Unknown Worlds hands Natural Selection 2 development to community team

Unknown Worlds Entertainment handed over future development of Natural Selection 2, its real-time strategy first-person shooter, to a community development team in order to dedicate more resources to Subnautica.

"It means that now with Unknown World's blessing, we as a community can forge patch 266. We can hopefully start to incorporate the best the community has to offer, such as bug fixes and popular features...with many more ideas for the future!" reads an announcement post from the NS2 Community Dev Team (CDT), the collective of 14 developers now overseeing the game's upcoming patches and content.

"For the everyday player, they can now rest easy knowing that NS2's future developments will be in the trusted hands of a team of experienced NS2 players just like them, who only wish to see NS2 become bigger and better than ever before!" the post adds. "There is potential for greatness, but we will have many hurdles to overcome along the way. While these things take time to implement and grow, we plan on being very open with what we are actively working on. Afterall, it is by the community, for the community!"

Game director Charlie Cleveland revealed in 2012 that Natural Selection 2's development was hindered by money problems and a lack of manpower. Cleveland described how certain aspects of the title were developed and polished with the assistance of several community members.

Unknown Worlds launched Natural Selection 2 via Steam for Windows PC on Oct. 30, 2012. Natural Selection 2 went on to move 144,000 copies in its first week, grossing more than $1 million. The RTS then received female marines as a free update last year, offering gamers the choice of three different armour versions for the female marine.

Unknown Worlds released the source code for Natural Selection and the development tools and debugger used to create Natural Selection 2 as an open source in January and February this year, respectively.