The legal battle around Subnautica 2 between Charlie Cleveland, Max McGuire, and Ted Gill and their former parent company KRAFTON continues, as the studio that Gill, Cleveland, and McGuire all co-founded, Unknown Worlds, has now filed a lawsuit against Gill, Cleveland, and McGuire.
This comes a little more than a week after KRAFTON filed its own lawsuit against Gill, Cleveland and McGuire, and since Unknown Worlds is wholly owned by KRAFTON, it appears that this suit is meant to pile on even more pressure on the three co-founders.
This new suit also includes what appear to be Slack messages meant to back KRAFTON's claims that Cleveland and McGuire were no longer working on Subanutica 2, and that they had moved on to personal projects while the rest of the team was left to pick up the pieces.
Since filing their lawsuit against KRAFTON, Cleveland, Gill, and McGuire haven't added anything to the long list of events that encompass this story, and it's worth asking where this suit from Unknown Worlds originates.
It carries many of the same allegations that KRAFTON already laid out in its own filing, that Cleveland and McGuire allegedly "abandoned" their roles at Unknown Worlds, which impacted development on Subnautica 2, and that the co-founders were prepared to release a sub-standard version of Subnautica 2 in the interest of earning the $250 million bonus that has been at the centre of this entire dispute.
"Acting out of pure self-interest, the Key Employees pushed to release any game - even one that was underdeveloped and had received a litany of disappointing reviews - into circulation on a timeline that maximized their earnout, even if it meant disappointing Subnautica's devoted fans and damaging the franchise," the suit reads.
Is this just KRAFTON adding more pressure and filing a second time under the Unknown Worlds name, because it can, or does the driving force of Unknown Worlds filing its own lawsuit stem from members of staff genuinely taking umbrage with their former bosses? The truth of the matter is unclear, and though we tried asking KRAFTON about the intentions behind this suit and if it aligns with the views of Unknown Worlds staff, we received no response prior to publication. We'll update this story if we do hear back.
In the meantime, what is clear is that we are in the long haul for this dispute, and there are some questions about this situation that we may never learn the real answers to.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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