Remember all the legal shenanigans surrounding Subnautica 2 from last year? If not, the basic gist was that Krafton bought Unknown Worlds several years ago for $500 million, with an additional $250 million bonus available if Subnautica 2 hit certain sales milestones by 2025. As the deadline approached, it was looking like Subnautica 2 might squeak into Early Access in time after all, and possibly trigger the payout. Then Krafton fired the founders for alleged nonfeasance, and otherwise muddied the waters as much as possible. Litigation has been ongoing ever since.

Until now, anyway. A judge rejected Krafton’s claims, ordered the former CEO Ted Gill reinstated, and the $250 million bonus deadline extended until September 2026:

“Frustrated by the Key Employees’ refusal to forfeit operation control and facing a nine-figure liability, Krafton went searching for a pretext,” the judge wrote, slamming Krafton’s previous claims that Gill and others had “abandoned their responsibilities.”

“Krafton’s true focus in June 2025 was avoiding its financial exposure,” the judge wrote. “It knew Subnautica 2 was poised to achieve a $250 million earnout, which Kim viewed as a catastrophic failure. Krafton undertook ‘Project X’ to either force a deal on the earnout or execute a ‘takeover’ of the studio. Terminating the Founders was one tactic explored and ultimately chosen by Krafton to accomplish its goal.”

If you were curious about the “financial exposure”:

Eligibility for the performance-based earnout is determined by Unknown Worlds’ revenue through December 31, 2025, with an option to extend the earnout period through June 2026. The earnout formula is highly leveraged. If Unknown Worlds surpasses a revenue threshold of $69.8 million, Krafton must pay $3.12 for each additional dollar of revenue generated, up to the $250 million cap.

To better visualize this, here’s a spreadsheet I made:

Subnautica 2 Revenue	Krafton	Unknown Worlds
$69,800,000.00	$69,800,000.00	$0.00
$92,171,794.87	$0.00	$69,800,000.00
$149,928,205.13	-$100,071,794.87	$250,000,000.00
$250,000,000.00	$0.00	$250,000,000.00
$319,800,000.00	$69,800,000.00	$250,000,000.00

So, if Subnautica 2 earns $69.8 million, Krafton keeps all the revenue. Each dollar after that is exponentially worse to the point that Krafton is potentially $100 million in the hole if the game caps out at $150 million in revenue. It’s not until after almost $320 million in total revenue that Krafton gets back the original $69.8 million they “start” with. I don’t know if these bonus payout schemes are normal in the industry, but is it not obvious how much corporate fuckery it invites?

Incidentally, the court records indicated that Krafton’s own finance team estimated over 1.67 million copies sold by Q4 2025 (from an August 2025 early access launch), which would trigger a payout between $191 million and $242 million. So, yeah, right in that Krafton “dead zone” of negative money.

The entire court PDF was a fascinating read, by the way. Back in November, I remember reading an article alleging that Krafton CEO Changhan Kim – the same guy who spearheaded the acquisition in the first place – tried to get Legal to get out of the contract. When he was told by Legal that Krafton would still have to pay out the bonus, he turned to ChatGPT for advice… which also said it was a bad idea. Nevertheless, Kim persisted until ChatGPT spit out an approach that he enacted almost verbatim. The allegation certainly had some “big if true” energy to it. And, well, it was true.

185 Kim Tr. 440-41. Kim admitted at trial that he had deleted specific, relevant ChatGPT logs. Id. at 441. This particular chat was deleted. Id.

Woof.

Anyway, problem solved, Subnautica 2 is on track for a May 2026 early access release!

…or is it?

In another burst of last minute corporate fuckery, Steve Papoutsis (the Krafton-appointed CEO who replaced Ted Gill) sent out an internal memo to the Subnautica 2 team congratulating them on their hard work and saying Krafton has green-lit the release of the game into Early Access in May. This memo was then “leaked” to the world and Krafton acknowledged its veracity to IGN. Which is cool and all, aside from the fact that Ted Gill had yet to be reinstated as CEO, from which he was illegally removed. Motions are already being filed, and Krafton’s argument appears to be that the release date determination came before the judgment, so haha, oops, we did nothing wrong.

So… maybe not May? It’s very possible that the actual developers of Subnautica 2 have been keeping their nose to the grindstone this whole time and the game is ready to go. Or maybe ChatGPT told Krafton executives that their best bet was a reduced-fanfare rollout and hope expected revenue was depressed as a result, thereby limiting liabilities. I’ve certainly heard people on Reddit saying that they don’t want to buy the game and support Krafton as a result. Which is a bit silly in context of the payout, considering the best possible way to punish Krafton is to get Subnautica 2 to $150 million in revenue, directly causing a $100 million Krafton loss.

Regardless, we’ll undoubtedly see something released between May and September. Missing the earnout window after all this time drama would be… criminal.