Krafton Will Likely Have to Pay $250 Million Bonus for Subnautica 2 That It Tried to Avoid

Subnautica 2 has officially entered early access, and from the look of its popularity thus far, it’s highly likely that Krafton will have to fork over the $250 million bonus promised to its developers. The bonus has been a huge point of contention, leading to a delayed release and lawsuits following publisher Krafton’s acquisition of Unknown Worlds Entertainment, the developer behind Subnautica 2 and its predecessors.

So far, fans of the Subnautica franchise seem to be very happy with the latest entry. Although the game is still in early access, Subnautica 2 currently holds a Very Positive review average on Steam, with nearly 3,500 players leaving reviews in English within the first day of its release. While it’s been a bumpy road getting there, it seems that the Subnautica 2 team has thus far delivered what fans have been wanting from the franchise.

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Subnautica 2 Publisher Will Likely Have to Pay $250 Million Bonus

Within mere minutes of Subnautica 2‘s release, the game had already soared to hundreds of thousands of players on Steam. Within a single day, Subnautica 2 beat Resident Evil Requiem for the biggest playerbase for a 2026 game release at launch, with nearly 500,000 Steam users pouring in to check out the game on its first day in early access. It’s already doing extraordinarily well for a new game, with Unknown Worlds announcing that a million copies of Subnautica 2 had been sold by the morning of its early access release date. These achievements will likely lock Krafton into paying out a $250 million bonus to Subnautica 2 developers, which it attempted to avoid.

When Krafton acquired Unknown Worlds Entertainment back in 2021, part of the agreement indicated that a major bonus would be offered if certain revenue targets were achieved. According to the stipulation, if developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment earned more than $69.8 million in revenue, its new parent company would have to pay $3.12 for each additional dollar of sales, with a cap of $250 million. Given the game has already reached a million players and many more will likely pick it up over the weekend when there’s more free time, things are looking good for the developers who were promised bonuses.

While Unknown Worlds Entertainment is likely very happy, judicial proceedings found that Krafton had tried to avoid this outcome. Major controversy arose when Krafton fired Unknown Worlds Entertainment’s CEO and co-founders and delayed the release of the game entering early access. Part of the agreement was that Subnautica 2 had to achieve its goals by the end of 2025, so pushing it out of that year meant that the bonus would be void, regardless of the game’s success. Matters only became more problematic when it was discovered that “AI-first” Krafton CEO Changhan Kim had consulted with ChatGPT in an effort to find a way out of the agreement.

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The entire situation became messy, with a lawsuit ultimately ending with the CEO of Unknown Worlds being reinstated to his position. Further, the judge overseeing the case determined that the publisher had engaged in obstructionist tactics in an effort to avoid the promised bonus. Given that the deadline had already come and gone and hadn’t been met due to Krafton’s interference, the judge extended this deadline to mid-September 2026, with the possibility of a further extension until early 2027. With months to go until the first deadline arrives and so many copies already sold, Unknown Worlds will likely meet the requirements for a major payout to its team.