Subnautica 2 Drowns Legal Drama by Selling Over 2 Million Copies in One Day

Ever since Unknown Worlds Entertainment launched the first Subnautica in its 1.0 state in 2018, fans of the aquatic survival games have been clamoring for the San Francisco-based developer to release a proper sequel.

While the relatively smaller spin-off Subnautica: Below Zero quenched these desires for an expansion to Subnautica's universe a bit, the announcement of Subnautica 2 in 2022 truly got the fanbase exhilarated, especially after more gamers became enamored with the first game in 2021 when it was ported to the Nintendo Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

Now, after over four years of development and numerous internal legal drama surrounding Subnautica 2's publisher, Krafton, and Unknown Worlds' CEO and founders, Subnautica 2 has finally been released in an early-access state on PC and Xbox Series X|S platforms to record sales.

Not only has Subnautica 2 sold over 1 million copies within its first hour on the market, but it has managed to sell over 2 million copies in its first day alone.

The Massive Launch and Future of Subnautica 2

The first Subnautica game sold over 18.5 million copies worldwide across all modern gaming platforms, so there was pressure for Subnautica 2 to succeed by both fans and developers, especially with the game introducing four-player co-op.

However, the game infamously got caught up in rather upsetting legal drama throughout 2025 and in early 2026 ahead of Subnautica 2's early-access debut, ignited after Krafton fired Unknown Worlds CEO Ted Gill and co-founders Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire in mid-2025.

This change not only resulted in Subnautica 2 being delayed to 2026 but was later discovered to be part of a plan by Krafton, using ChatGPT, to prevent the game from being released to the public too early and to prevent Unknown Worlds staff from receiving a $250 million bonus if they reached certain revenue targets by the end of 2025.

Cleveland, Gill, and McGuire then sued Krafton and were later reinstated after a judge found that Krafton violated an Equity Purchase Agreement by firing the three without cause and seizing control of Unknown Worlds, with the judge additionally extending the time period for the developer to receive the $250 million bonus till September 2026 at the earliest.

Given Subnautica 2's already staggering sales numbers, it seems likely that Unknown Worlds will earn that $250 million bonus this year, with the developer recently releasing the game's first roadmap of future content and updates.

Subnautica 2's upcoming early-access 1.1 update will introduce quality-of-life improvements to the biomods system, blight encounters, vehicle docking and fabrication, among other improvements, in addition to a new sprint function, a storage cache, and more passive biomod slots.

Subnautica 2's upcoming early-access 1.2 update will center on co-op gameplay with improvements to HUD signals, the base builder tool, and the pinned recipes system, with the update adding voice chats, emotes, player trading, player revive, and other customization options.

Those two updates will likely debut later this year, but Unknown Worlds already has plans to expand the game in the far future, with later updates planned to add:

• New Biomes
• New Creatures
• New Resources
• New Tools
• A New Vehicle
• A New Chapter to the Story