Unknown Worlds was created by Charlie Cleveland and was originally a group of developers making a half life mod: Natural Selection.

With its success, Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire formed the official studio called Unknown Worlds, and then hired more people to make Natural Selection 2.

After Natural Selection 2, Unknown Worlds made Subnautica 1. Charlie Cleveland was the director, designer, and lead programmer on it. Max McGuire was also a programmer on it, Hugh Jeremy was the producer.

After this, Charlie Cleveland moved into a CEO role, Max McGuire moved in the role of company President, and Trey had Ted Gill as CEO.

They released Subnautica Below Zero, which none of them were that involved in to somewhat more middling reviews.

They sold Unknown Worlds to Krafton, and in the contract it had a $250M bonus spread amongst the staff of Unknown Worlds for on time delivery of Subnautica 2.

Allegedly Krafton asked Charlie Cleveland to work on also producing a Subnautica movie, so he was focusing on that.

Apparently at a milestone review Krafton was unhappy with the amount of content that would be in Subnautica 2 early access. They asked the team to increase it by 30%. The team refused and thought it was ready to release.

Krafton then fired the two studio founders (Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire), the CEO (Ted Gill), and put in a new CEO who delayed the release past the point of the staff getting the $250m bonus.

The studio then pledged to give the staff a $25m bonus instead.

The fired leadership team is now suing Krafton, meanwhile Krafton is claiming that it was just acting in the beat interests of not disappointing gamers.