It’s been a long road for developer Unknown Worlds in getting Subnautica 2 out the door, but that destination is almost here. An unexpected drama unfolded last year when the previous publisher, Krafton, fired Unknown Worlds’ co-founders and technical director, accusing them of an “absence of core leadership.” The three individuals alleged that this move was made so that Krafton could delay the game’s early access, thus avoiding a $250 million bonus payout to the developers, but this would not be the end of the story for Unknown World’s attempt to get the game out the door.
Per VGC, a Delaware court ruled in favor of the developers, declaring that Krafton reinstate Unkown World’s co-founder Ted Gill as its CEO and be given full access to the company’s Steam platform. The drama continued as the CEO Krafton had replaced Gill, and immediately announced to staff that the game would be entering early access in May, something that Gill and other co-founders, Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire, disagreed had the authority to do per the court ruling, and are reportedly pursuing legal options.
Meanwhile, at the root of it all is the sequel game, which is officially entering early access on May 14 for $29.99 on Steam. A new cinematic trailer has been released along with PC hardware requirements and the launch map.
“We’re excited today to debut the Subnautica 2 Early Access cinematic trailer
And, if you stuck around until the end of the trailer, you now know that…
Subnautica 2 will enter Early Access on May 14th, 2026, at 08:00 PDT / 15:00 UTC.
We’ve put together a handy map to show the exact date and time we will launch Early Access around the world!”
– Unknown Worlds
“You will only need to buy Subnautica 2 once during Early Access. You’ll get all additions, updates, and hotfixes up to our 1.0 launch and beyond.”
-Unknown Worlds
Much like the first game, which became a huge success from the indie developer, the next game doesn’t appear to require hefty hardware to play. Ultra+ settings need either NVIDIA RTX 6070 Ti or AMD RX 7900XTX, but otherwise an RTX 3070 or AMD RX 6700XT are on the recommended list. Generally speaking, most hardware released in the last 5 years or so should be able to play the game at 60 FPS 1440p.
