Subnautica 2 has to be one of the most wildly successful video game stories in recent history. What else do you call it when the game proceeded to sell over 2 million copies just 12 hours after its launch on May 14, 2026? And all in spite of an extensive sabotage campaign conducted by publisher Krafton under their CEO Kim Chang-han, beginning with the illegal firings of the co-founders of developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment back in July 2025. With the goal of this sabotage campaign being to prevent a $250 million USD payout to Unknown Worlds for meeting profit milestones for Krafton. Krafton seriously thought that Subnautica 2‘s Early Access launch would be so wildly successful that it would meet those milestones and trigger the payout. Well, as it turns out, those fears have just been proven true.
Alinea Analytics has just published a report revealing that Subnautica 2 has sold 4.1 million copies in the first week after its Early Access launch. This is roughly double the sales numbers in the first 12 hours after launch, with the gross revenue reaching $100 million USD. The vast majority of those sales were through Steam, with Xbox sales accounting for only just under 100,000 copies of that number. The reason for those low sales number is because Xbox made the game available for free via Game Pass, which resulted in 2.4 million players playing Subnautica 2 via Game Pass to add to the overall over 6 million players playing the game.
In fact, Alinea Analytics goes on further to state that Subnautica 2 is the fastest-selling game on Steam in all of 2026 so far. Unknown Worlds’ masterpiece beat the runner-up Slay the Spire 2 by 1.4 times the number of sales in the first 5 days after launch. They even made a handy graph for you to check out below:
Subnautica 2 Almost Certainly Reached $250 Million Payout Milestone with 4.1 Million Sales
There’s really no doubt about it now. Subnautica 2 has almost certainly made enough money for Krafton to trigger that $250 million USD payout. Krafton was already in deep trouble with the initial 2 million sales on launch day, and these numbers just in the first week only sealed the deal. I would not put it past Krafton to try to worm their way out of the payout, since they already went to extremely illegal lengths to prevent it. However, with the weight of law behind Unknown Worlds now, here’s hoping that the threat of legal consequences forces Krafton to pay up.
Perhaps Unknown Worlds can use that money to put into Subnautica 2‘s development? Or even divest themselves from Krafton entirely, and just self-publish the game to keep Krafton from trying to sabotage it even more? We can only guess at what will happen next, so we just have to wait for Unknown Worlds to tell us that info at a later date.
What do you all think? Are you excited that Subnautica 2 is doing so well in the sales department? Enough to hopefully get Krafton to honor their contract with Unknown Worlds Tell us your undersea thoughts in the comments section below.
Source: Alinea Analytics
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