Now this has been rather disproved, do we think we could retract the post? It's probably done harm already but we can at least acknowledge it's no longer accurate.

Planning on not buying it, that being said I was likely never going to even if this controversy didn't happen. I'm apparently part of 3% of Subnautica players on steam who really didn't care for the game. Gave it a decent chance (7 hours playtime) and talked with several people who adore the game but found many aspects of the game to be overrated, poorly designed, or frustrating. Just about the only thing I can remember honestly enjoying about the game was the aesthetic, which even then was held back by some sometimes downright bad graphics.

Subnautica is one of those games that's incredible hard to recreate. Once they started trying to explain every little thing about the aliens I completely lost interest. You may be able to bottle lightning, but you certainly can't do it twice.

Honestly, I do not plan to buy it after Below Zero. Now that they did all the evil stuff I guess my decision is well justified.

Avast ye matey!

Just gonna copy paste my comment on a related post...

Similar shit happened when they were PUBG Corporation. Fuck these lying assholes. Player Unknown was a smart, capable dude, and they exiled him to a remote office because he got pissed at the CEO for over-monetizing things in a way that cost them players.

When they released the battle pass while the game was retail, all of the non-Korean employees nearly revolted. It wasn't smart, and it was a money grab on the players. When the team lead of market research told the product manager that the feature was a bad idea and would lose them all their Western players, the product manager got him demoted and moved to another team.

When the numbers didn't look good, the data analysts were freaking out because they couldn't deliver bad news up the chain of command, even if it was accurate.

When they acquired Mad Glory, they promised that the dev team would still be contracted to other game companies to build APIs and tools for them, keeping the game industry tooling ecosystem healthy (think op.gg). When PUBG Corporation acquired them, the company canceled their contract with Bethesda for the API they were in the middle of building and forbade them from working with other companies.

Fuck Bluehole. Fuck PUBG Corporation. Fuck Krafton. Fuck game studios in Korea. Don't play Korean games. Kpop and cosmetics and whatever are chill. Don't play Korean games. Korean game companies are fucking cancer.

Don't buy Subnautica 2. The Subnautica franchise died when Krafton became the publisher.

jokes on them, i already pirate their games ☕

Well this just wrecked my evening.

But this is an ongoing, recurring story. Thief 2014 was a mockery of the original titles.

Natural Selection and then Natural Selection 2 - no games or communities like it. Before there time both of them and very much under appreciated. Felt like NS2 never really found it's rhythm but Unknown World kept it going longer than most games.

Pop it in your calendars? Maybe I'm using calendars wrong, but mine aren't filled with things I should avoid doing. But, I'm willing to learn. What date should I put "Don't Buy Subnautica 2" on?

I feel like I learn more about what I shouldn't play then what games I should play when I am on here.

Why can't the OG devs just opensource the code out of spite. Would be a big middle-finger

I remember Flayra from Natural Selection, a half-life mod twenty years ago. I remember him making appeals for investors/donations to keep Unknown Worlds afloat (or maybe just launch it as a company. I recall a video he posted where he showed us his tiny apartment and the milk in his fridge.)

Then Subnautica came out years later and I thought 'Well I'll be damned.'