Imo, the part of this whole controversy that’s really been danced around is how much of the disputed $250m bonus is developer bonus and how much is executive bonus. I would be very interested in more details around this breakdown and eligibility if anyone has seen it.
As far as I’ve seen, the only indicator that this was anything other than an executive bonus dispute was one executive claiming they were totally going to share it with the rest of the team after the shit went down and the story was in the press. Sorry if I find that claim less than reputable. What Krafton did was undeniably greedy and illegal, but how worked up am I supposed to get about executive payouts? It seems like the other employees weren’t in the sale language at all, and there’s a very real possibility they may end up getting larger bonuses now that the executives have resorted to using their development team as a tool to garner additional public sympathy.
how worked up am I supposed to get about executive payouts
I think this is the wrong mentality looking at it. Regardless of payout (which I do agree should be going to employees as well which according to most sources do seem to agree that at least some will be going to the employees as well), imagine the precedent this would imply:
Larger companies being allowed to “agree” to terms as part of an acquisition, and then once they have control over it just decide “yea you know what I don’t need to pay this” and then not doing so. That was my main issue regarding this. The concept of a company agreeing to terms in order to acquire a company. Then deciding after the fact that since they regretted their decision that they just shouldn’t need to uphold their end of the legally binding deal put a massive sour taste in my mouth.
Honestly I would have been just as satisfied with a ruling stating that unknown world’s acquisition was invalid due to the EPA breakage and therefore is now its own independent studio again, but has to refund the 500m (minus whatever amount the court decides to use as compensation/retribution that Krafton had paid for the acquisition, and completely throw the 250m bonus out the window.
And to think this game almost got cancelled because the CEO made a promise, got cold feet, and asked ChatGPT to weasel his ass out of it, and FOLLOWED THE PLAN, and LEFT RECEIPTS.
Rich people aren’t smart for getting rich. They’re incredibly fucking stupid as a baseline.
I totally want to know more about this
If you want to dive into the court documents, you can here: https://courts.delaware.gov/Opinions/Download.aspx?id=392880
But I would just recommend listening to some lawyers comment on the situation, like Opening Arguments: https://www.patreon.com/posts/idiot-ceo-used-153623405?collection=867807
Steam review excerpt from Ulrich
–" Their EULA specifically calls out the following behavior and actions as not allowed and will result in the termination of your license:
- Using a VPN.
- Streaming the game.
- Making fan art.
- “Taking actions that go against social norms”
- Playing the game on more than one device without buying more than one license.
- Any action that “Tarnishes the reputation of Krafton”
They also mention that they:
- Reserve the right to “remote access the game” at any time, meaning they have backdoor access to your computer.
- Reserve the right to harvest your personal data, such as full legal name, email, physical address, phone number, gender, etc.
- Will pass that data on to third party providers, such as marketing agencies and cloud services
- Provide no guarantee that the data is protected or anonymized in any way (it includes your name and address so how could it be, anyway?) "–
Might want to read the eula for the game, otherwise you might lose access to it.
Shitty draconinan and unforceable EULA, that’s a hard pass for me. Any company that does shit like that don’t deserve to see my money.
Link to the terms of service here: https://subnautica.com/en/policy/tos
I didn’t see anything about VPNs.
Besides that, it’s definitely an overreaching document. I expect it to get a failing grade at ToS;DR.
What’s funny is that the EU has already ruled the EULAs are not legally enforceable. So that custom EU version is irrelevant and they may as well have not bothered.
Any source on that? As a european i am very interested on reading up on this!
Shouldn’t there be a Steam EULA or something that overwrites BS like this? I don’t know. I’m genuinely curious if that holds up. If developers really can terminate your license willy-nilly and damage Valve’s reputation by doing so. Because it would sound like a PR nightmare for the store front too.
Wouldn’t they lose access to their own rights by causing a scandal that tarnishes Kraftons reputation?
They are not end users. So the End User License Agreement wouldn’t apply
why would they include themselves in it when they can make onesided demands?
The three claimed, however, that Krafton had betrayed them by firing them right before delaying Subnautica 2, a move they allege was designed to deliberately prevent its Early Access release, and avoid it selling well enough to trigger a $250 million bonus for the development team.
Disgusting if true.
What do you mean if true? They went to court and produced the ChatGPT logs that Krafton CEO used to strategize how to get out of paying the bonus.
And people buy it in record numbers anyway? 😬
Yeah, the judge reversed the layoffs and reinstated the Unknown Worlds team, and now they’ll get the bonus. But yes very awkward all around.
Something fair and good happening in America? Count your blessings…
OK I didn’t see the article mention that. Only that they leaders were fired, and everybody lost the bonus.
I guess it ended OK then?The judge extended the deadline on the bonus by 9 months (to September).
If Subnautica earns $69.8million in revenue by then, Krafton will need to pay up the full $250million to the team.
https://gamerant.com/subnautica-2-250-million-bonus/
Considering it sold 2 million copies in 12 hours, at $30 each, I’m assuming they’re very close to reaching that (if they haven’t already).
70 Million in revenue (not profit) for a 250 Million bonus … all else aside, was the executive who signed that high on coke?
That’s correct, revenue, not profit.
The CEO of Krafton was the one who signed the deal. He definitely had buyers remorse which is why he ended up ignoring his lawyers and turning to ChatGPT for advice on how to delay the release of Subnautica 2 and avoid the payout.
No wonder the idiot tried to get out of it what a stupid thing to agree to. Perhaps a change in management might be a good idea, the current CEO appears to be throwing good money after bad.
Personally - I’m not buying the game. Krafton still owns the studio, and they’ve done nothing to make the situation better. Court mandated remediations aside, krafton tried to abuse these devs and steal what they were owed. They’re still working under a hostile parent company and likely will become a skeleton crew in no time.
Best case scenario unknown worlds can use the money to split themselves into a new studio.
It’s sad the the gaming industry so often turn toxic. 😒
the game has to sell at least 3M copies for the devs to get the $250M tho
AFAIK this is not true. The bonus is just capped. But every dollar spent is increasing their bonus until they have sold 3M copies.
It does mention:
Earlier this year, publisher Krafton was accused of ignoring a court order by announcing to staff that the game was releasing in May, despite such a decision seemingly being the responsibility of the newly reinstated CEO Ted Gill.
Gill is the first person named as part of “the three”.
I suppose that if you’re another development studio working with Krafton, like InZOI, you’re probably looking with a lot of suspicion at every move from your publisher now.
Krafton isn’t just publishing Inzoi, it founded the entire studio. If you work there you work for Krafton. And honestly it shows in the sloppy product.
I’m not seeing any evidence of that. I looked it up and all I could find was that CEO was reinstated. Do you have a link by any chance? If the original dev team is still there I’d want to support them, if not then I’ll just pirate it
The only ones fired were the 3 co-founders. They were the ones who were set to receive the largest amount of the bonus (they had promised to put most of that back into the company and to share with the development team). The judge ordered that only one of them be brought back and for the deadline on the $250million to be extended by 9 months.
I sure haven’t, and won’t. If that’s what their leadership wants, I won’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. There are many other games, I don’t need to play this particular one that badly.
Do we know how they got their hands on those chatgpt chat logs?
OpenAI produces them once the laywers subpoena them.
I assume the judge told openai to hand it over?
Kinda shitty for the site to phrase this as an allegation; it is exactly what the court found occurred, so there’s no risk of misstating or libel exposure.
Yes, if you are unfamiliar with the situation, like I was, it isn’t 100% clear IMO.
Probably will end up buying this. I liked the first one but eventually switched to Planet Crafter which i actually enjoyed more. But still, this game is going to be good, you just know it.
But it’s in Early Access… so I don’t wanna see yet. I’ll wait for full release
Me too…although it’s a tough challenge to restrain myself. See you in two years. Or three, then it’s 100% and full of mods 😁
Yeah I’ll let Jacksepticeye tell me how he found Early Access once I finish the storyline aha
Not playing until v1.0.1 defeats the purpose of early access releases but ¯_(ツ)_/¯
“early access” is a way for publishers and studios to get players to pay for the privilege of play-testing a game without paying testers properly, and also ship an unfinished game.
I have a soft spot for the first two, but that’s mainly because I can play them on my phone and the controls actually aren’t awful like most mobile games.
Fuck this game. The CEO ties to fuck over employees and last year they announced shifting to “AI first” for gaming. Fuck Krafton and every game they make or buy.
The CEO got punished for it, dude. Let go. The game is only alive because the employees fought the dipshit tooth and nail at every turn and he got shafted. Now he owes all the employees 250 million.
caveat: the game still has to sell at least 3M copies for the devs to get the $250M
They sold 2M copies in the first 12h, I think they’ll hit that target.
The CEO got punished for it, dude.
How many years did he get?
Lost full rights of any managerial ability with subnautica 2 & reinstated the old CEO & required to pay the bonus out if sale targets are hit and the deadline was extended to September/w the ability to delay the deadline further to march 2027 at the choice of Unknown World.
That’s also ignoring monetary damages and punishment for it which is phase two of the lawsuit and currently in the courts still.
I doubt jail time will be done(nor should it really as this is all monetary issues) but, punishment for the blatent breakage of the EPA terms is likely nowhere near over for krafton.
He lost his job and will soon need to pay 250 mil. Even if you think that’s a light punishment, anything in that vein is too much for their fragile asses.
The CEO is a billionaire that will pay his employees only if it sells a certain amount. It’s a slap on the wrist. Doesn’t change the fact he tried it and has shifted the entire company to AI first.
Stop sucking CEO dick.
How am I glazing him with this post? The game sold 2 million copies in the first 12 hours, their goal is 3 million. I think they’re close to hitting it. This is literally the only time a CEO suffered consequences for being an evil piece of shit.
It’s fine. It’s just the first game with a shitty UE5 plaster on top and a slightly different story. Wish they’d improved upon the general depth of interaction with the world, but it’s exactly the same as the other two.
They fixed a bunch of mechanics and are adding multiplayer so that’s nice.
Co-op with my brothers and dad (who was a scuba trainer) is gonna be a blast.
I have a general unease about the sea and water in general so I’m sure it’ll have some lovely tense moments once we get playing.
I have a general unease about the sea and water in general so I’m sure it’ll have some lovely tense moments once we get playing.
For me the first one went from relaxing to anxiety-inducing quite quickly once you started to go deep
Yeah the first one is downright terrifying lmao
My kids and I did Raft together and it was a fun bonding experience I hope Subnautica 2 can replicate.
Can you confirm that it has around 15hrs of story content as of now ? I’m debating whether to buy it early access or not
At least 15. I’ve made it to 10 and haven’t even unlocked most things yet. It also depends on how much base building and scanning you like to do.
Alright, nice. I like to take my time. When you say shitty plaster, do you mean it looks bad ? or that it runs bad ?
It looks great and runs great. The only gripe I have is that HDR isn’t a feature (and the mods that turn it on are just reverse tonemapping, not true HDR)
UE5 has a bad reputation in the community due to developers making UE5 games without understanding how to use the UE5 engine, leading to performance problems. Subnautica 2 is very well tuned and so those criticism don’t apply.
If you liked the gameplay loop in the first one and enjoyed the experience of learning about the behaviors/uses of all of the various flora and fauna then this game is exactly that but there’s a new world of things to learn, you get new kinds of equipment/powers and it looks prettier.
I see thanks. Well,… more of the first game in a new world floats my boat.
if you are running completionest you probably could. I’m about 12 hours in myself and I’ve been bouncing between collection and story taking my time and I would expect im approaching where what is available is going to end. at least I would expect they wouldn’t move into the next section. Milestone wise it would make sense to stop the EA at this stage.
Alright, cheers ! that gives me a good idea.
Sells would mean the people owns it. In this case the EULA is clear, you are renting the game…
You aren’t wrong, that’s why I use Goldberg/steamless to keep my library of steam games safe, even if steam shits the bed
The way I understand about this stack is that it still relies on steam architecture under the hood. So emulation of the steam client to run the game is what has to occur?
More likely it has to run the bit of the client that handles DRM calls.
I’m not entirely familiar with the process, but I think Goldberg uses steam architecture, but replaces calls to steam servers with locally emulated ones. And I think Steamless emulates the DRM check locally, to spoof the call to steam servers. Neither tool requires internet or active steam servers to run. If the internet disappeared tomorrow, as long as I had my game library downloaded, and the latest version of those two tools installed, I could play all my games forever. Of course, I still prefer to buy my games as physical copies or offline installers from GoG, but you kinda have to go where the games are.
So only a year wait, until it’s stable and affordable.
It’s already stable and $30 for the amount of content already is worth it. I’ve got almost 20 hours with 2 other friends playing coop on it and having an absolute blast so far.
It’s less than $30 for a game worth more than that imo. I also haven’t had any stability issues with it on Linux.
I am glad to see, too bad my PC is too old for it, I would gladly play it otherwise.
