Who can't relate to this classic blunder: You promised the heads of the game studio you acquired a $250 million bonus if their game sold well, and now it's the most-wishlisted game on Steam and it's looking like you'll have to pay up. Ay, caramba! What's a CEO to do?
After consulting ChatGPT, the answer that Krafton CEO Changhan Kim came up with was to fire the studio heads despite not having a convincing reason to do so, other than to get out of paying them $250 million. It didn't work out.
The studio in question is Unknown Worlds, and the game is survival adventure Subnautica 2, which is out in early access this week—and still looks primed to hit whatever revenue goal will trigger that big payout, which is back on the table after a judge slapped an UNO Reverse Card on Krafton's plans.
In July 2025, Unknown Worlds CEO Ted Gill and founders Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire were suddenly told to pack up their desks. Initially, Krafton claimed that the three studio heads were fired because they were planning to release Subnautica 2 prematurely, and that it was so flawed that this could cause "irreversible harm to the entire IP franchise."
We at PC Gamer thought this was pretty strange at the time, because we'd recently been planning a Subnautica 2 cover story for our magazine. We were awaiting the artwork for the cover in June 2025 when we were told that the studio was suddenly no longer able to commit to an in-depth feature, and the whole thing was cancelled. How'd they go from being ready for primetime to so-bad-it's-unreleasable seemingly overnight?
In the ensuing lawsuit brought on by the ousted studio heads, we learned about the $250 million bonus, some of which would have been shared with staff at the studio, according to Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier. The ousted studio heads alleged that Krafton had made up that stuff about Subnautica 2 not being ready, and that it had only disposed of them to avoid signing a big check.
Krafton later changed its claims: The issue became that Gill and the others had "abandoned" their jobs and made off with confidential company data.
It was true that Cleveland and McGuire were performing limited roles at Unknown Worlds, but the trial revealed that this was already known and accepted by Krafton. And the trio did back up confidential data, but as Delaware judge Lori Will pointed out in her decision, they did this after they were fired in order to "protect the studio's work product amid Krafton's takeover attempt." And regardless of why they did it, it turns out you can't fire someone "for cause" if the cause happened after they were fired.
It did not help Krafton's case that its CEO had asked ChatGPT for advice on how to get out of the $250 million bonus. Krafton initially denied that Kim had consulted the chatbot, but he later testified that he had used ChatGPT "to get faster answers," and in a message sent to Krafton's head of corporate development in June 2025, he relayed that ChatGPT had told him it would be "difficult to cancel the earn-out."
"Fearing he had agreed to a 'pushover' contract, Krafton's CEO consulted an artificial intelligence chatbot to contrive a corporate 'takeover' strategy," wrote Will in her decision, which required the company to reinstate Gill as CEO of Unknown Worlds and extend the eligibility deadline for that $250 million bonus.
Krafton disagreed with the ruling, but did as ordered. It also, to Gill's dismay, announced a May early access release window for Subnautica 2 before he'd had a chance to resume control. He objected to the overstep, but ultimately the release window stuck: Subnautica 2 releases in early access this week, on May 14.
The Subnautica 2 Steam page no longer lists Krafton as its publisher, but the change is only cosmetic; Unknown Worlds remains a subsidiary of Krafton, which is "supporting the early access launch of Subnautica 2," a rep told us.
Will we find Subnautica 2 in such a poor state this week that Krafton's claim about its unreadiness will be vindicated? I suppose anything's possible. Subnautica is one of the most popular survival games ever—we awarded it an 89% when we reviewed it in 2018—and impressing fans all these years later won't be an easy trick. But one of the founders, Cleveland, seemed genuinely baffled by the claim that Subnautica 2 needed more time, saying after he was fired in July 2025 that it was ready to go.
The moment of truth approaches, with the caveat of course that this is an early access release, and Unknown Worlds expects it'll be two to three years before Subnautica 2 hits its 1.0 milestone.
"Our goal for the full version of Subnautica 2 is a more polished, feature rich version of the game with more content than at Early Access release," reads Subnautica 2's Steam page. "Throughout Early Access, we plan to release a number of updates that add new content to the game—such as more biomes, creatures, craftables, features, and narratives. We also plan to continue to improve the game experience through bug fixes and optimization as well, largely with your help as players."
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