Subnautica 2 is finally here, and while the vast majority of fans are playing – and paying – their hearts out, a few have taken to a different ocean. And the game’s design lead has now pushed back against these flagrant pirates.

Ahead of Subnautica 2’s release earlier this week, a few players were seemingly boasting about having acquired early illicit copies of the game in the official Subnautica Discord server. It’s this behavior that Unknown Worlds’ Anthony Gallegos was responding to.

“Just to be clear, pirates are gonna do their thing. We were all kids once,” Gallegos wrote. “Money and the economy is very hard. I get it. It wasn’t the piracy that bothered me. It was the people that flagrantly walked in here and wagged it in the faces of people who were waiting to play legitimately. That was the part that aggravated me.

“That and the Reddit responses that keep talking like I’m a millionaire,” he continued. “I’m very much [not]. I don’t own a home. I rent. There’s a lot of misinformation going around and we just wanted the best launch possible for our people.”

All that to say, I understand and thank you for supporting the studio ultimately. I cannot condone piracy, but I get why people do. I would much rather people buy the game, try it for an hour, and return it than go play it illicitly.”

It seems the vast majority of players thought the same; Subnautica 2 saw around 446,000 concurrent (paying) players on Steam on the day of its launch. Quickly after, Unknown Worlds announced over 2m copies were sold across both PC and Xbox Series X/S.

If you’re curious what all the fuss is about, Eurogamer’s Subnautica 2 impressions offers an introductory peek at what the early access release has to offer.