Krafton vs Unknown Worlds: The $250M Subnautica 2 Lawsuit Timeline
A clear timeline of the Krafton vs Unknown Worlds lawsuit: the $250M bonus, the ChatGPT memo, the reinstated CEO, and how Subnautica 2's sales settled it.
The biggest Subnautica 2 story of 2026 was not a leviathan or a patch — it was a courtroom. Unknown Worlds, the studio behind Subnautica, was owed a $250 million bonus tied to franchise sales milestones. Its parent company Krafton allegedly tried to engineer its way out of paying, the plan leaked, a Delaware judge intervened, and then the game sold so well the point became moot. Here is the timeline, stripped to the facts.
The bonus that started it
Unknown Worlds’ acquisition deal with Krafton included an earnout: a $250 million bonus payable to the studio’s leadership if the Subnautica franchise hit specific sales targets within a set window. That deadline, and who got paid, is the thread running through everything below.
Timeline
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| July 2025 | Krafton fires Unknown Worlds founders Ted Gill, Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire — the original creators of the Subnautica franchise. |
| Late 2025 – early 2026 | A Delaware court case unfolds. Filings reveal Krafton CEO Changhan Kim consulted ChatGPT on how to remove Ted Gill and avoid the $250M payout. |
| March 2026 | A judge orders Ted Gill reinstated as CEO and returns control of the Early Access release schedule to him, giving the team roughly nine more months to hit the bonus targets. |
| May 14, 2026 | Subnautica 2 launches in Early Access and sells two million copies in its first 24 hours. |
| Following weeks | Sales climb to an estimated 4 million copies and around $100 million in revenue, putting the milestones within reach. |
| Late May 2026 | Krafton agrees to pay the $250 million bonus it had tried to dodge. |
Subnautica 2 sales figures so far
The sales numbers are the whole reason the lawsuit deflated, so they are worth stating plainly:
- 2 million copies sold in the first 24 hours of Early Access (May 14, 2026).
- An estimated 4 million copies and roughly $100 million in revenue in the weeks that followed.
- Those figures pushed the franchise toward the sales milestones tied to the $250 million bonus — the exact targets Krafton had allegedly maneuvered to deny.
Treat the 4 million / $100 million numbers as the latest widely reported estimates rather than an audited Krafton disclosure; the 24-hour figure is the most firmly reported. We update this section as newer figures are published.
The ChatGPT memo
The detail that turned a contract dispute into a viral story: court findings indicate Krafton’s CEO asked ChatGPT how to engineer the removal of Unknown Worlds’ leadership. The chatbot reportedly suggested forming an internal task force to renegotiate the earnout, locking down publishing rights, and — most damningly — framing the conflict publicly as being about “fan trust” and “quality” rather than money, even drafting a public-facing message aimed at Subnautica fans. The strategy did not survive contact with a judge.
Why it matters for players
Beyond the spectacle, the ruling had a concrete effect on the game you are playing: returning control of the Early Access release schedule to the reinstated leadership means the people now steering Subnautica 2’s hotfix cadence and roadmap are its original creators. If you are tracking what ships next, that context sits behind every patch — follow the cadence on our Patch Notes tracker and the roadmap page.
The bottom line
Krafton tried to avoid a $250 million bonus, the plan backfired in court, and then the game succeeded so completely that the bonus was earned outright. Subnautica 2 sold itself into the very milestone its publisher had allegedly maneuvered to deny.
This page tracks publicly reported developments and will be updated if the situation changes. It summarises reporting from PC Gamer, Fortune, Kotaku and others; treat figures as the latest widely reported estimates.