fall outside of [the Company\u2019s] main development activities.\u2019\u201d As for Gill, \u201cAnd Gill, who remained, focused on leveraging his operational control to maximize the earnout payment, rather than developing a successful game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">They allege that without the leadership of Cleveland and McGuire, development on Subnautica 2 suffered to the point that a delay of the game\u2019s early access launch was necessary.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"duet--article--blockquote ewrhy30 _1xwtict9\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup ewrhy38 _1xwtict1\">\u2026as the end of the carnout period drew nearer, the game was still nowhere near its planned scope. Indeed, as late as March of 2025, only two months before the Key Employees claimed the game was ready for the first Early Access (\u201cEA\u201d) release, the development lead for Subnautica 2 at Unknown Worlds noted that the first EA and second EA (planned for December 2025) would only be \u201cabout 12% of our intended 1.0 scope\u201d and joked that \u201cat that rate we would be in development for 30 years.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Krafton has fired another shot in its legal battle with former executives of Subnautica 2 studio Unknown Worlds,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":69038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,393,3228,50,153,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-140957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-gaming","10":"tag-law","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-policy","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115018523658880908","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}