Subnautica’s August 2025 update breaks mods - here’s how to roll back on Steam

Subnautica’s latest August 2025 patch, while packed with bug fixes and improvements, has left mod enthusiasts high and dry with broken installations across the board. Players diving back into their heavily modded saves are finding themselves in a frustrating situation. Popular mods like the Subnautica Map mod, Cyclops Docking, and even the beloved Decorations mod have stopped functioning entirely. 

One player on Reddit described the chaos perfectly: “Broke everything almost like v2.0 all over again. Guess I need to find something else to play for a month or three until stuff gets fixed”. Similarly, there are multiple such complaints.

The culprit appears to be Unknown Worlds’ decision to modernize the game’s underlying systems. The update switched from legacy Unity input to a new input system and made various backend changes that modders relied on. While these improvements bring better controller support and performance optimizations, they’ve essentially pulled the rug out from under the modding community.

Thankfully, the Subnautica community is a resourceful bunch, and solutions are already circulating for those who want to get their modded games back up and running. The most common and effective method involves rolling back your game version on Steam. Here’s how you can do it, as shared by helpful players like Ultroman the Tacoman on the Steam forums and various Reddit users:

1. Open Steam and go to your Library.
2. Right-click on Subnautica in your game list.
3. Select ‘Properties’ from the context menu.
4. In the Properties window, navigate to the ‘Betas’ tab.
5. From the dropdown menu, choose the ‘2023_march’ version. This will revert your game to a previous, mod-compatible state.
6. Steam will then download the older version of the game. Once it’s done, your mods should be working again.

This rollback method has been widely reported as successful by players across Reddit and the Steam community. It’s a temporary workaround, of course, as mod developers will eventually need to update their creations to be compatible with the latest version of Subnautica.

But for now, it’s a lifeline for those who can’t imagine diving into the depths without their favorite enhancements. So, if your Subnautica experience has been a bit rocky lately, give this a try and get back to exploring the alien ocean as it was meant to be.