Subnautica 2 officially has an early access release date after significant delays, with a fetching cinematic trailer to hype players up. However, after Unknown Worlds’ co-founders scored a significant win in their legal battle against Krafton, the Steam page no longer featured the latter as a publisher.
Naturally, this caused some confusion (and even speculation that the studio had split from Krafton). However, creative media producer Scott MacDonald and design lead Anthony Gallegos have since offered some clarification to Eurogamer in a recent call.
“I’m not sure I have that good an insight into the Steam page, but what I can say is we’re co-publishing the game [with Krafton], so they’re not not the publisher anymore,” said Gallegos.
MacDonald added, “As you can tell with Krafton people in this call, we’re working with them for all promotional material; it’s a co-publishing thing. It’s just one of those things on Steam, I think that just happened. It may have blown up a little bigger than it was meant to, but you know, Krafton are still very much helping us with the launch of the game.”
A PR representative present in the same call agreed with the same, so there it is. Of course, how much it dictates the direction of the game remains to be seen, especially following a court order granting authority to reinstated CEO Ted Gill over the early access launch.
For now, Subnautica 2 will launch on May 14th for Xbox Series X/S and PC via early access (and will also be available on day one for Game Pass). While it’s launching several biomes, support for four players in co-op, several craftable items, and much more, Unknown Worlds will expand on it further with subsequent updates, which means a price increase from the current $30 when early access ends.
However, the road to 1.0 is quite long, with the developer expecting two to three years based on its previous work. Of course, on top of being “difficult to accurately predict,” it’s also committed to “completing Subnautica 2 and making it the best game possible.” Alongside taking place on a new planet, Unknown Worlds said it’s “definitely doubled down” when it comes to the aliens, and players will go “deeper than you could ever hope.”
