Claiming otherwise is evidence of a “reasoning gap”
If the messy situation regarding Subnautica 2 and those ousted studio heads has led you to wonder if publishers Krafton might be mismanaging the development of their games, the company’s chief financial officer reckons you’re diving in the wrong sea. According to Dongkeun Bae, Subnautica 2’s delay from 2025 release to 2026 is proof that Krafton are doing a good job with that, actually.
The exec said as much via translator during a recent earnings call that, among many other things, featured the publishers’ own version of the events surrounding Striking Distance CEO Steve Papoutsis being parachuted in at Unknown Worlds to replace senior executives Charlie Cleveland, Max McGuire, and Ted Gill last month. Whether Subnautica 2 was genuinely ready to release in early access this year is a key part of the whole fracas. Krafton say no, the three fired leads say yes, and now the latter are suing. The complicating factor is that there was a big bonus for the studio’s workers tied to the game releasing this year.
All of that context brings us to Krafton’s latest quarterly earnings call. During the Q&A section that always follows the great number-filled presentationy bit of these things, CFO Dongkeun Bae was asked by one analyst whether Krafton are struggling to manage all their different game projects, given the disagreement over Subnautica 2’s readiness for early access. That analyst also questioned whether the company’s “internal standard is appropriate for different games and different initiatives, Subnautica 2 milestone included”.
“I do fully understand that from the outside you may think that because there’s talk of legal proceedings of Subnautica 2 and it being delayed, that could make you think that maybe within Krafton our milestone process is being mismanaged,” Bae responded, continuing as follows:
There’s a bit of I believe a reasoning leap or reasoning gap between those two points. I say that because the actions that we’ve taken on Subnautica 2 actually represent that things are effectively being managed inside Krafton when it comes to the milestone management.
I say that because…[the] Subnautica IP basically has this big follower base, this fandom base. So, as long as we market it and we release it into the market, people would say that there’s [a] certain level of sales from this title [which] will be guaranteed. But what we are seeking to do is to make sure that we satisfy the highest level of satisfaction that the gamers have, their aspiration. And so because we’ve managed the whole milestone process very rigorously within the company, we were able to make the decision that we made regarding Subnautica 2 and because we felt that the game was not up to par, not up to the level that we had wished it to be.
That’s a fairly blunt way of saying that if they weren’t managing Subnautica properly, they’d have been cool essentially chucking out any old shite with the Subnautica name on it, because it’d probably make bank regardless.
In response to another question from the same person, Bae also talked a bit about how Krafton sees Subnautica 2 as worth approaching differently to life sim InZoi, despite both going the early access route. Basically, with the latter not being an established name and offering “a great level of freedom” that might leave players feeling a bit lost or overwhelmed, Krafton reckon getting live feedback on it ASAP is the key priority. By contrast, the publishers believe that as an established thing, Subnautica 2’s facing “much higher” initial expectations from players, and will need to offer a “greater level of distinctive and differentiating fun factor”.
So, there’s a bit more of the company giving more of its view and arguably playing a bit of defense even to money types about the Subnautica 2 situation, which continues to rumble on as we wait to see what’ll happen with the lawsuit brought by the former studio leads.
