The legal battle between Krafton and the founders of the game development studio Unknown Worlds has escalated in recent days.
Krafton, the owner of Subnautica 2 developer Unknown Worlds, has responded to the lawsuit filed by the studio’s co-founders, affirming claims that Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire left their roles at the studio and that their absence has negatively affected the Subnautica 2 team since July 2023. Cleveland, McGuire, and Ted Gill (creators of the original Subnautica and co-founders of Unknown Worlds) sued their former employer after Krafton dismissed all three and postponed Subnautica 2’s original 2025 launch to 2026. You can find a summary of the events leading up to the lawsuit here.
Since the start of the public dispute between Cleveland, McGuire, Gill, and Krafton, the publisher has stressed a key point: its assertion that the co-founders were not actually working on Subnautica 2. In a response published yesterday, Krafton doubles down, claiming that after acquiring Unknown Worlds, Cleveland and McGuire took their proceeds and quickly lost interest in Subnautica 2’s development.
“Cleveland and McGuire abandoned their roles as studio-wide game director and technical director to focus on their personal passion projects and quit making games for Unknown Worlds entirely. Gill, who remained, focused on leveraging his operational control to maximize the earnout payment rather than developing a successful game,” Krafton wrote.
The filing further alleges that Cleveland left game development to pursue filmmaking—a point Krafton has raised before. Two months before Cleveland, McGuire, and Gill declared the game ready for early access, Subnautica 2’s development lead reportedly said the first early-access phase would represent about 12% of the planned 1.0 scope, joking that at the current pace the game would take 30 years to complete.
To support its claim about Cleveland’s and McGuire’s departure, Krafton says the two co-founders refused to return to their roles as game director and technical director, and that Gill even stated there was no going back to a job that wasn’t theirs. Krafton also shared a statement allegedly from Cleveland acknowledging that Subnautica 2’s development began with the intention of having a younger generation of Unknown Worlds developers take the reins of the sequel, and that he knew from the outset he wouldn’t be leading that team.
At this stage, both sides are trading allegations that cannot yet be fully verified. However it plays out, it will be interesting to see where this dispute lands.
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