The news coming out of studio owner Krafton and Subnautica franchise developer Unknown Worlds lately hasn"t been very positive. It was only earlier this month that the parent company revealed that it has decided to remove the heads of the development studio that built and managed it since its inception. Now, the highly anticipated Subnautica 2 has been delayed out of its 2025 Early Access launch window it had earlier.
The studio explained in a blog post today that despite receiving positive feedback from closed playtests regarding the environment, creatures, and storyline of the sequel, it had realized that some areas needed more work before the public community is given access.
"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," said the team.
With that, the Subnautica 2 Early Access launch has now been delayed to 2026 across PC and Xbox, another broad release window. The studio also gave the first official gameplay teaser for the sandbox title, showing off the new environment that players will be diving into. Catch it below.
"Nothing is changing in terms of the direction of the game or the team behind it," added the company. "We are confident in what we’ve created; we just want to give you a little bit more content for our first Early Access release."
With the extra development time, Subnautica 2 is set to receive more biomes, upgrades, tools, creatures, and an expanded story, according to today"s announcement.
The official announcement from Krafton and Unknown Worlds landed only a few hours after a report from Bloomberg that spilled the beans a little early. According to the publication"s Jason Schreier, Krafton was supposed to pay out a $250 million bonus to the development team (which is about 100 staff) if it had reached a certain revenue threshold before 2026, and the delay makes that task unlikely. The removed heads of the studio had reportedly objected to the delay by the publisher.