The entire staff of Subnautica 2 developer Unknown Worlds will get their bonuses after parent company Krafton reached a settlement with studio leadership.
Bloomberg reported that as part of the settlement, Unknown Worlds CEO Ted Gill had stepped down, leaving the company to look for a new boss. IGN has asked Krafton for comment.
The underwater adventure has sold a mammoth 4 million copies since its early access launch on May 14, achieving more than 467,000 peak concurrent players on Steam. But its development was turbulent, with Krafton firing Gill and co-founders Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire in the summer of last year. At the time, Krafton said the game’s launch had also been delayed — something it blamed on Gill — even though its team had been working towards an early access release that would have seen them eligible for a $250 million bonus.
Gill and the co-founders immediately launched a lawsuit against Krafton, suggesting they were ousted to avoid that bonus being paid, while Krafton hit back and said the fired staff had “resorted to litigation to demand a multimillion-dollar payout they haven’t earned.” Krafton also accused them of stealing documents in anticipation of subsequent legal action, muddying the waters over their exit.
But in March, Krafton was ordered to reinstate Gill and extend the proposed $250 million bonus to staff in one of the most dramatic legal rulings the video game industry had ever seen.
The legal battle revealed a number of shocking revelations around the South Korean company’s internal actions in the run up to Subnautica 2’s release. For example, as internal projections showed Subnautica 2 looked on course to trigger the earnout, Krafton’s chief executive, Changhan Kim, believed it was a “bad deal” and felt “taken advantage of,” according to the ruling.
Kim was warned by his legal department that the earnout would still need to be paid even if there was a “dismissal with cause” of the Unknown Worlds’ leadership. He was also warned it would expose Krafton to “lawsuit and reputation risk.”
Kim then turned to ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot built by OpenAI, for help, vice-chancellor Lori Will of the court of chancery in Delaware said in the ruling. ChatGPT initially responded that the earnout would be “difficult to cancel,” but later, at ChatGPT’s suggestion, Kim formed an internal taskforce, dubbed Project X. “The task force’s mandate was to either negotiate a ‘deal’ on the earnout or execute a ‘takeover’ of Unknown Worlds,” Will stated. “They looked to buy time.”
“Over the next month, Krafton followed most of ChatGPT’s recommendations,” Will wrote.
Development of Subnautica 2 continues as Unknown Worlds works through its plan to update the game throughout early access. The developer has confirmed plans to add a new vehicle and new region centred around the Collector Leviathan, but don’t expect to ever be able to directly kill fish.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
