As the legal debate between Subnautica 2's publisher and former studio execs rages, the original game and its spinoff quietly receive small patches and big discounts

Subnautica 2 has become one of the year's most talked-about games, albeit for reasons I don't think anybody wanted. A big legal brouhaha has developed in the wake of publisher Krafton abruptly dismissing the entire leadership team of Subnautica 2's developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment.

Those former leaders, including co-founders Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire, subsequently filed a lawsuit, claiming Krafton wanted to push Subnautica 2's launch out of 2025 to avoid a big financial payout. Krafton responded by claiming Subnautica 2 wasn't ready for an early access launch, and that Cleveland and McGuire "abandoned their roles as studio-wide game director and technical director to focus on their personal projects".

It's all very messy and unpleasant, with Unknown Worlds caught in the middle of it all as it continues to work on the sequel. And not just the sequel, apparently, as the original game and its spinoff Below Zero have quietly received new patches.

Both updates focus primarily on making small but significant fixes to the available Subnautica adventures. Subnautica's 2025 patch adds proper controller support for most of the standard gamepads from the last few console generations, as well as reworked input options for non-keyboard players.

Alongside this, it stops your PRAWN suit from falling through the map when returning through the game's alien arch portals, and fixes an issue where Leviathans had "a tendency to fly above the ocean surface when grabbing the Seamoth or PRAWN suit", which frankly sounds like a feature, not a bug.

Below Zero's 2025 patch, meanwhile, focuses mainly on the Snowfox, a sci-fi skidoo used for traversing the game's icy landmasses. The Snowfox was always the most difficult Subnautica vehicle to control, and the patch makes several changes to address this.

For starters, it alters the Snowfox's collider to reduce the chance of it getting stuck on obstacles. But it also dramatically reduces the damage received from terrain impacts from 100% to 12%, and lessens the chance of players being knocked off the Snowfox when attacked by an ice worm from 100% to 25%.

Oh, and it stops the vehicle from "occasionally falling inside the terrain and disappearing forever when deploying it", though some players may have been relieved when this happened, given how finicky it could be to drive.

Finally, both patches add a "pop-up newsfeed that can be used for one-time-only announcements", which I'm guessing will keep existing Subnautica players updated on the sequel's ongoing development. The games are also on chunky discounts for the next week— each 75% off from $30 (£26) to $7.50 (£6.50).

As someone who played both Subnautica games to death, I can say that they're well worth that price. Subnautica is the superior experience, with bigger biomes, better aquatic vehicles, and a more rounded adventure overall.

That said, I think Below Zero has some wonderful environments and creatures, as well as an incredible soundtrack by Ben Prunty. As for Subnautica 2, it's now set to release into early access sometime in 2026, though Krafton is being no more specific than that at this point.