Ben Lindbergh

So

People are well within their rights not to like this game and to be as vocal about that as people were about loving it.

But we are very much in the camp of this is an artistic achievement, and it's one that we quite enjoyed and would recommend.

All right, Matt, I want to tee you up to say a few words about Subnautica 2, the latest Steam sensation.

This is, of course...

an action-adventure survival game developed by Unknown Worlds Entertainment and published by Unknown Worlds and, reluctantly, Krafton.

It has now entered early access on Steam and the early access equivalent on Xbox Game Preview.

So it's on Game Pass.

You can...

Check it out.

It is a pretty polished early access experience.

And the original Subnautica was similar.

It was in early access.

It was refined over the course of years.

This is a long way away from the 1.0 release, but it is fairly finished by early access standards.

And if you have not tracked all of the legal trouble that preceded this early access release, it's worth digging into.

But the very quick summary is that Krafton, the Korean publisher of Subnautica, dismissed, replaced, fired the CEO and the founders of Unknown Worlds Entertainment.

It was later alleged, reported, when a lawsuit was filed, that Krafton had come up with a chat GPT-inspired plan to try to cheat Unknown Worlds out of a $250 million bonus that would be due to the studio if it hit Krafton.

certain revenue benchmarks which would be easier to accomplish if it did launch in early access when the studio wanted it to ultimately the judge ruled in favor of the developer unknown worlds against craft and here it was quite embarrassing for the publisher

The CEO, the founders were reinstated.