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Unknown Worlds Entertainment
April 15, 2026 at 08:29 PM
Merged 8 People pages (Steve Papoutsis, Ted Gill, Charlie Cleveland, Max McGuire, Anthony Gallegos, Seth Dickinson, Cory Strader, Ben Prunty) into this page. Added their slugs as aliases for URL redirects.
Unknown Worlds Entertainment is a game development studio founded in May 2001 by Charlie Cleveland (online handle "Flayra"). The studio is based in San Francisco, California, and is a fully remote, globally distributed team of approximately 171 employees. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of KRAFTON, Inc. since December 2021.
Cleveland founded the studio to develop Natural Selection, a Half-Life mod combining FPS gameplay with top-down RTS. It released October 31, 2002 as a free mod, co-created with Cory Strader (now Visual Development Lead on Subnautica 2, still at the studio after 17+ years).
Max McGuire joined as co-founder in October 2006 after working as Lead Engine Programmer at Iron Lore Entertainment (Titan Quest). McGuire built a custom engine called Spark for Natural Selection 2. The game released in 2012, reached #1 on Steam, and sold well over 300,000 copies.
Subnautica was announced December 17, 2013 and entered Steam Early Access on December 16, 2014. After roughly three years in Early Access, the 1.0 release landed on January 23, 2018. It became a massive commercial success, selling over 5.3 million copies with over $108 million in Steam revenue.
The standalone expansion Below Zero entered Early Access January 30, 2019 and fully released May 14, 2021. Originally planned as DLC, it was expanded into its own title. Both games were built in Unity.
KRAFTON acquired Unknown Worlds in late 2021 for $500 million upfront plus up to $250 million in earnout. See KRAFTON Acquisition and Controversy for the full account.
Under KRAFTON, the studio began developing Subnautica 2 in Unreal Engine 5. The game was revealed at the Xbox Partner Preview on October 17, 2024. In July 2025, KRAFTON replaced the founders with Steve Papoutsis as CEO.
Unknown Worlds has operated as a remote-first studio for most of its history, predating the industry-wide shift to remote work during COVID-19. The team is distributed globally across multiple time zones.
Item | Description |
|---|---|
Natural Selection (2002) | Free Half-Life mod |
Natural Selection 2 (2012) | Standalone, custom Spark engine |
Subnautica (2018) | Unity, 5.3M+ copies sold |
Below Zero (2021) | Unity |
Subnautica 2 (2026 Early Access) |
This section consolidates biographies of the key people at Unknown Worlds Entertainment during the development of Subnautica 2. The team went through a major leadership upheaval in July 2025 when KRAFTON removed co-founders Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire along with CEO Ted Gill and installed Steve Papoutsis as the new CEO. The three former executives are now plaintiffs in a $250 million earnout lawsuit against KRAFTON. The creative leads listed here are the public faces of the game's day-to-day development.
Steve Papoutsis is the CEO of Unknown Worlds Entertainment, appointed on July 2, 2025 when KRAFTON replaced the studio's co-founders. He oversees the development and release of Subnautica 2.
Papoutsis started his career at Crystal Dynamics, where he first worked with Glen Schofield. He is credited on Gex: Enter the Gecko (1998) and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver as a producer.
Papoutsis spent approximately 13 years at Electronic Arts, primarily at the studio known as EA Redwood Shores (later renamed Visceral Games). He rose from Senior Producer to Executive Producer to General Manager.
Item | Description |
|---|---|
Dead Space (2008) | Senior Producer |
Dead Space 2 (2011) | Executive Producer |
Dead Space 3 (2013) | Executive Producer |
Battlefield Hardline (2015) | contributed as GM of Visceral |
He served as General Manager of Visceral Games until his departure from EA in April 2015, shortly after the launch of Battlefield Hardline. Scott Probst replaced him as GM. EA shut Visceral Games down in October 2017, over two years after Papoutsis had left.
Papoutsis spent approximately 14 months at Baobab Studios, a VR animation studio, between his time at EA and Striking Distance.
In 2019, Papoutsis joined Striking Distance Studios (a KRAFTON subsidiary) as Chief Development Officer, reuniting with Glen Schofield who served as CEO. The studio developed The Callisto Protocol (2022), a survival horror game set in the PUBG universe.
When Schofield departed in September 2023, Papoutsis was promoted to CEO of Striking Distance Studios.
On July 2, 2025, KRAFTON appointed Papoutsis as CEO of Unknown Worlds, replacing co-founders Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire, along with CEO Ted Gill. See KRAFTON Acquisition and Controversy for the full context of this leadership change.
When Reddit communities called for a boycott of Subnautica 2 following the founders' removal, Papoutsis responded: "There have always been people that have come and gone." He later praised the fired founders as "great leaders" while noting their "limited involvement" in the game's day-to-day development.
Ted Gill is the former CEO of Unknown Worlds Entertainment. He was removed from his position on July 2, 2025, when KRAFTON replaced the studio's leadership, firing Gill alongside co-founders Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire. He was replaced by Steve Papoutsis, who was transferred from KRAFTON subsidiary Striking Distance Studios.
Gill served as CEO of Unknown Worlds, overseeing the studio's operations and the development of Subnautica 2. While Cleveland and McGuire were the studio's co-founders with long public histories (Cleveland created Natural Selection; McGuire built the Spark engine), Gill's role was more operationally focused. His public profile prior to the KRAFTON controversy was limited compared to the founders.
On July 2, 2025, KRAFTON removed Gill, Cleveland, and McGuire from Unknown Worlds and installed Papoutsis as the new CEO. KRAFTON's CEO Kim Chang-han later testified that the founders had "effectively stopped working" on Subnautica 2 as of May 2025.
Gill joined Cleveland and McGuire as a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in July 2025 by Fortis Advisors LLC in Delaware Chancery Court. The lawsuit alleges KRAFTON deliberately sabotaged Subnautica 2's development to avoid paying a $250 million earnout tied to the game's release milestones. The earnout was part of KRAFTON's $750 million acquisition of Unknown Worlds ($500 million upfront plus $250 million in performance-based payments due by June 2026). The founders intended to distribute the earnout among approximately 100 employees.
KRAFTON counter-sued in August 2025, alleging that the founders "abandoned the studio and took confidential information" before their departure. According to KRAFTON's filings, Gill specifically exported his entire company email account twice, triggering IT alerts. See the full KRAFTON Acquisition and Controversy article for complete lawsuit details, including the Project X internal task force, ChatGPT allegations, and trial proceedings.
Court filings reveal that a KRAFTON executive allegedly attempted to negotiate a lower earnout directly with Gill on June 18, 2025, approximately two weeks before the leadership change. This is cited in the lawsuit as evidence that KRAFTON was seeking to reduce the payout obligation before ultimately removing the leadership team entirely.
A three-day trial took place November 17-19, 2025. Post-trial arguments were held January 9, 2026. As of March 2026, no ruling has been publicly announced. The plaintiffs (including Gill) demand full reinstatement, payment of the complete $250 million earnout, and additional damages for reputational harm and lost income. KRAFTON has stated it is "nonsense" for the founders to return.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Max McGuire is the co-founder and former CTO of Unknown Worlds Entertainment. He was removed from his position by KRAFTON on July 2, 2025.
McGuire graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2001 with a B.S. in Mathematics and a double major in Computer Science.
McGuire was the first employee at Iron Lore Entertainment. As Lead Engine Programmer, he built the core technology and tools behind Titan Quest (2006) and Titan Quest: Immortal Throne (2007), working alongside creative leads Rich Sullivan and Josh McHugh.
McGuire joined Charlie Cleveland as co-founder of Unknown Worlds in October 2006. He built the Spark engine from scratch, originally designed for loading Source engine media. The Spark engine became the proprietary technology powering Natural Selection 2 (2012). The division of labor at the studio was straightforward: "Charlie writes the Natural Selection 2 code and Max writes the engine/tools code."
The Spark engine also powered early development of Subnautica, though the game ultimately shipped on Unity.
On July 2, 2025, KRAFTON removed McGuire alongside Cleveland and CEO Ted Gill, replacing them with Steve Papoutsis. The three filed a lawsuit against KRAFTON seeking $250 million in earnout payments.
In KRAFTON's countersuit, the company alleged McGuire downloaded nearly 100,000 confidential files (including hundreds related to another project called Moonbreaker) before his departure.
Anthony Gallegos is the Design Lead for Subnautica 2 at Unknown Worlds Entertainment. He has been the primary public face of the game's development, hosting all five Dev Vlogs released between April 2025 and February 2026.
Before game design, Gallegos worked as a gaming journalist. He wrote for IGN, 1UP, Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), Games for Windows (GFW), and GameSpy, primarily on the PC team at IGN. He studied at the University of California, Davis.
In January 2009, after layoffs at 1UP.com, Gallegos co-founded Rebel FM, a gaming podcast that became one of the longest-running in the medium. He also produced The Comedy Button podcast (over 200 episodes).
Gallegos transitioned from journalism to game design, working at several studios:
Item | Description |
|---|---|
Gazillion Entertainment | Systems Designer on Marvel Heroes (MMO) |
Zombie Studios / Z2 | Design roles |
Echtra Games | Senior Game Designer on Torchlight III |
Unknown Worlds (May 2021-present) -- Design Lead on Subnautica 2 | -- |
Gallegos has been vocal about two design principles for Subnautica 2. First, no weapons: the game has "no weapons, only collection tools." Leviathans cannot be killed. He stated that eliminating predators is "boring" and "players will have to avoid or interact with these colossal creatures."
Second, co-op must remain optional. He stated: "The important distinction there is that any part of the game isn't going to require cooperative play." He also noted that survival game players aren't "monogamistic" like MMO players, and the team supports players taking breaks between content updates.
Seth Dickinson is the Senior Narrative Designer for Subnautica 2. He joined Unknown Worlds Entertainment in May 2022. On his blog that same month, he wrote: "I have just started a full time job at Unknown Worlds Entertainment as senior narrative designer on the Subnautica universe. Time for fish."
Dickinson is a graduate of the University of Chicago, where he received the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing in 2011 for his short story "The Immaculate Conception of Private Ritter." He had received honorable mention in 2007 and first runner-up in 2008 in the same competition. He was also a lapsed PhD candidate at NYU, where he studied racial bias in police shoot/don't-shoot decisions. He lives in New York City.
Dickinson's most recognized fiction work is The Masquerade series, beginning with The Traitor Baru Cormorant (2015). The novel follows an accountant who infiltrates the empire that conquered her homeland, using economic warfare and political manipulation rather than military force. The series continued with The Monster Baru Cormorant (2018) and The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (2020), with a fourth book announced but not yet published.
His standalone science fiction novel Exordia was published in January 2024. It uses the Anfal genocide of the Kurds as a historical backdrop and blends action with metaphysical inquiry. Dickinson paid expert readers out of his own pocket for cultural authenticity.
He has published short fiction in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among other venues. He has also contributed to Magic: The Gathering lore.
Dickinson did a stint at Bungie and became known for deep, literary lore writing within the Destiny franchise.
Contribution | Details |
|---|---|
Books of Sorrow | (The Taken King, 2015): The origin story of the Hive, told through mythological narrative spanning billions of years. Widely considered among the finest writing in Destiny's lore. |
Marasenna | A lorebook about the Awoken and Mara Sov. |
The Unveiling | (Shadowkeep, 2019). Lore entries exploring the cosmological underpinnings of Destiny's universe. |
The Witch Queen Collector's Edition | (2022), Including Ikora Rey's letter to Sen-Aret. |
Lightfall Collector's Edition | (2023). Confirmed by Bungie staff. |
In a 2024 Clarkesworld interview, Dickinson described the central theme running through his work as "the necessary, monstrous choice", moral complexity under extreme constraint. He has said he listens to "underlying concerns rather than surface-level suggestions" when processing feedback, noting that "often the solution players propose won't work from an integrity, technological or finance perspective, but you can address the problem behind it in a different way."
As Senior Narrative Designer, Dickinson is responsible for Subnautica 2's story, world-building, and in-game text on Planet Zezura. The Subnautica franchise relies heavily on environmental storytelling and PDA log entries rather than cutscenes. Dickinson's background writing mythology-scale lore for Destiny and politically complex novels suggests a potentially more structured narrative than the first two games, which were praised for atmosphere but sometimes criticized for thin plotting.
Cory Strader is the Visual Development Lead for Subnautica 2 at Unknown Worlds Entertainment. He has been with the studio since June 2008, making him one of the longest-tenured team members at over 17 years.
Stainless Steel Studios -- Modeler, Texture Artist, UI Artist, and Concept Artist on Empire Earth (2001) and Empires: Dawn of the Modern World (2003)
Factor 5 -- Senior Texture Artist and Concept Artist on Lair (2007) for PS3
Strader served as the primary artist and art director for the original Natural Selection mod, co-creating the game alongside Charlie Cleveland in 2002. He established the franchise's visual identity, designing the environments and creatures for the marines-vs-aliens multiplayer experience.
Strader joined Unknown Worlds as Art Director in June 2008 and has art-directed every release since:
Item | Description |
|---|---|
Natural Selection 2 (2012) | Art Director |
Subnautica (2018) | Art Director |
Below Zero (2021) | Art Director |
Subnautica 2 (in development) | Visual Development Lead |
On Subnautica 2, Strader leads the visual design pipeline. He featured prominently in Dev Vlog #3 (Collector Leviathan) and Dev Vlog #4 (Tadpole), showing his process of starting with "multiple rounds of quick, low-detail thumbnail sketches" before progressing to detailed concepts and final models.
Ben Prunty is the composer returning to score Subnautica 2. He previously composed the soundtracks for both Subnautica and Subnautica: Below Zero.
Prunty attended the New England School of Communications for audio engineering. Before becoming a full-time game composer, he worked at Google as a datacenter technician. His break came with FTL: Faster Than Light.
Prunty composed the soundtrack to FTL: Faster Than Light (2012), the roguelike spaceship management game by Subset Games. FTL's soundtrack blended ambient electronic music with tension-building combat tracks and helped establish Prunty's reputation in indie game music. He also composed the score for Subset Games' follow-up, Into the Breach (2018), which he described as his "most challenging and most personal" work.
Prunty's work on the original Subnautica established the franchise's musical identity: ambient underwater textures layered with moments of wonder and dread that shift depending on depth and biome. The music responds to gameplay, becoming more intense in dangerous areas and more contemplative during surface exploration.
In a SPIN interview about the Below Zero soundtrack, Prunty described his three focal points as "loneliness and isolation, the awe and wonder of an alien world, and the fear of the unknown." He also stated: "Getting to work on a game series that I already loved as a player is one of the greatest privileges of my life."
Prunty's return for Subnautica 2 provides musical continuity with the franchise. The shift to a new planet (Zezura) and new biomes gives room for fresh compositions. No released tracks or specific interviews about the Subnautica 2 score have surfaced as of February 2026.
Beyond the Subnautica franchise and Subset Games titles, Prunty's credits include The Darkside Detective and Dead Secret. His work has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered, PC Gamer, SPIN, and NME.
