Subnautica 2 has sold 2 million copies worldwide within 12 hours of launching into early access.
That’s according to a press release sent out by developer Unknown Worlds (thanks, IGN), which noted that concurrent players across all platforms (Steam, Xbox Series X | S, and the Epic Games Store) exceeded 651,000—with Steam alone delivering a peak of more than 467,000 concurrent players.
It’s a remarkable debut that’s all the more notable given the commotion surrounding the long-awaited sequel. Last year, Unknown Worlds parent company Krafton was accused of delaying Subnautica 2 to avoid paying its development team a $250 million earnout tied to revenue targets.
The move sparked a very public legal battle between Unknown Worlds’ executive team and Krafton, which ousted studio co-founders Charlie Cleveland, Max McGuire, and Ted Gill for allegedly downing tools.
The trio refuted those claims and eventually emerged victorious after a Delaware court found that Krafton had deliberately schemed to remove all three leaders from their roles. Gill was subsequently reinstated as CEO of Unknown Worlds and handed “full operational authority” over the studio and the release of Subnautica 2, paving the way for this week’s launch.
The dispute also had the side effect of pulling Krafton CEO CH Kim into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
According to a pre-trial brief filed in November 2025, Kim formed a task force called ‘Project X’ to seize control of Unknown Worlds and also purportedly asked ChatGPT for advice on how to avoid paying the mammoth earnout. According to the filing, the generative AI tool told Kim it would be ‘difficult to cancel’ the payout.
It’s unclear what specific conditions must be met in order to trigger the earnout, but Subnautica 2 has evidently flown out of the traps.