The story involving the departure of the Subnautica creators has escalated into a full-blown scandal. KRAFTON has been sued by the dismissed executives of Unknown Worlds.
In a post on Reddit, former creative director and co-founder of the studio Charlie Cleveland stated that suing a multi-million dollar company was never part of their plans. Additionally, he and Ted Gill, along with Max McGuire, understand that this will be a painful process. Nonetheless, they want to seek justice.
“Subnautica has been my life’s work and I would never willingly abandon it or the amazing team that has poured their hearts into it,” Cleveland wrote.
Concurrently, KRAFTON released a statement revealing that the dismissed developers were not meeting their responsibilities. Specifically, the early access release of Subnautica 2 was initially scheduled for early 2024, but due to the actions of the managers, it had to be postponed.
“KRAFTON made multiple requests to Charlie and Max to resume their roles as Game Director and Technical Director, respectively, but both declined to do so. In particular, following the failure of Moonbreaker, KRAFTON asked Charlie to devote himself to the development of Subnautica 2. However, instead of participating in the game development, he chose to focus on a personal film project. KRAFTON believes that the absence of core leadership has resulted in repeated confusion in direction and significant delays in the overall project schedule,” the message from KRAFTON states.
The company also confirmed plans to award Unknown Worlds $250 million in bonuses upon achieving certain milestones by the end of 2025. According to KRAFTON, 90% of this amount was intended to go directly to the former studio heads. In his statement, Cleveland mentioned that they did not plan to keep the entire sum and would have shared the money with their subordinates.
KRAFTON did not comment on the lawsuit from the developers.
