> "passive experience to a more proactive and intelligent one"

Well, maybe that's kind of true for the browser, but the users? They will become more and more passive until they are reduced to bots keeping the AI agents busy. Yay.

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They should start selling special 18+ versions of their steam wallet cards in shops.

You could easily sell those underhandedly to minors. Sure, you could also give away your credit card information, but you'd be quite an idiot to do so.

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Bummer: when I read the title, I thought the game would be a cynical commentary on smartphone addiction where you are an app developer or something and have to use dark design patterns to keep people on their phones until they die from neglecting their bodily needs.

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That it was a christmas movie Cleveland was working on hasn't come up in what I've seen and read. Some sources I no found claim that is was part of learning how to make movies in the context of possible Subnautica movies. If it was not and, as Krafton claims, a "personal project" and he worked on that instead of doing his job (you can have personal projects in your own free time, of course), it would be kind of dumb to not expect consequences.

That said, even if Cleveland neglected his job, that makes one out of three. For the other two, I haven't found anything more substantial than general "neglecting their jobs". I find it a little hard to believe that all three of them turned into (or turned out to be) just greedy people while none of them had the awareness to say: "Guys, maybe we should actually make sure Subnautica 2 will be ready so we will get the bonus?"

But I'm open to outcome.

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So I think I'm just going to ignore this mess and play a game!

Sane choice. I'm not even interested in the game. The drama just came up for me on the YouTube landing page, and sometimes, I'm weak for the catchy titles and click.

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at least one of the directors just stopped working on it to make a movie

The lawsuit claimed that he worked on a movie and other projects in that regard specifically for Subnautica and on order of Krafton. Allegedly, they wanted a whole Subnautica franchise.

Deadlines were missed. The game isn't ready for Early Access yet.

How do you know that the game isn't ready and won't be in 2025? That's Krafton's perspective as far as I'm informed, and the founders claim otherwise.

It's true that we don't know the truth (I certainly don't), and it's true that "evil greedy corporation breaks contracts and gets rid of innocent founders to get out of paying a 250 million $ bonus" is the way better story than "greedy founders fucked up and were fired". Given what I have heard, though, I'm inclined to believe the founders because it seams more plausible. If Krafton had hard evidence that the founders had neglected their jobs or did them so poorly that they could all be fired just like that, it seems to me they would have used this evidence to control the narrative.

As with most stories, the truth will lie somewhere in between, just how far from which end? I am very curious to know.

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What have they done? Yes, I'm aware of the drama... but we don't know what happened behind the scenes. Why judge them before we know the real deal?

Last video I watched on the topic contained a lot of detail of the (alleged) contract between Krafton and the founders of the Subnautica studio (Unknown Worlds), and from how things went, it seems that Krafton broke quite a lot of contractually agreed upon promises and did everything they could (and, in part, weren't even allowed to do) to delay the Early Access launch to get around the contractually agreed upon 250 Million $ bonus. For example, they apparently simply stopped all support at some point, went into hiding, didn't pay contractors etc. I wonder whether we'll hear any details of the lawsuit or this will be settled outside of court.

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The solution I'd like to see implemented: stop using effin' PayPal.

On a less dreamy note: I'd be okay with it if these games were still available but you couldn't pay for them using PayPal or whoever's responsible for it. Blame who's to blame, charge your Steam Wallet via other means, pay that way.

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Tried the demo. It wasn't what I expected. The "automation" part thus far is hiring people to do work for you, but they work completely autonomously without any means to control then. There are farmers to replant crops you previously planted, marking a tile with the respective crop until you replant it with something else, and gatherers who pick up the harvest. I haven't seen any "optimisation" part so far. Maybe apart from "plant crops close to each other and plant the crops with the best yield". In its current state, I can't really see where it's going. What I like most about automation and optimisation are the puzzles you can set for yourself and then solve in hopefully interesting and smart or even brainfucky ways, and that's not what this game is at this point.

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there is no sane reason not to release the files to the community.

There can be copyright issues, for example when using libraries under some copyleft licences which enforce you to release your own source code when making your software available. This does in some cases not apply when making not the software itself available but only its functionality by a web service / SAAS.

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