Subnautica 2 lawsuit takes a bizarre turn as Krafton seemingly changes its tune

Back in July, the founders of Unknown Worlds, the studio behind the Subnautica franchise, were let go by parent company Krafton ahead of the second instalment’s early access citing the readiness of the game. Shortly after, the founders sued Krafton and the case has been getting messier since. The latest development is that Krafton has now called the primary reason for their termination irrelevant and is drawing focus to other complaints.

After the lawsuit was filed against Krafton, Unknown Worlds reassured fans that the development on Subnautica 2 remained unchanged. Soon after, the studio sued the former co-founders stating that their actions led to the delay and sparse progress of the game. The lawsuit also stated that the founders had “largely abandoned” their duties as creative and technical leads.

According to a report by PCGamer, Fortis Advisors, the team representing the co-founders stated, “The termination notices of the founders gave one reason for their termination and that was the supposed lack of readiness of Subanutica 2 for release. Krafton reiterated that basis for its actions repeatedly." Now, as per the report, Krafton has changed its argument and taken the primary reason, the state of the game, off the table.

Krafton is now claiming that the readiness of the game was irrelevant to the firing of the co-founders and that the reason was deception and abandonment. It stated that the former leadership “abandoned their posts" and "deceived" their employer, which is why they were let go. On top of all this, Krafton also accused the co-founders of downloading files and keeping devices with confidential information on them. However, this was revealed only after the termination so it could not be used as a reason for the termination. Moreover, the co-founders stood firm stating that they had the right to those documents and devices, and the judge agreed.

Furthermore, Fortis has also accused Krafton of being cagey with information about the massive earnout and challenging the requests for discovery.

The renewed accusations by Krafton took Fortis and judge Lori W. Will by surprise with the latter asking for immediate clarification. At the end, both parties agreed to confer and concluded that the state of the game was not the reason for the termination.