After Subnautica 2 leaked early, one developer has responded to those who decided to pirate the game.
Earlier this week, Unknown Worlds confirmed that the builds that had leaked online were legitimate, but noted that they were "incomplete development versions," so anyone who got a hold of them would not be experiencing the game as it was intended. But, of course, piracy is bound to happen no matter the game, whether it leaked out early or not. While some developers have previously been happy to help out – such as Hotline Miami dev Jonatan Söderström – in most cases people pirating the game don't go to ask devs for help.
However, as spotted by RespawnFirst, on the Subnautica 2 Discord, the developers behind the survival game were asked a few tech support questions – as you would expect from a public-facing Discord server for a game – the only catch was that this was on May 13, 2026… a day before Subnautica 2's official early-access release date on May 14.
After figuring out "he wasn't some child trying to figure out a genuine Subnautica issue" a developer who goes by Anthony (possibly game design lead Anthony Gallegos), responded to the pirate. "It took some doing, but this guy self-reported. Thanks for pirating a game that I've spent years working on." He adds, "I'm disappointed that you'd do that when it's kind of how we make our living. I hope you rethink your life choices."
Of course, in this instance – where Subnautica 2 had a peak of over 460,000 concurrent players on Steam and had sold over one million copies by the end of its first hour – I don't think the developers have to worry too much. Alas, piracy is always going to happen, especially when the cost of games and the cost of living is going up drastically in recent times, but you'd think people would have the sense to not advertise it to the devs the day before their game releases.
