GoKawiilis a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
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Subnautica 2, the new underwater survival game from Unknown Worlds, took less than an hour to rocket up Steam’s charts. The game has already sold more than one million copies, according to a press release, and as of this writing, Steam’s charts show that Subnautica 2 is currently the fourth-most played game on the platform with more than 460,000 concurrent players. The only titles with more concurrent players right now are perennial heavy hitters Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and PUBG: Battlegrounds.
It’s also worth noting that Steam’s Subnautica 2 player count doesn’t include players on the Epic Games Store or on Xbox, where the game is also now available in early access, so the total number of concurrent players is probably even higher.
The huge launch isn’t a total surprise. Before release, Subnautica 2 got five million wishlists and was the most-wishlisted game on Steam. It’s a follow-up to the well-received Subnautica and Subnautica: Below Zero. And it was also at the center of a lengthy legal dispute between Unknown Worlds executives and the Unknown Worlds’ owner, Krafton — and around when that happened, the game was delayed from a planned 2025 early access launch, ostensibly due to feedback from playtests.
Related Subnautica 2 launches soon after lengthy legal dispute
After a judge’s ruling in March that reinstated the studio’s CEO and extended the eligibility window for a potentially significant bonus for Unknown Worlds’ developers, the game got its new early access launch date. The studio expects that the early access period will last for “about” two to three years.