Subnautica 2 Sells One Million Copies on Its First Day in Early Access, Tops Steam Global Revenue Charts

Subnautica 2, the underwater survival sequel developed by Unknown Worlds under publisher Krafton, launched in Steam Early Access on 14 May 2026 and sold more than one million copies within its first 24 hours — immediately claiming the top spot in Steam's global revenue rankings.¹⁴ The result marks one of the strongest early access launches in recent memory for a survival game, and confirms that the original Subnautica's devoted fanbase has been waiting patiently for years for a follow-up worthy of the first game's reputation.³⁷

The game is priced at $29.99 on Steam — a deliberate positioning that reflects its early access status while acknowledging the significant content already available at launch.⁵ Krafton, the South Korean publisher best known for PUBG: Battlegrounds, has backed Unknown Worlds with the resources to develop a sequel on a larger scale than the original, though the studio has been careful to set expectations about the multi-year early access roadmap still ahead.²⁴

What is Subnautica 2

Like its predecessor, Subnautica 2 drops players into an alien ocean world with minimal equipment and tasked with surviving — gathering resources, building underwater bases, crafting tools, and gradually uncovering the mysteries of a world that is simultaneously beautiful and genuinely threatening.³⁶ The sequel is set on an entirely new alien planet with new biomes, creatures, technologies, and story, meaning players familiar with the original will find much that is different while the core survival loop — diving deeper, building better, pushing further — remains intact.⁷

The most significant new addition compared to the original Subnautica is cooperative multiplayer. Where the first game was a solo experience by design, Subnautica 2 supports up to four-player co-op from the start of early access, a feature that the developer community has requested since the original launched in 2018.¹⁶ The implementation of four-player co-op in a game built around exploration and base-building creates interesting dynamics around resource sharing, division of labour, and joint discovery that the single-player experience cannot replicate.⁵

GeForce NOW and cloud gaming

Subnautica 2 launched simultaneously on NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud gaming platform, giving players without high-end gaming hardware immediate access to the game on devices that would otherwise struggle to run it.² Cloud gaming availability on day one of early access is becoming increasingly standard for major PC releases as publishers seek to maximise addressable audience at launch rather than limiting it to players with capable local hardware.²

Early access roadmap

Unknown Worlds has confirmed that the early access period is planned to last at least two years before a full 1.0 release.¹⁴ The studio has given a sneak peek at the early access roadmap, which will add new biomes, creatures, story content, and features over multiple major updates.³ This extended timeline is consistent with how the original Subnautica was developed — it spent roughly two years in early access before its full launch in January 2018 — and the studio appears to be using the same model of releasing to players early and iterating with community feedback.⁷

For Krafton, the million-copy launch day represents a significant return on its investment in Unknown Worlds and validates its strategy of publishing games in the survival-exploration genre alongside its battle royale portfolio.⁴⁸ The early access approach also provides Krafton with early revenue that can fund continued development, reducing the financial risk that comes with fully funding a game through to a finished 1.0 state before seeing any commercial return.⁵