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Subnautica 2 Stands By No-Killing Design as PC Mod Brings Back Lethal Play

The studio says the goal is to learn to live with the world, not to conquer it.

Overview

  • Unknown Worlds, which restated Monday that Subnautica 2 is built around non-violent survival, argues that letting players kill wildlife would drain tension from the game.
  • Lead designer Anthony Gallegos framed the vision as coexisting with the ecosystem, saying players are “here to exist on this planet, not to dominate it,” and pointed to lessons from Subnautica 1’s killable leviathans.
  • A Discord exchange from a studio developer telling critics to “go play Sons of the Forest” hardened community pushback, with Reddit and Discord posts citing weak early-game defense like flares.
  • Modder Domelll released a Killable Creatures add-on on PC that lets the multitool deal 20 damage and the sonic resonator 50, leaves floating corpses, and includes cleanup, though slain fish cannot be harvested and big creatures take ages to down.
  • Developers say they will hear feedback on defense gaps and ideate on non-lethal tools, a stance that continues a shift begun in Below Zero and now plays out in Early Access where mods offer an alternate path for players who want combat.