'Subnautica Began With a Love for the Ocean' — Subnautica 2 Dev Makes $100,000 Donation to Ocean Cleanup Charity as It Releases 1.2 Patch

August 2026 · 22 minute read

Subnautica 2 Early Access 1.2 is out now, adding the Buddy System to the underwater survival and crafting game.

Developer Unknown Worlds has also announced a $100,000 donation to the appropriately named ocean cleanup non-profit The Ocean Cleanup.

Unknown Worlds previously donated a portion of proceeds from the original Subnautica to The Ocean Cleanup on World Environment Day in 2019, and has continued to support ocean conservation efforts since.

“Subnautica began with a love for the ocean, and it means a great deal to continue the conservation work we started with the original game through this donation to The Ocean Cleanup,” said executive producer Fernando Melo. “We will keep doing our part to protect the ocean we have spent so long bringing to life.”

Unknown Worlds spoke about what to expect from Subnautica 1.2 yesterday, but today's release of the update brings with it detailed patch notes, below, which include a long list of changes and fixes.

1.2 includes the first iteration of Subnautica 2 proximity chat via an in-game voice chat option that you can use with your friends to talk locally with each other. As you get farther away it will switch to a radio-sounding voice that will progressively break up to a point where you can almost not hear your friend.

Also added is player emotes via a small menu that lets players cheer on their friends, clap, or tell them you’re a little annoyed or frustrated. Inventory sharing lets players walk up to another player, access their inventory and quickly swap items between one another, rather than having to drop inventory items out in the world and have them pick them up. Player revives are also added, so if your friend is downed for whatever reason, you’ll have some time to share some oxygen with them and bring them back to life.

Two additional player characters (Grace and Jegna) are added alongside two new suit colors. Also included is the tracking tag, a short-range beacon you can throw out in the environment or put inside an inventory such as a portable locker, so if you ever leave it in a cave you can find your way back to it. If you die holding a tracking tag or have one in your inventory, it will extend your black box signal to help you find the stuff you left behind.

Improved HUD icons means all the icons will not be at full scale by default, but when you mouse over them after a half second or so they will scale up and give you the full details. Alongside that, there are improved pinned recipes, which means the UI should feel a little less confusing, and improvements to the base builder tool that should help make it clearer when you can and can't build something.

The Subnautica 2 Early Access 1.2 update patch notes, courtesy of Steam, are below:

Subnautica 2 Early Access 1.2 patch notes

Gameplay

Fauna & Flora

Resources

Base Building

Vehicles, Tools & Equipment

Menus & UI

Art & Visual FX

Voice & Narrative

Music & SFX

Miscellaneous

Bug Fixes

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].