Subnautica 2 dev knows "pirates are gonna do their thing," but would rather people play for an hour "and return it than go play it illicitly"
Subnautica 2 creative development lead Anthony Gallegos knows some people are pirating the underwater survival game sequel, which developer Unknown Worlds trudged through mucky legal swamps for a year to finally release in early access May 14, and it pains him. He'd feel better if they just bought it and returned it.
Gallegos writes in a launch day message to the Subnautica Discord, that soon also spread throughout the game's subreddit, that he knows "pirates are gonna do their thing," but "I would much rather people buy the game, try it for an hour, and return it than go play it illicitly."
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Subnautica 2 is now available above-board on Steam, Xbox, and the Epic Games store for $29.99 – Gallegos even advertises this in his Discord display name: "Anthony - $29.99 is the price." Though, the developer also acknowledges in his May 14 Discord message, if you haven't already noticed for yourself, that "money and the economy is very hard. I get it."
He maintains that he's less "aggravated" by the act of piracy itself than "the people that flagrantly walked in here and wagged it in the faces of people who were waiting to play legitimately," plus the fact that some people on Reddit "keep talking like I'm a millionaire."
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter"I don't own a home. I rent," he counters. He and the other Subnautica 2 developers – who have indeed been through a lot with parent company Krafton, which suddenly ousted key leadership in 2025 before being recently ordered to reinstate CEO Ted Gill – "just wanted the best launch possible for our people."
"Pirates gonna pirate," admits one Reddit reaction with over 800 upvotes to Gallegos' Discord message, "but at least have enough respect for the devs to not brag about it. Pretty simple."
But if you subtract the rogue pirates and their boasting, the Subnautica 2 launch is irrefutably one of "the best" possible. 5 million Steam wishlists ended up helping Unknown Worlds sell a whole 2 million copies in 12 hours – and the developer hit its first 1 million sales just one hour after launch, buoyed by pre-orders. It also took just one hour for Subnautica 2 to beat the first game's peak concurrent player count by about 412,000. A pirate can't do too much harm in an ocean this deep.
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Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.
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