Subnautica 2 studio reassures fans that it's not a live-service game: 'No season passes. No battle passes. No subscription'

In response to concerns that arose after publisher Krafton said the upcoming Subnautica 2 will feature co-op mulitplayer built on the «games-as-a-service model,» developer Unknown Worlds has clarified that it won't be very different from the early access releases of the previous games in the series, and that there will be no battle passes or subscriptions involved.

Krafton said in its latest earnings release that Subnautica 2 is «pursuing fandom snowballing,» which is a bit of uniquely corporate terminology I haven't run into previously, with «single or 1-4 player co-op» and «games-as-a-service model with enhanced replayability.» 

This resulted in immediate consternation from fans: Subnautica and Subnautica: Below Zero are outstanding survival-exploration games that trade heavily on the sense of isolation they engender, and the idea of ditching that aspect of «you against the world» in pursuit of the live-service trend—microtransactions, season passes, in-game events, weird crossovers, whatever—did not go over well.

«Really sad news for Subnautica fans,» redditor patchinthebox wrote. «I get why they'd do it, but it doesn't make it okay. Games as a service are predatory.»

«This kinda bullshit is the result of top-down decisionmaking by management types, certainly not helped by the fact that Unknown Worlds was bought by publisher Krafton in 2021,» darps wrote in a separate thread. «Publishers don't invest for fun, they demand profit maximization and all too often trend-chasing.»

One redditor wondered if any Subnautica developers spend time on the subreddit so they could see the widely negative reaction to the Kraton report, and apparently the answer is «yes» because in very short order the studio released an update about its plans for the game.

«In reference to 'Games-as-a-Service,' we simply plan to continually update the game for many years to come, just like the previous two Subnautica games,» the studio wrote. «Think our Early Access update model, expanded. No