Krafton Revenue Nearly Doubles on Subnautica 2 Surge

Krafton reported the strongest quarter in its history on July 29, 2026, with revenue nearly doubling from a year earlier as the newly launched Subnautica 2 and a still-growing PUBG business drove the Korean publisher to record numbers. The catch for anyone reading past the headline: a large share of that growth did not come from games at all.

Second-quarter revenue rose 94.9% year over year to ₩1.29 trillion ($889.1 million), and operating profit climbed 67% to ₩410.9 billion ($283.1 million), both second-quarter records, according to Krafton’s earnings release. Across the first half of 2026, revenue reached ₩2.66 trillion and operating profit ₩972.5 billion, the latter already equal to about 92% of the company’s entire operating profit for 2025.

The two franchises doing the work

Subnautica 2 was the quarter’s fresh catalyst. The underwater survival sequel, built by Krafton’s Unknown Worlds studio, entered Steam Early Access on May 15, 2026 and sold more than five million copies within 22 days, holding a “Very Positive” user rating that put it among the best-selling games released in 2026. Revenue from the wider Subnautica series, including the original game and Below Zero, reached ₩232.5 billion ($160.2 million) in the first half. The launch helped lift quarterly PC revenue above ₩500 billion for the first time, to ₩560.4 billion, and sent console revenue up 143.3% to ₩23.8 billion.

PUBG remained the steadier engine. First-half revenue from the battle-royale franchise grew 25% year over year, which Krafton credited to what it calls “content platformization,” a push to turn the aging shooter into a rotating platform of new modes and brand tie-ins rather than a single game. New PC modes, including Xeno Point and a PAYDAY crossover, lifted player numbers and spending, while PUBG Mobile and its India edition set a single-day revenue record on a new cosmetic and kept mobile revenue up 5.5%, even as it fell more than a third from the previous quarter.

Why the headline number flatters the story

The 94.9% jump overstates how much of this is a games story. Krafton’s “others” segment, the bucket that now holds ADK, a Japanese advertising and animation group it acquired in 2025, brought in ₩255 billion, up more than 5,000% from a year earlier. Strip out that consolidation and the underlying growth from PUBG and Subnautica, while real, is far more modest than the top line suggests.

The acquired business also weighs on the mix. Operating profit fell 26.8% from the first quarter and revenue slipped 5.9%, as mobile spending cooled and the advertising unit carried heavier costs than Krafton’s core game operations. For a publisher that has long relied on PUBG for the bulk of its earnings, the quarter reads less as a clean breakout than as a company buying its way into new revenue while it waits on its next home-grown hit.

That wait is part of why the Subnautica settlement mattered. Near the end of the quarter, Krafton settled a lawsuit with Unknown Worlds’ former leadership and agreed to pay a disputed $250 million bonus, clearing a legal overhang just as the sequel began delivering.

What Krafton is betting on next

Management is steering investors toward the pipeline. At Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, running August 26 to 30, 2026, Krafton plans to reveal five titles it aims to ship by 2027: a new project built on the PUBG IP, alongside No Law, Project Zeta, Age Twisters, and Tarae: The Unbound. The company has said Subnautica 2 will stay in open development for roughly two more years before a full launch, noting that about half of current players are new to the series.

“We will remain focused on Krafton’s core gaming business as we begin to move into the execution phase of producing new titles,” said CEO Changhan Kim, casting the PUBG platform as the funding base for a wider slate of franchise IP.

The company is also returning cash while it builds that slate. Krafton bought back ₩300 billion in stock and paid a ₩99.6 billion dividend in the first half, and it plans to cancel ₩431.5 billion in shares, roughly 3.5% of those outstanding, with a further ₩100 billion buyback approved for the third quarter. The real test comes at Gamescom and beyond: one hit sequel and a consolidated ad business lifted this quarter, but Krafton still needs its pipeline to prove it can build a third franchise pillar that stands on its own.