Subnautica 2's publisher Krafton turned to AI to help deny a $250 million payout to former devs
Back in July, court documents published by Charlie Cleveland, one of the three founders of Unknown Worlds Entertainment (UWE), revealed some interesting details of the lawsuit that had been filed against the South Korean Publishing giant, Krafton. The documents revealed startling allegations against the publisher about their behaviour during and up to the eventual filing of the lawsuit. “In the name of its bottom line, Krafton has thrown its promises out the window and ripped the game from the hands of both its creators and its community,” the lawsuit stated.
After Krafton acquired UWE for $500 million in October 2021, it also agreed to pay an additional $250 million to the founders if they met specific sales targets, specifically for Subnautica 2. In late 2024, UWE announced Subnautica 2’s early access release date of 2025, followed by Krafton laying off the founders a mere 6 months later, and shortly after, delayed the launch to 2026, citing several aspects of the game that needed improvement by the remaining UWE and Krafton staff, which would also mean they wouldn’t have to pay the previously agreed-upon bonus.
Ironically, after announcing their move to become an AI-first company, the founders claim in the new filing that Krafton asked ChatGPT for legal ways to avoid paying the bonus. “Krafton terminated the Founders and seized control of Unknown Worlds to avoid the earnout,” the filing read. “Smoking gun documents show that Krafton was looking for ways to ‘cancel the earn-out’ and that its secret ‘Project X’ was designed to either make a ‘Deal’ on the earnout or execute a ‘Take over.’ When the Founders would not agree to Krafton’s demands related to the earnout, Krafton decided a ‘take over’ would be the ‘easier’ route,” it continued.
Revealing documents bits show Krafton's internal communications, where they discussed the offers to renegotiate the payout. It quoted Richard (Sang-Han) Yoon’s texts, “ I had a phone call a little while ago. This time, they’re asking for 75m for themselves and 40m for the team members … They say they won’t do it unless we negotiate the packages of the teams together, “ Yoon continued. “The bucket for the team members we are thinking of at present is ~10m,” he added. “It might be easier just to take over,” he concluded.
“Set a date and send a letter, if you need to send it in advance,” Chang Han Kim responded.
The release date of Subnautica 2 is still set for early 2026, even as both the founders' suit and Krafton's counter suit, alleging mismanagement, theft of files, and the dissemination of confidential information, among other things, are pending.
Krafton has since provided a rebuttal of this argument to Eurogamer stating:
This claim is simply a distraction from their own efforts to destroy evidence, such as Charlie's reminder to the other Key Employees (Max and Ted) to delete anything 'incriminating' from their own ChatGPT accounts. To the contrary to Fortis's claims, Krafton offered to extend the earnout period if the Key Employees returned to their contractually required roles.
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