Subnautica 2 was originally supposed to enter Early Access on Steam sometime in the second half of 2025. Instead, it was delayed by publisher Krafton to avoid a $250 million bonus payout to the cofounders of the studio making it, Unknown Worlds. A messy power struggle and complex legal battle ensued, with a judge recently ordering Krafton to put the launch plans back in the hands of the studio. Did this unexpected delay end up hurting the most-wishlisted game on Steam?
“I always am a fan of launching earlier and earlier,” Subnautica 2‘s lead designer, Anthony Gallegos, recently told Polygon. “I think I’m more aligned with Charlie [Cleveland] than other people. But, like I said, even among founder-level leadership, I think you would get varying opinions.” He added that knowing the right time to launch is “one of those ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ things for a lot of people.”
As a result of the delay, Unknown Worlds has been expanding Subnautica 2‘s launch content plans, saying the team worked “really hard on adding significantly more content to the game.” Gallegos added that it’s “probably the most robust and feature-rich early access launch the studio has ever done.”
But the extra time has also meant that Unknown Worlds still hasn’t been able to see what players think of the sequel and begin responding to that feedback. Part of the whole point of Early Access development is to have the player community test the game in real time and locate pain points the development team wouldn’t discover on its own. Gallegos said one of the downsides of the delay was that Unknown Worlds hasn’t yet received “the same level of input we would’ve otherwise gotten from the community,”
The team won’t have to wait much longer to find out what players think. Subnautica 2 finally has a release date of May 14. Though as with any Early Access date, that’s only just the beginning.