After revealing its release date yesterday, Subnautica 2 developer Unknown Worlds has revealed the PC system requirements for its upcoming underwater deep-sea exploration survival adventure. Overall, the requirements arrive at a sort of middle ground for today’s games, but they are far above what you’d need to play the first game. So much so that depending on when you last upgraded your PC, you might have to go diving for some extra RAM just to meet its requirements for the recommended minimum settings.
Subnautica 2’s minimum requirements call for a base of 12GB of RAM, to play the game at 30 FPS at 1080p. Which, for a lot of players who either built or upgraded their PC in the last eight years since Subnautica’s launch, isn’t that bad of an ask. Many players have at least 16GB in their PCs, which Unknown Worlds says is the recommended amount.
But if you’ve been cruising on an 8GB system in part because the games you like to play, including Subnautica, have lower requirements, and you were looking forward to the sequel, you’re pretty stuck. At least for the game’s early access launch.
Unknown Worlds does add that “Further optimizations will come over the course of development, so we’ll update this as things change to ensure you continue to enjoy the best possible experience with Subnautica 2.” It’s always possible that the studio optimizes it so much that it’ll even run on 8GB machines.
Image credit: Unknown Worlds
But that’s no guarantee, and unless you’re fine with an 8GB ceiling forever you’ll have to eventually bite the bullet and add more RAM to your machine. It’s just unfortunate that this is probably the worst time to need to upgrade your PC, as the memory crisis continues to impact the entire tech industry, video games included.
Alongside revealing the game’s system requirements, Unknown Worlds also cleared up another element of Subnautica 2’s release, by clarifying that yes, it is still co-publishing the game with KRAFTON. After the Unknown Worlds co-founders won their legal bout against their parent company and we saw KRAFTON’s name removed from the game’s store pages as its publisher, speculation ran wild that Unknown Worlds was going independent again, or that at least KRAFTON was no longer publishing Subnautica 2.
Unknown Worlds cleared up part of the confusion today with the confirmation that KRAFTON is still a co-publisher on the project, but that doesn’t mean Unknown Worlds won’t leave KRAFTON’s umbrella at some point in the future. The relationship between the two companies is, if nothing else, forever changed after that legal battle.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech’s gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry’s movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he’s done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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