Yesterday, a report from Bloomberg revealed that Subnautica 2 was going to be delayed into 2026, and that Krafton, the parent company of Subnautica 2 developer Unknown Worlds, had made the decision because it believed it wasn’t ready for an early access launch.

But to Unknown Worlds developers, the timing of the delay felt too convenient, as many of them, including the studio’s founders who were fired by Krafton at the beginning of the month, felt the delay was unnecessary, and that the game was ready to launch in early access before the end of 2025. There was also the fact that, based on Unknown Worlds contract with Krafton dating back to when Krafton acquired the studio in 2021, if Unknown Worlds hit certain revenue targets by 2025, the studio was owed a $250 million bonus.

To members of the Unknown Worlds development team, it seemed more like Krafton delayed the highly anticipated sequel to Subnautica, a game that sold more than 6 million copies since launch, in order to avoid paying Unknown Worlds the $250 million it would be owed. It’s still possible for Unknown Worlds to hit the revenue targets that would earn the studio its bonus, but per Bloomberg’s report, developers feel that reaching the revenue targets that would unlock the bonus is now “unattainable.”

Hours after Bloomberg’s report, Unknown Worlds published a statement confirming that Subnautica 2 was in fact delayed into 2026. According to the statement, the decision to delay the game came from the feedback Unknown Worlds received from an internal playtest it recently conducted.

“We got some great feedback about Subnautica 2 during those playtests,” the statement reads. “The community was responding well to the environment, creatures, and story, and felt positive about the general direction of the game. It gave us a great indication that we’re swimming in the right direction.“

“It also provided some insight that there are a few areas where we needed to improve before launching the first version of Subnautica 2 to the world. Our community is at the heart of how we develop, so we want to give ourselves a little extra time to respond to more of that feedback before releasing the game into early access. With that in mind, we’ve made the decision to delay Subnautica 2’s early access release to 2026.”

The studio also debuted a new gameplay trailer, as part of showcasing the team’s confidence in what they’ve been building with Subnautica 2.

Krafton, for its part, gave a statement to Bloomberg, claiming that the decision to delay Subnautica 2 “was not influenced by any contractual or financial considerations.” The publisher also maintained that talks about delaying Subnautica 2 took place prior to the founders of Unknown Worlds being removed from the studio.

Per Bloomberg’s report, however, delaying the game was not what founders Charlie Cleveland, Max McGuire, and Ted Gill wanted. Cleveland also publicly stated that the game was ready for an early access launch.

And while the public statement from Unknown Worlds claims that the delay was to improve areas of the game based on feedback from playtesters, in an internal meeting, Steve Papoutsis, the former head of Striking Distance Studios who Krafton placed as the new studio head of Unknown Worlds following Cleveland, McGuire, and Gill’s firing, told the Unknown Worlds team that Krafton felt Subnautica 2 needed more content before it could launch into early access.

Early access games are launched with the understanding that more content is going to be added, and that elements of the game will be fixed and improved based on community feedback. We’ll likely never know the exact truth behind the decision to delay Subnautica 2, but it’s difficult to believe that Krafton potentially having to give Unknown Worlds a $250 million bonus played no role in the publisher’s decision to delay the game, especially if it would have ensured that Unknown Worlds hit the agreed revenue targets it was meant to achieve between 2021 and 2025.

Subnautica 2 could very well need more content, but so does practically every game when it launches into early access. Krafton saying that the game needed more content feels like a weak reason, to say the least, made even weaker by the direct claims from Unknown Worlds founders, who also made up the core of the development team for the first Subnautica, saying that Subnautica 2 was ready to take the next step and be built alongside the community through early access.