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The run-up to Subnautica 2's early access launch was defined by legal action and hangups with Unknown Worlds owner Krafton, which certainly appeared desperate to avoid a $250 million payout contingent on the sequel hitting certain sales milestones. Now that the game is finally out following the court-ordered reinstatement of CEO Ted Gill, and absolutely smashing it on PC and Xbox, we all get to see if and when Krafton has to pay that bonus.
Valve veteran Chet Faliszek, now at The Anacrusis developer Stray Bombay, hits this on the head in a new YouTube video. Faliszek stresses that he won't be playing Subnautica 2 himself because the first game just didn't click for him (I won't be playing it because I hate deep water), but observes that "half a million people are playing it right now." Indeed, Subnautica 2 peaked at 467,582 concurrent players on Steam alone.
"This means we all get to play the game of, what's gonna happen with that Krafton lawsuit?" Faliszek says. "Maybe they should ChatGPT, 'What happens if Subnautica 2's a super big hit? How are we screwed?'"
Faliszek is, of course, referring to the ChatGPT history of Krafton CEO Kim Chang-han. A judge's order claims he regularly relied on ChatGPT for legal strategy before the lawsuit, generally acting on the tool's suggestions and ultimately losing the case spectacularly.
"Internal projections showed the new title generating significant revenue that would easily trigger the earnout," judge Lori W. Will says. "Fearing he had agreed to a 'pushover' contract, Krafton's CEO consulted an artificial intelligence chatbot to contrive a corporate 'takeover' strategy."
We can add legal strategy to the long list of things that AI shouldn't be trusted to handle.
Faliszek, meanwhile, says he's been playing Forbidden Solitaire, a truly devious card game whose success blindsided its creators. Now that's more my speed.
Subnautica 2 dev says "go play Sons of the Forest" if you don't like its lack of violence.
