Subnautica 2 Now Lets You Mock Its Own Publisher

Buried in a hotfix mostly about Silver spawns and Hammerhead AI, Unknown Worlds has quietly removed one of the more absurd clauses I've seen in a modern game's terms of service. Subnautica 2's End-User License Agreement no longer prohibits players from using the game to "harm the reputation" of Krafton, its publisher and parent company. Yes, that was a real clause. You can now, legally speaking, make fun of Krafton while playing their underwater survival game.

The original provision, as reported by Game Rant, was broad enough to theoretically cover parodies, critical videos, or even publicly mocking the EULA itself for being ridiculous. It's the kind of corporate overreach that would almost certainly fail in court in any jurisdiction with basic free speech protections for criticism and parody, but the fact that it shipped at all says something about how little thought went into the original agreement. Alongside that removal, the updated EULA also drops the requirement that all fan-made Subnautica 2 gameplay videos include an explicit disclaimer stating Krafton does not endorse them. Non-endorsement is now implicit, which is how every other publisher on the planet handles it.

I'm glad Unknown Worlds walked this back, but it shouldn't have taken fan backlash to catch something this obviously heavy-handed. Someone at Krafton approved a EULA that told paying customers they couldn't criticize the company selling them the product. That's not a grey area; it's a clause that reads like it was drafted by someone who has never encountered the internet. The hotfix also lets players turn off analytics telemetry at any time through the settings menu, another change that came after community pushback. Both are good corrections, but they're corrections to problems that never should have shipped with a game that sold 2 million copies in its first twelve hours. Hotfix 2 is live now on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, with the Xbox Series X/S version expected after console certification wraps up.