Charlie Cleveland

Charlie Cleveland (online handle "Flayra") is the co-founder of Unknown Worlds Entertainment and the creator of the Natural Selection and Subnautica franchises. He led the studio for over two decades before being removed from his position by KRAFTON in July 2025.

Early career

Cleveland studied at Case Western Reserve University. Before founding Unknown Worlds, he worked at several studios: as a programmer at Papyrus Design Group on Grand Prix: Legends (1998), at CogniToy on MindRover: The Europa Project (2000), and as a game programmer at Stainless Steel Studios on Empire Earth (2001). He has described starting his game development career "more than 25 years ago, back before there were any books or courses, back before there were engines to license."

Natural Selection

Cleveland created Natural Selection as a Half-Life mod, released on October 31, 2002. He was the sole coder and designer, funding development with roughly $40,000 in personal savings. The mod attracted over two million downloads and logged more than two billion player-minutes of total play time. GameSpy called it "possibly the most ambitious user-made modification ever brought to fruition."

He co-created the mod with Cory Strader, who handled the visual design. Strader remains at Unknown Worlds as Visual Development Lead on Subnautica 2.

Subnautica and the no-weapons decision

Cleveland directed Subnautica from its announcement in December 2013 through its release in January 2018. The game sold over 5.3 million copies.

One of Cleveland's most consequential design decisions was removing all weapons from Subnautica. In 2016, he wrote on Steam: "Subnautica was being birthed right around the time of the Sandy Hook shooting. I've never believed that video game violence creates more real-world violence. But I couldn't just sit by and 'add more guns' to the world either." He continued: "Subnautica is one vote towards a world with less guns. A reminder that there is another way forward. One where we use non-violent and more creative solutions to solve our problems."

This was a deliberate reversal from Unknown Worlds' roots. The studio's previous two games, Natural Selection 1 and 2, were multiplayer first-person shooters. The no-weapons philosophy has carried forward into Subnautica 2.

GDC 2019 talk

Cleveland delivered a Game Developers Conference presentation in 2019 titled "The Design of Subnautica." He covered the game's core design pillar, "Thrill of the Unknown: the excitement, dread, and tension of exploring when you have no idea what dangers and rewards are down there", along with how the studio embraced player phobias, used radio signals to add structure to sandbox exploration, and maintained business transparency through monthly community updates.

Writing and design philosophy

Cleveland maintains a website and newsletter called "Making Fun" covering game systems design. His published essay "Ugliness Needed" argues for fast, ugly prototypes to validate core mechanics before investing in art, recommending a maximum team of three people during prototyping. He advises that ugliness "means nimble", allowing rapid pivoting both technically and emotionally while preventing premature attachment to polished assets.

Removal from Unknown Worlds

On July 2, 2025, KRAFTON removed Cleveland from the studio he co-founded. He was replaced alongside co-founder Max McGuire and CEO Ted Gill by Steve Papoutsis. KRAFTON's CEO Kim Chang-han later testified that Cleveland and McGuire had "effectively stopped working" on Subnautica 2 as of May 2025.

Cleveland broke his silence on July 7, posting on Reddit and X: "After all these years, to find that I'm no longer able to work at the company I started stings." He added: "Our priority is, and has always been, to make the best damned game we can for the best community in the world." He stated the game was ready for its originally planned Early Access release and that "this is not where the story ends."

Cleveland, McGuire, and Gill subsequently filed a lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court against KRAFTON seeking reinstatement, the full $250 million earnout, and damages.