Considering the state if Subnautica 2’s development it might be good to pick this up cheap instead.
this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
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A few more months in the cooker isn't a bad thing for the game itself. It's just the three founders who got screwed out of millions, but they were already millionaires anyways. If I remember well, the rest of the employees are still getting their bonus.
I'll see it when it happens. This is the latest I have read. https://www.escapistmagazine.com/news-subnautica-2-krafton-chatgpt-drama/
All I see is two groups of millionaires fighting over who gets the payday. I don't know the founders personally, and if what krafton says is true (that they got lazy) then fuck them. I don't owe either side anything.
I'll always side with the actual employees first, but if they are getting their bonus either way, then I'll go with the side that is advocating more content and better quality. That's what actually makes a game good, not releasing it just in time so three guys get a fat paycheck.
The article just mentioned they used chatgpt in the fight, it seems inconsequential.
The article actually mentions that they used ChatGPT for advice with how to avoid doing the payout. That differentiation is big, it's not that they just used it casually, it was actively used as a point of advice of how to not pay them, and even advised that it was unlikely they could get out of paying for it.
Keep in mind that it wasn't only the founders that were getting this bonus, the bonus was to be shared among the entire dev team as well. The argument is that the studio is trying to push back S2's release into EA because they want to lower chances that they hit the sales metric required for the payout, if that happens the current dev teams as well as the founders wouldn't get the bonus. That's what this case is really about. Their claim is Krafton is intentionally delaying S2 in an attempt to avoid having to do the payout altogether, and that them terminating the founders is just a result of the founders being against the concept of delaying the game, saying that the game is ready for an EA environment.
In my eyes the case is crystal clear. The timeline shows them tasking the founders anything /but/ the game(including focus for PR and the movie), saying the game isn't ready we need to delay it -> the founders rejecting the claim saying that the game is a decent EA candidate and that they won't delay the game -> the founders being terminated for cause for supposedly abandoning the project -> the project getting officially delayed, once the founding team was out of the picture.
Time will what will happen with this case but, it really doesn't look good for Krafton here.
Chang-han denied using ChatGPT.
The article just points out that the founders accused the CEO of using ChatGPT to find a way out of the layout and the CRI denied it. There's no evidence at all, just hearsay.
I'm waiting for the lawsuit to progress to make a judgement. And I'm waiting for Subnautica 2 to release and get reviews before making s purchasing decision. Heck, I usually wait a couple of years to buy games anyways.
I normally would side with the founders over the business executives, but the idea that Subnautica 2 was finished, and is of a quality similar to or better than the first game, and Krafton is just sitting on instead of releasing it... That seems really dumb. Bonuses are typically structured as a percentage of profit. The whole point of bonuses is to align the interests of employees with the employer. Krafton should WANT the game to release and sell well enough to hit the bonus incentives.
This is a really weird situation and I can't remember seeing anything like this in the industry before. Usually it's the opposite- the publisher and business executives pushing the developers and creative people to release things too early and unfinished. Because that's how the incentives are usually aligned.
It's also worth giving credit to Krafton for things like buying Tango Softworks after it closed and trying to hire back as many former employees as they could. They are removing Denuvo from Hi-Fi Rush, but they are adding in their own DRM (not sure if it will have an online component or not).
They're a corporation and no one's friend, but Krafton does seem to understand that doing what's right for consumers and employees can often be good for their own bottom line long-term. They do not yet have an established history of making short-term decisions that screw over employees and customers to chase quarterly profit numbers like other publisher have. Yet.
Everything is hearsay at the moment, the testimony isn't public from what I've found, but there's multiple pages stating that the notes of the testimony stated the CEO has admitted that AI was used for general knowledge and then they deleted the conversations afterwards and as such couldn't obtain them anymore. Being as all models store it server side, I expect that if they did a legal notice to Chat-GPT or something they could likely retrieve it, but that would require going through the proper process.
I'm pretty sure they came out and said they would pay the entire bonus to the dev team regardless, just not the part that went to the three founders.
Their argument was that the game was in such a lackluster state that it would have caused real damage to the brand and angered fans. Per what they say, the founders basically stopped working on it the moment the contract was signed and were only pushing for the release to get the paycheck, not caring what state it was in.
It's legit impossible to know who has the truth of it. I know I don't care about three guys getting paid a stupid amount of money and I'd rather be safe then sorry. I feel like we are getting a better game out of it this way, even if krafton is lying, so I'll take it.
Everyone is always complaining about botched and rushed early releases, and rightfully so. We might have avoided getting a shitty release that would have forced a kind of "cut your losses and move on" situation.
I haden't seen that they had extended the milestone to 2026, so that's good on Krafton (even if they are removing most of the cost due to the founders portion of the bonus in the process). The issue i see still is, Subnautica pioneered the EA field. It was expected to release fairly barebones, thats how Subnautica 1 released when it went EA. Thats how below zero released when it went EA. The leaked milestone reports show a very optimistic view of what S2 should be when released, and then they revisited it to scale it back down to realistic expectations, then when revisited they said the new goals would be seen as bad PR to the user field and would recommend postponing release so they could upgrade the content available (both goalposts listed in the leaked milestone images). It sounds more like what the founders are claiming, that Krafton is trying to delay the game to avoid the primary payout, and that they are using the excuse that users would be critical of an EA as a reason.
EA Games can still flop because they are laughably too early. There's definitely certain expectations that come with the brand as well.
I just don't really see the point though. Between three guys getting millions of dollars and us getting a better game, if delayed by a few, the second choice is always the best one. No matter the reasoning behind it imo.
It seems like a lot of risk just for three guys. I like the game, I'd rather avoid a bad release so this suits me fine. Honestly, the bonus was insane and really puts the whole situation into rich people fighting each other. At least, we are getting the pro consumer outcome.
I think my biggest issue with it is, it definitely seems like they made the bonus as part of the acquisition deal to obtain the company, with no expectation to actually follow through with the bonus. I dislike companies being able to bully smaller companies out of what they were entitled to.
I don't care that the founders aren't getting the money so to speak, I disagree with the corporate bullying of a larger entity absorbing/acquiring a smaller entity and then not even going through with their end of the deal.
It was delayed for early access, what would be the point of that? This is a big company going "AI first" and CEO trying to find a way to not pay on their deal. It's easy to see who is in the wrong. They are just trying to save face.
That or it was actually too early and three guys were trying to push through a half baked product so they could get millions each.
Games usually don't get worst when delayed, I simply see it as a good thing.
If the new owners are trying to screw over the CEOs and devs then they aren't going to have the same passion to work on a project that benefits the people that are fucking with them.
Maybe the founders were dicks, lost all interest the moment they got paid and were trying to screw over the whole project out of greed. We don't know. Assumptions don't make a point.
Delayed releases do make better games though.
I've already decided that due to the controversy regarding AI usage and what they did to the founders I won't be picking Subnautica 2 up, I don't have high expectations of the game, especially if the murmurings are true.
being said, Subnautica 1 is an amazing game, hard agree pick that up ASAP!!
Its such a great game my wife wants me to buy a Steam Machine so she can watch me play it instead of watching TV