Just a few days after Forza Horizon 6 was hit with a substantial leak, forcing Microsoft and/or Playground Games to hand out bans to those pirating the game, reports now reveal that Subnautica 2 has suffered the same fate. A full build of the much-anticipated underwater exploration title has been listed at several piracy sites, 48 hours before the Steam launch.

Subnautica 2 launches into early access on May 14, with developers Unknown Worlds recently publishing its final dev vlog to confirm the sequel’s system requirements and show it off on handheld devices. This early leak draws obvious comparisons to the Forza situation; Playground Games denied that it was due to a Steam pre-load issue.

Subnautica 2 has been uploaded to a few piracy sites

According to the publication Respawn First, Subnautica 2 is available on “multiple piracy sites” – supposedly, the full build has been leaked. There has been a wave of recent game leaks happening just ahead of launch. Notable examples include Capcom’s Pragmata, and the PC launch of Death Stranding 2, which also happened after pre-loads went live.

Unlike Forza Horizon 6, where the contents of the massive 167 GB game were listed in SteamDB depot data, inspecting the same for Subnautica 2 reveals only 14.59 GiB (around 15.6 GB) of data, despite the Steam store page recommending 50 GB of space. This seems to reinforce the idea that Steam pre-loads are not the problem; instead, the content may have been leaked by a reviewer or another party with access to an early build.

It was originally thought that unencrypted pre-load data was the cause of the leaks. Adding on to Playground Game’s official statement, SteamDB later backed up the reviewer leak theory.

While there has been no official response on Unknown Worlds’ socials regarding the Subnautica 2 leak at the time of writing, developer Anthony Gallegos has addressed the issue on the official Subnautica Discord, claiming that someone who pirated the game “self-reported” – while sharing his disappointment regarding the leak.

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Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.