Judge rules Krafton breached contract and must reinstate former Subnautica studio CEO

Last year, we learned that Subnautica co-creators and former Unknown Worlds Entertainment executives, Ted Gill, Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire would be suing Krafton for breach of contract after the trio were forced out of the company, following a forced delay of Subnautica 2 by the publisher. The three argued that the game was ready for an Early Access launch, but that Krafton had forced a delay to avoid paying out hundreds of millions in bonuses. Now, a judge has ruled that Krafton must reinstate Gill as CEO of the Subnautica studio.

As reported by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, a judge ruled this week that Krafton must re-hire Gill as the CEO of Unknown Worlds Entertainment, the studio in charge of the Subnautica games. In the ruling, the judge states that Krafton had violated the terms of its contract and that Gill must regain “full operational authority over the studio”.

Krafton has already said in a statement that it disagrees with the ruling, adding that the team is “evaluating” its options. There is additional litigation pending too, as Gill, Cleveland and McGuire still believe that Krafton should have approved the Early Access release of Subnautica 2 in 2025 and paid out as much as $250M in contracted bonuses. The three executives have previously claimed that they would have passed down much of this bonus money to other employees throughout the company.

Subnautica 2 remains in development but has not yet launched. Krafton stated last year that the ‘content volume' was not yet at a level to launch into Early Access.

KitGuru Says: It will be interesting to see how the rest of this unfolds. So far, it appears that the merger between Unknown Worlds and Krafton has not gone to plan for either side.

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