Fired, Reinstated, Gone. Subnautica 2's CEO Steps Down

Last summer, Krafton fired Ted Gill. In March, a judge ordered Krafton to give him his job back. Today, Gill is leaving anyway, on his own terms, with a settlement that pays every single person at Unknown Worlds more money than anyone originally expected.

According to Bloomberg, Gill and Krafton have reached a legal settlement that ends one of the strangest corporate sagas in recent gaming history. Co-founders Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire, who were also ousted alongside Gill in July 2025, are part of the deal. The lawsuits have been dropped. A court filing confirmed that bonus payments are now being distributed, and the entire Unknown Worlds team is eligible.

Gill told Bloomberg the developers "will be compensated significantly more" than what Krafton's original 2021 acquisition agreement called for, with "further incentives" tied to the game's ongoing early access updates. Crucially, the bonuses will now go to everyone at the studio, not just the three executives and the employees who were there when Krafton bought Unknown Worlds for $500 million. Staff who joined after the acquisition are included too, with payments spread across three annual instalments.

I've been following this story since the firings, and the resolution feels almost anticlimactic given how wild the journey was. Krafton's CEO Kim Chang-han literally asked ChatGPT how to dodge the $250 million earnout. A judge noted that even the chatbot told him it would be "difficult to cancel the earnout." The executives Krafton fired then accused the publisher of deliberately delaying Subnautica 2's early access launch to sabotage the revenue milestones that would trigger the bonus. Then the game launched in May anyway and sold a million copies in its first hour.

Five Million and Counting

Subnautica 2 has now likely crossed five million copies sold, utterly eclipsing the original game's trajectory. It peaked at over 467,000 concurrent players on Steam. The earnout milestones Krafton allegedly tried to avoid? The game blew past them. All that legal manoeuvring, all those firings, and the developers delivered a hit so big that the bonus became unavoidable.

Which makes Gill's departure the strangest part of this whole thing. He fought to get his job back, won in court, oversaw a blockbuster launch, and is now walking away. "New leadership is the best way for the studio to move forward," he told Bloomberg, describing the split as mutual. Krafton and Unknown Worlds are searching for a replacement CEO from outside both companies.

I think that's probably the right call, even if it's a bittersweet one. Whatever trust existed between Gill and Krafton was shredded the moment those termination letters went out. You can reinstate someone's title, but you can't reinstate a working relationship after one side tried to use ChatGPT to wriggle out of paying them. A fresh CEO without baggage from either camp gives Unknown Worlds the best shot at focusing on what actually matters now: building Subnautica 2 into a finished game.

The developers come out of this in a strong position. They kept their heads down, shipped a game that players loved, and now they're getting paid more than the original deal promised. In an industry where studios get shuttered after shipping hits, where layoffs follow million-selling launches, Unknown Worlds' team securing an expanded bonus for the entire staff is a rare outcome.

Subnautica 2 remains in early access with no PS5 or Switch 2 versions announced. Its first major update is expected to lean harder into horror, which Unknown Worlds has described as "the scariest the game has been yet." Gill won't be there to see it through, but the team he fought to protect will be.