Unknown Worlds’ founder, Charlie Cleveland, revealed that Subnautica has sold over 5 million copies worldwide on all platforms. This figure does not include the free downloads that the game gathered on Epic Games Store.
Subnautica is an underwater adventure game set on an alien ocean planet. Players can craft equipment, pilot submarines and out-smart wildlife to explore lush coral reefs, volcanoes, cave systems, and more.
It’s worth noting that the free downloads during the two-week free giveaway on EGS were around 4.5 million. Thus, the game has around 9.5 million players in total.
Unfortunately, Cleveland did not offer any platform-specific sales. As such, we don’t know how successful the EGS version was. We also don’t know whether the sales ratio between the PC and console versions.
Still, this is great news for Unknown Worlds. The team is now working on a sequel, Below Zero, which launched in Early Access in 2019.
Thanks GamesIndustry
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I remember not giving a damn about this game when it was early access on steam. Then when it became gold it went on rebate and i bought it.
Greatest decision of the year let me tell you that. I have had SO MUCH fun playing this totally relaxed, until you know… leviathan.
Game is worth playing. It’s beautiful and story is good enough to spike curiosity.
Nice game, but it feels unfinished in too many aspects for a final release:
– empty alien bases
– wonky controls on land
– too little feedback associated with damaging enemies
– restricted base building
– too little uses for some materials
– too little to do in deep environments (which are really interesting) except for gathering necessary materials once and moving
– little to no incentive for building bases past early game
– lack of more conventional, lethal weapons (I know it is supposed to be a pacifistic game, but come on… being able to defend yourself in some weird-ass way only feels incomplete and unsatisfying, especially given the lack of proper feedback upon damaging enemies).
– …and more.
I feel like this title fell victim to the whole early access practice. People were given an unfinished game and gave it the benefit of the doubt due to the prospect of it being fixed further down the road. Many problems were fixed, but many weren’t. This sets a bad precedent, in my opinion. Devs can just slap an “early access” tag and keep getting away with a good but flawed product until sales are already made and they can’t be arsed with polishing the game since they have the money.
One of the best games of the past couple of years IMO. Definitely worth picking up.
5 million units sold, but 9.5 million active players? how is it possible? really, I did not understand correctly, forgive me
4.5 are EGS freeloaders, it’s literally stated in the article xD