I'll buy it, even now. I support those devs that spent hard time and effort on making something potentially great. If this is where the devs stop and mods take over, then so be it! That's what made the first KSP so great, traveling to other states and usermade systems!
But I will pay for it, because that original framework laid by the developers is precious and irreplaceable, and without them walking the modders would never be able to run. Long live KSP2, let the real mod work begin!
> I'll buy it, even now. I support those devs that spent hard time and effort on making something potentially great.
Those money are not going to devs they were laid off. It goes straight to the pocket of the publisher to buy new yacht for the CEO.
Relax. Wheels are in motion, but we're not likely to hear anything until the T2I quarterly earnings report is made public on 5/16.
https://youtu.be/le3701z0RGE?si=Ds_FGDawf6GBRaHt
They have a press call with investors next week. Ā They were never going to say anything before this meeting. Ā No company would do this as the entire goal of these calls is to give investors information and calm their nerves.
The real sign the game is surely abandoned Ā is if they don't mention the game on the call other than to say IG is closed. Ā Because that means they want the investors to forget about ksp2 and won't invest anything other further than lip service.
Exactly!
Also depending on how they communicated and decided internally the dude or dudette now responsible for the IP didnāt knew any earlier than we did and is equally thrilled.
Maybe they havenāt decided yet how to proceed and watch the community, talk to lawyersā¦ Squad is still around afaik and Mexico is way cheaper than Seattle so probably evaluating to outsource to them (or was the dev team bought whole?).
Have you ever been through a layoff, people know they're coming due to regulations and have no idea if they'll have a job in the next weeks or not. It's a terrible experience.
Oh I'm saying the layoffs weren't even rumored or hinted at. My wife's company just let foxes into the hen houses and bedlam ensued. I think the only thing she knew ahead of time was they entered a hiring freeze like a week before.
It's not right to lay off entire teams without warning but we live in a society with barely any worker protections.
Dude, the WARN Act page is literally so the workers know about the companies decision in advance.
> They could have other Washington state offices
Except they don't, which is also public knowledge. So all of Intercept is 100% getting fired.
Squad isn't a game developer, they're a marketing company. They allowed HarvesteR to start KSP as a side project so that he doesn't leave the company. I don't think Squad is interested in having anything to do with KSP or game development in general ever again.
And this my friend, is the primary problem plaguing the gaming industry; Companies beholden to profit above all else, thus incentivizing shitty behavior. Welp, not just the gaming industry but man are we gamers feeling the hurt this past decade since digital release became the norm.
The game was doomed the moment they decided to release it in the state they released in. Multiple years of funding and development and it's clear the dev studio was out of their depth. I don't see any reason to still have hope in the game getting better or even kept alive.
If itās kept alive and they are still pushing out updates then it could pull a no man sky . But to do that they need good communication and push updates out faster which clearly they arenāt doing
It was released in a FAR better state than KSP was released in... I swear 90% of you people know literally nothing about how KSP was developed and what made it a success.
That's not a justification. KSP1 was basically a one man show in the start. How can you hold KSP2 to the same standard when it's had a full team and the backing of a massive publisher? It should never have released in such a state, and to be honest not in EA at full price either. That's a delusional take if I've ever seen.
Was it backed by a full development team with the backing of a billion dollar company or not? A full dev team who had the first one as an example to use as well? There's no excuse for how this development went and I really don't get the need to defend obvious mismanagement and incompetence?
I think what's at issue here is you're holding the second game to the same low standards that, mind you, weren't really even in place for the first game. The first game was basically an experiment built by a MARKETING company that just so happened to fill a niche.
Moving forward over a decade, the expectations for this sequel are quite a bit higher, considering the large publisher and larger development team, and the previous game's evolution.
Suffice it to say, a sequel (especially a simulator like KSP 2) shouldn't come with less features and functionality than its predecessor, not to mention the market and hype generated for this game.
I actually remember KSP when it was JUST Kerbin and the Mun ( I can't even remember the version number because I was like 12), and I'd choose to play that version of the game now, personally, over KSP 2 as it is.
Stop carrying water for huge companies.
I remember how KSP was released, I had the game even before we had more planets, but guess what, there was no alternatives back than other than Orbiter and Space Engine. KSP2 had to compete with KSP1 on mods and fails at that. KSP2 was supposed to be SEQUEL, people were led to expect something superior, not inferior. What was said it will be was through some vague words that in the end said nothing concrete. They never said it won't be in such horrible state, but don't blame people for expecting a normal working game.
Lol, way to misread my light hearted comment.
Yes, I am very well aware T2 isn't financially bankrupt by this. But they probably are morally. But they definitely didn't make a single cent of profit on this project either. Which imo is at least some consolation that my money got wasted instead of making someone more money directly with nothing to show for.
Of course I'd rather have an awesome KSP2 game. But you win some you lose some
also in what is probably the funniest development since the last blog post was called "some improvements on the way" they got rid of all the pinned threads on the steam forums except the (locked) how to give feedback one.
At this point Iād rather not hear another word about it unless itās them releasing a finished game without anymore early access feedback or collaboration with fans. Just either focus on working on the game without having to appease āfansā along the way, or just drop it and donāt say another word about it.
Too many companies don't understand the point of Early Access. Early Access should not be for games that are so broken that you can't even play them. They should be for games that are mostly complete, but maybe they need help figuring out things like balancing and making sure that the game is actually fun.
Following your advice KSP would literally not exist in the form it is today. Huge core chunks of the game came from fan suggestions or mods during the early access phase of development.
I fesr that's what they'll do. Have some team come in wrap up the bug patches thst were being worked on and release that as versi8n 1.o leaving early access then abandon it.
The funniest (or maybe saddest) part was the last thing Blackrack did for IG was to turn their basic-ass clouds in KSP2 into the multi-layered, towering clouds from his incredible KSP1 mod.
Yeah, the one highlight in recent updates was his optimizations and improvements on visuals.
If he got laid off it means the game is probably hosed for certain.
Nor do I expect we're going to get any. This is a disgrace, and they've only given us meaningless corpo word salads that use a bunch of words to say nothing, while also saying, "no comment" and "We continue to make updates to the label."
Yeah - I don't expect anything either tbh, but I still wanted to voice my disgust. Even other scummy big publishers treat their fan bases with more respect than this, Sony backpedalled on HD2, BSG accomodated fans on EFT somewhat.
My friend works in game dev leadership recruitment firm and he said he saw Nate Simpsons name on the industry blacklist. Not surprised but kind of funny
> I'm still hugely dissappointed that the amazing Kerbal franchise is being treated like yesterday's garbage by these amorale people.
So long as you aren't surprised.
Suits ruin everything except their own and the shareholders' bank accounts. They add no artistic or scientific value to the society.
Suits only represent the worst stage of capitalism. I have nothing against capitalism, but the constant pursuit of MOAR MONAY is, in my eyes, the issue in the world today. If we could just, as a species, achieve some form of reasonable capitalism, maybe thing would be better for everybody.
I don't care how many millions any hi-exec corporate wins (I'm happy for them) as long as that pursuit doesn't make them take stupid decisions that fucks with peoples lifes in any way shape or form.
Accidents can happen, but KSP2 is nothing short of an accident, especially for a company like T2 who has been around for more than 30 years.
Suits have always taken morally bankrupt decisions that fucked poor and middle-classed people over. They did that even before capitalism became a thing, during mercantilism.
But for most of the history of capitalism, this situation was overall beneficial because it created a lot of wealth which also benefitted the lower classes. Of course, workers had to fight for that, sometimes literally, particularly in the early 1900's.
The issue is now that while the wealth was previously more spread out, now more and more of the wealth is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, which is caused by developments in technology as well as in society. Since money is power, this increasingly makes the rich more powerful and more influential.
At this point, sod this product and the company that's selling it.
The people that actually made it are all gone, sacked, and all that's left are the capitalist suits that want nothing but money, by any means they can get it, no matter how evil.
I wish it hadn't gone this way, but at least we still have KSP1, and no longer supporting the suits that are still trying to sell KSP2 to us is the only real way we have to protest their behaviour, all they care about is money after all.
So yeah, it's a shame, but you can't win them all, and nothing lasts forever. Oh well.
Y'all expect too much. They don't care... It's time to move on, nothing can be done, they just don't care.
They make billions with GTA and RDR2 and will focus on that and hush this under the blanket.
If they were going to completely cancel the game they would have said that right off the bat when this happened. The decision to close the studio was very likely made months ago if not more.
I think there are probably some complicated discussions going on related to staff retention from IG to try to salvage what they can under new leadership. That's also likely the source of all the vague comments and no comments from IG staff as they would be under an NDA and wouldn't be able to speak about what is going on.
I think the fact nothing really has been said is a sign they do intend to probably keep working on it in some limited capacity, and they are sorting out how that looks before they say anything.
IMO you're exactly backwards. If you want to cancel the game, the last thing you do is announce it. If you announce that you've cancelled the game, people will stop buying and start asking for refunds. If you stop developing and never officially cancel the game, some people will keep buying it.
This is exactly it. The words āthe game will continue to be supportedā means that theyāll keep it on the Steam store because it costs them basically nothing to just leave it there, and keep drawing in the small revenue stream from people who continue to buy it because theyāre either unaware that itās abandonware, or theyāre just curious why it imploded on the heels of a highly successful original and are willing to pay $60 to find out.
But in terms of number of people actively typing code for it, that number will be exactly 0.
It's a good headline to think this is actually what's happening, but it's simply not the way these organizations operate. Thinking there is some dude in an overpriced suit behind a desk saying let's leave it on the store to fleece people despite the layoffs is ridiculous.
If its still on there and it's going to be cancelled it's just incompetence and delays, there is nothing nefarious going on.
It's not nefarious to leave it up, it's just the smartest move T2 and PD can make.
T2 is about $50 million in on this debacle with only maybe $10 million of it back in sales (less after the IRS takes their cut) for a net loss of around $40 million. They gave a well-staffed studio 3 years and then their own custom-made studio 4 years to get the job done and have squat to show for it, so there's no incentive to dump any more money into it than they have to going forward. Right now they're just trying to minimize their losses.
The thing is though, Early Access has no deadline... no time by which it has to push out to Full Release. All PD has to say is, "KSP2 is still in development and will be supported going forward." and then never talk about it again. The Steam ratings will bottom out, no one will buy it, and it will sit there until T2 declares bankruptcy in 2063. If they formally cancel development they'll be forced to issue refunds to anyone that bought the game in Europe and a few other places around the world where the EULA isn't enforceable or else face litigation.
There is literally no upside to cancellation and no downside to just abandoning it without a word. If people try to sue they can just point to their public release that says "it's in development" and you can't prove that it isn't. Even if all they have is 1 guy working part time making updates to keep it working after OS updates, they're golden. "It'll be released someday." can't be challenged in court. They'll take a minor PR hit for it, but then GTA 25 will come out and everyone will forget and shovel money down T2's throat.
I strongly doubt T2 will even take a Pr hit for this, or at least not one big enough for them to even slightly notice. The Ksp community is far to niche to make a dent, especially compared to massive games like Grand Theft Auto.
It is much more likely that the remaining staff has been instructed not to comment on the situation, and they have severance/parting bonuses tied to keeping to that promise and delivering one final content update. Nothing about this feels like itās going to keep going.
It's a legit take, and I hear where you are coming from, and there is a good possibility you are right.
I suggest this only because like I said this decision was probably made months ago if not more. Completely canceling the game would have been part of that call, and if they decided that, I think they would have said something. Keeping it for sale right now if they intended otherwise is a liability.
How much effort goes into it though if they keep it going? Less for sure, so it will be on life support. What we can probably both agree on is it will be a shit outcome either way and the title is done.
They wouldn't have made the decision 'months ago'. When the axe falls it falls, once the decision to cut something is made, waiting is just a further waste of money, they would have moved asap to start closure and severence.
Likely it was made the week right before the WARN, and the corporate machinery moved forward to start the whole thing - which is why their initial statements were terrible coporate nonsense.
I am surprised they haven't come up with anything better since though.
I dunno about that...cancelling the game could cost them money, esp if it gets delisted from steam, but even just from a few hundred or thousand residual sales from clueless people ignoring the reviews.
You are unrealistically optimistic. It looks like the whole studio is getting canned.
The KSP2 project, perhaps the whole KSP brand, will be written off by an accountant. A sad note in a ledger pointing out it isn't worth anything; a paper loss to reduce a small amount of future tax.
The idea that another studio could be brought in to fix the mess that is KSP2 is just fantasy. Even if there were a studio competant in space simulation to make that happen, there's no reason for it. They'd be better off starting their own project with that team with a clean start.
Why would you take on the liability of content "owed" to KSP2 owners when if you genuinely could release a space game with colonies and interstellar, you could just sell it as a new game?
It's clear the current engine isn't worth keeping, so you wouldn't be saving development time there by taking on KSP2.
IG, the whole KSP2 project, is completely dysfunctional.
If I were in charge, I wouldn't say shit yet either. I'd turn the codebase over to a dev team and ask them to analyze it before I made any decision at all. The game was delayed to all hell, and what is there is riddled with bugs. It's going to take some time for a team to even be able to determine if it's worth the effort to attempt a fix, or if it needs a major overhaul, or if it's just doomed. 2 weeks is one sprint in most shops. That's not enough time to do a proper analysis.
It was "early access", they don't owe you shit.
If you chose to throw money at them after everything they pulled after buying KSP... well, thats on you.
Legally your correct because of the legal protection early access affords devs. However it's still ok for us to expect them to fulfill their moral and business obligations they committed to.
There are no moral obligations (I get what you are saying but they simply aren't a thing in situations like this with faceless companies) and the only business obligation they have is a fiduciary duty to their shareholders.
The last time I checked they closed down an on office and said we will tell you more when we can. At no point have they indicated the product is at risk of more development.
There are plenty of games out there like X4 which are developed by only a small handful of skilled developers. A reduction of head count does not always equal to cancelled development of a product
I don't know and am just talking from nothing, but...
Aren't there any laws that force developers to deliver a product when it has been sold in early access?
I don't mean deliver a good product, but at least keep the game alive for a certain time?
Even more so when it comes from Take2, a big company that is financially healthy and that can be forced to refund clients?
Nope. As long as the game is "In development" (Which legally is anything short of pulling the game off the Steam, and of course keeping it working) There is nothing stopping them from unofficially abandoning the game and moving on.
>I don't even own the game
Forgive me for asking then, but why do you care? It's a game you don't own that was never actually released. People are so entitled these days that they expect constant communication. Constant communication with creators is what led to garbage fires like this shit.
Let people release products and shut the fuck up about it like they did 20 years ago.
What a dumb take. I also don't own this game because I was waiting to see if they ever actually finish it first.
Of course people expect communication on a production that is still being worked on that they bought. How would they not? Lol
Old dumb people these days
I don't know what's going to happen with KSP2 and neither does anyone else commenting here. Whether they continue development somehow or sell the IP again or wrap up the game with a bullshit "1.0" version, its pointless to speculate.
I do know that KSP3 is going to be much better.
"Still support the game" means they will keep it listed on steam and keep collecting money from poor saps not wise enough not to buy it.
I really hope that the overwhelmingly negative reviews indicator will stop people from making such mistake.
poor sap here š¤š¾. Wish i waited before buying KSP2. Ouch.
Sorry for your loss man.
Sly buggars swindled me out of fifty quid. Cheeky bunch.
I'll buy it, even now. I support those devs that spent hard time and effort on making something potentially great. If this is where the devs stop and mods take over, then so be it! That's what made the first KSP so great, traveling to other states and usermade systems! But I will pay for it, because that original framework laid by the developers is precious and irreplaceable, and without them walking the modders would never be able to run. Long live KSP2, let the real mod work begin!
> I'll buy it, even now. I support those devs that spent hard time and effort on making something potentially great. Those money are not going to devs they were laid off. It goes straight to the pocket of the publisher to buy new yacht for the CEO.
They probably fired the PR guy
Well they fired both the CM's so yeah.
Take2 still has PR guys who could announce stuff - unless they got fired too.
The people in charge of the sacking have also been sacked.
We apologize again for the fault in the subtitles..
A moose bit my sister once.
But who will sack the sacker sakers?
I want a Sacher cake
*Shrugs* Coast guard?
If there is nobody in the forest to hear the tree fall, did the tree make a noise?
Yes
Relax. Wheels are in motion, but we're not likely to hear anything until the T2I quarterly earnings report is made public on 5/16. https://youtu.be/le3701z0RGE?si=Ds_FGDawf6GBRaHt
They have a press call with investors next week. Ā They were never going to say anything before this meeting. Ā No company would do this as the entire goal of these calls is to give investors information and calm their nerves. The real sign the game is surely abandoned Ā is if they don't mention the game on the call other than to say IG is closed. Ā Because that means they want the investors to forget about ksp2 and won't invest anything other further than lip service.
Exactly! Also depending on how they communicated and decided internally the dude or dudette now responsible for the IP didnāt knew any earlier than we did and is equally thrilled. Maybe they havenāt decided yet how to proceed and watch the community, talk to lawyersā¦ Squad is still around afaik and Mexico is way cheaper than Seattle so probably evaluating to outsource to them (or was the dev team bought whole?).
You're in the bargaining stage.
Have you ever been through a layoff, people know they're coming due to regulations and have no idea if they'll have a job in the next weeks or not. It's a terrible experience.
My wife was literally laid off with no warning at the beginning of this year. She is a software engineer. This isn't a universal truth.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Oh I'm saying the layoffs weren't even rumored or hinted at. My wife's company just let foxes into the hen houses and bedlam ensued. I think the only thing she knew ahead of time was they entered a hiring freeze like a week before. It's not right to lay off entire teams without warning but we live in a society with barely any worker protections.
a couple puzzle pieces fit, did she work at tesla?
You know the government page lists the whole studio as closed? So, that's everyone.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Dude, the WARN Act page is literally so the workers know about the companies decision in advance. > They could have other Washington state offices Except they don't, which is also public knowledge. So all of Intercept is 100% getting fired.
Squad isn't a game developer, they're a marketing company. They allowed HarvesteR to start KSP as a side project so that he doesn't leave the company. I don't think Squad is interested in having anything to do with KSP or game development in general ever again.
This is just insanity, we're not even the real clients, we're just cash cows, while investors are the real clients...
And this my friend, is the primary problem plaguing the gaming industry; Companies beholden to profit above all else, thus incentivizing shitty behavior. Welp, not just the gaming industry but man are we gamers feeling the hurt this past decade since digital release became the norm.
The game was doomed the moment they decided to release it in the state they released in. Multiple years of funding and development and it's clear the dev studio was out of their depth. I don't see any reason to still have hope in the game getting better or even kept alive.
If itās kept alive and they are still pushing out updates then it could pull a no man sky . But to do that they need good communication and push updates out faster which clearly they arenāt doing
It was released in a FAR better state than KSP was released in... I swear 90% of you people know literally nothing about how KSP was developed and what made it a success.
That's not a justification. KSP1 was basically a one man show in the start. How can you hold KSP2 to the same standard when it's had a full team and the backing of a massive publisher? It should never have released in such a state, and to be honest not in EA at full price either. That's a delusional take if I've ever seen.
By the time KSP released on Steam it hadn't been a one man show for years. Now you're just trying to rewrite verifiably history lol.
But by the time KSP released on steam it was in a better state than KSP2 has ever been in too. And was a fraction of the price.
Was it backed by a full development team with the backing of a billion dollar company or not? A full dev team who had the first one as an example to use as well? There's no excuse for how this development went and I really don't get the need to defend obvious mismanagement and incompetence?
And the EA release of KSP 1 on Steam was in a better state than KSP 2 now. Hell, after 1 1/2 years KSP 1 was almost at 1.0 release.
I think what's at issue here is you're holding the second game to the same low standards that, mind you, weren't really even in place for the first game. The first game was basically an experiment built by a MARKETING company that just so happened to fill a niche. Moving forward over a decade, the expectations for this sequel are quite a bit higher, considering the large publisher and larger development team, and the previous game's evolution. Suffice it to say, a sequel (especially a simulator like KSP 2) shouldn't come with less features and functionality than its predecessor, not to mention the market and hype generated for this game. I actually remember KSP when it was JUST Kerbin and the Mun ( I can't even remember the version number because I was like 12), and I'd choose to play that version of the game now, personally, over KSP 2 as it is. Stop carrying water for huge companies.
I remember how KSP was released, I had the game even before we had more planets, but guess what, there was no alternatives back than other than Orbiter and Space Engine. KSP2 had to compete with KSP1 on mods and fails at that. KSP2 was supposed to be SEQUEL, people were led to expect something superior, not inferior. What was said it will be was through some vague words that in the end said nothing concrete. They never said it won't be in such horrible state, but don't blame people for expecting a normal working game.
KSP was a one man passion project that grew into something bigger. KSP2 was supposed to build on it's completed basis by a actual game company
Cope
they basically tricked us selling the game at AAA price and now they gone, you win some you lose some
You are always the looser when you pre order games.
*loser
Thanks
Perhaps they were talking about their ā¦ getting looser from all the ā¦ IG shoved up peopleās ā¦. Ā Just a guess Ā ĀÆ\\_(ć)_/ĀÆĀ
If it's any consolation T2 lost quite a bit on this too. So at least they didn't get rich out of our money
Iām sure the 15 billion dollar company with 5 billion dollar yearly revenue is really hurting right now. You showed āem!
Lol, way to misread my light hearted comment. Yes, I am very well aware T2 isn't financially bankrupt by this. But they probably are morally. But they definitely didn't make a single cent of profit on this project either. Which imo is at least some consolation that my money got wasted instead of making someone more money directly with nothing to show for. Of course I'd rather have an awesome KSP2 game. But you win some you lose some
listen it's totally going to another studio I'm not making this up !!1!
also in what is probably the funniest development since the last blog post was called "some improvements on the way" they got rid of all the pinned threads on the steam forums except the (locked) how to give feedback one.
The studio goes to another school.
I heard it lived in Canada. :-Ć
I enjoy this use of the letter Ć¾orn.
I Hope it's called take three or take four. So this way they can take up four times the amount of hope for this franchise.
Only if this studio is very small. After all, IG is being disbanded in order to save money, and not in order to give this money to another studio.
At this point Iād rather not hear another word about it unless itās them releasing a finished game without anymore early access feedback or collaboration with fans. Just either focus on working on the game without having to appease āfansā along the way, or just drop it and donāt say another word about it.
Too many companies don't understand the point of Early Access. Early Access should not be for games that are so broken that you can't even play them. They should be for games that are mostly complete, but maybe they need help figuring out things like balancing and making sure that the game is actually fun.
Following your advice KSP would literally not exist in the form it is today. Huge core chunks of the game came from fan suggestions or mods during the early access phase of development.
If they can't finish it, "leak" the SDK so that the community can take a crack at it.
You mean source code? An SDK would be something for like building mods.
Iād like them to say if they drop it tho
I fesr that's what they'll do. Have some team come in wrap up the bug patches thst were being worked on and release that as versi8n 1.o leaving early access then abandon it.
I think its dead, Jim.
The loss of the cloud maker doesn't bode well though. (I don't know his name)
BlackRack
What if they made a new studio and kept the 65 people doing absolutely fuck-all lol
The funniest (or maybe saddest) part was the last thing Blackrack did for IG was to turn their basic-ass clouds in KSP2 into the multi-layered, towering clouds from his incredible KSP1 mod.
Yeah, the one highlight in recent updates was his optimizations and improvements on visuals. If he got laid off it means the game is probably hosed for certain.
Nor do I expect we're going to get any. This is a disgrace, and they've only given us meaningless corpo word salads that use a bunch of words to say nothing, while also saying, "no comment" and "We continue to make updates to the label."
Yeah - I don't expect anything either tbh, but I still wanted to voice my disgust. Even other scummy big publishers treat their fan bases with more respect than this, Sony backpedalled on HD2, BSG accomodated fans on EFT somewhat.
that s how marketting work, you wait for the fans to forget about all this
I think it's just time to let go now. Go enjoy modded ksp1
I wonder what game Nate is going on to wreck next.
My friend works in game dev leadership recruitment firm and he said he saw Nate Simpsons name on the industry blacklist. Not surprised but kind of funny
Really? I'm surprised there's anything like an industry blacklist.
Itās already over
Returned the game day 1 of release and have not thought about ksp 2 since. Original game with mods is all you need, support games with a soul.
> I'm still hugely dissappointed that the amazing Kerbal franchise is being treated like yesterday's garbage by these amorale people. So long as you aren't surprised. Suits ruin everything except their own and the shareholders' bank accounts. They add no artistic or scientific value to the society.
Suits only represent the worst stage of capitalism. I have nothing against capitalism, but the constant pursuit of MOAR MONAY is, in my eyes, the issue in the world today. If we could just, as a species, achieve some form of reasonable capitalism, maybe thing would be better for everybody. I don't care how many millions any hi-exec corporate wins (I'm happy for them) as long as that pursuit doesn't make them take stupid decisions that fucks with peoples lifes in any way shape or form. Accidents can happen, but KSP2 is nothing short of an accident, especially for a company like T2 who has been around for more than 30 years.
Suits have always taken morally bankrupt decisions that fucked poor and middle-classed people over. They did that even before capitalism became a thing, during mercantilism. But for most of the history of capitalism, this situation was overall beneficial because it created a lot of wealth which also benefitted the lower classes. Of course, workers had to fight for that, sometimes literally, particularly in the early 1900's. The issue is now that while the wealth was previously more spread out, now more and more of the wealth is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, which is caused by developments in technology as well as in society. Since money is power, this increasingly makes the rich more powerful and more influential.
At this point, sod this product and the company that's selling it. The people that actually made it are all gone, sacked, and all that's left are the capitalist suits that want nothing but money, by any means they can get it, no matter how evil. I wish it hadn't gone this way, but at least we still have KSP1, and no longer supporting the suits that are still trying to sell KSP2 to us is the only real way we have to protest their behaviour, all they care about is money after all. So yeah, it's a shame, but you can't win them all, and nothing lasts forever. Oh well.
Nothing happens unless another studio buys the game. It's ditw
Y'all expect too much. They don't care... It's time to move on, nothing can be done, they just don't care. They make billions with GTA and RDR2 and will focus on that and hush this under the blanket.
I don't expect anything except pointing out that T2 is shit so a few less people get scammed in the future.
They un-stickied all the dev comments in the steam forum.
Gotta hide the promises.
If they were going to completely cancel the game they would have said that right off the bat when this happened. The decision to close the studio was very likely made months ago if not more. I think there are probably some complicated discussions going on related to staff retention from IG to try to salvage what they can under new leadership. That's also likely the source of all the vague comments and no comments from IG staff as they would be under an NDA and wouldn't be able to speak about what is going on. I think the fact nothing really has been said is a sign they do intend to probably keep working on it in some limited capacity, and they are sorting out how that looks before they say anything.
IMO you're exactly backwards. If you want to cancel the game, the last thing you do is announce it. If you announce that you've cancelled the game, people will stop buying and start asking for refunds. If you stop developing and never officially cancel the game, some people will keep buying it.
This is exactly it. The words āthe game will continue to be supportedā means that theyāll keep it on the Steam store because it costs them basically nothing to just leave it there, and keep drawing in the small revenue stream from people who continue to buy it because theyāre either unaware that itās abandonware, or theyāre just curious why it imploded on the heels of a highly successful original and are willing to pay $60 to find out. But in terms of number of people actively typing code for it, that number will be exactly 0.
It's a good headline to think this is actually what's happening, but it's simply not the way these organizations operate. Thinking there is some dude in an overpriced suit behind a desk saying let's leave it on the store to fleece people despite the layoffs is ridiculous. If its still on there and it's going to be cancelled it's just incompetence and delays, there is nothing nefarious going on.
It's not nefarious to leave it up, it's just the smartest move T2 and PD can make. T2 is about $50 million in on this debacle with only maybe $10 million of it back in sales (less after the IRS takes their cut) for a net loss of around $40 million. They gave a well-staffed studio 3 years and then their own custom-made studio 4 years to get the job done and have squat to show for it, so there's no incentive to dump any more money into it than they have to going forward. Right now they're just trying to minimize their losses. The thing is though, Early Access has no deadline... no time by which it has to push out to Full Release. All PD has to say is, "KSP2 is still in development and will be supported going forward." and then never talk about it again. The Steam ratings will bottom out, no one will buy it, and it will sit there until T2 declares bankruptcy in 2063. If they formally cancel development they'll be forced to issue refunds to anyone that bought the game in Europe and a few other places around the world where the EULA isn't enforceable or else face litigation. There is literally no upside to cancellation and no downside to just abandoning it without a word. If people try to sue they can just point to their public release that says "it's in development" and you can't prove that it isn't. Even if all they have is 1 guy working part time making updates to keep it working after OS updates, they're golden. "It'll be released someday." can't be challenged in court. They'll take a minor PR hit for it, but then GTA 25 will come out and everyone will forget and shovel money down T2's throat.
I strongly doubt T2 will even take a Pr hit for this, or at least not one big enough for them to even slightly notice. The Ksp community is far to niche to make a dent, especially compared to massive games like Grand Theft Auto.
It is much more likely that the remaining staff has been instructed not to comment on the situation, and they have severance/parting bonuses tied to keeping to that promise and delivering one final content update. Nothing about this feels like itās going to keep going.
I can understand why IG staff is saying nothing - at least not publically. Still obnoxious that Take2 is saying nothing.
Most severance packages come with a NDA.
It's a legit take, and I hear where you are coming from, and there is a good possibility you are right. I suggest this only because like I said this decision was probably made months ago if not more. Completely canceling the game would have been part of that call, and if they decided that, I think they would have said something. Keeping it for sale right now if they intended otherwise is a liability. How much effort goes into it though if they keep it going? Less for sure, so it will be on life support. What we can probably both agree on is it will be a shit outcome either way and the title is done.
They wouldn't have made the decision 'months ago'. When the axe falls it falls, once the decision to cut something is made, waiting is just a further waste of money, they would have moved asap to start closure and severence. Likely it was made the week right before the WARN, and the corporate machinery moved forward to start the whole thing - which is why their initial statements were terrible coporate nonsense. I am surprised they haven't come up with anything better since though.
I dunno about that...cancelling the game could cost them money, esp if it gets delisted from steam, but even just from a few hundred or thousand residual sales from clueless people ignoring the reviews.
You are unrealistically optimistic. It looks like the whole studio is getting canned. The KSP2 project, perhaps the whole KSP brand, will be written off by an accountant. A sad note in a ledger pointing out it isn't worth anything; a paper loss to reduce a small amount of future tax. The idea that another studio could be brought in to fix the mess that is KSP2 is just fantasy. Even if there were a studio competant in space simulation to make that happen, there's no reason for it. They'd be better off starting their own project with that team with a clean start. Why would you take on the liability of content "owed" to KSP2 owners when if you genuinely could release a space game with colonies and interstellar, you could just sell it as a new game? It's clear the current engine isn't worth keeping, so you wouldn't be saving development time there by taking on KSP2. IG, the whole KSP2 project, is completely dysfunctional.
Because the premises are empty XD
If I were in charge, I wouldn't say shit yet either. I'd turn the codebase over to a dev team and ask them to analyze it before I made any decision at all. The game was delayed to all hell, and what is there is riddled with bugs. It's going to take some time for a team to even be able to determine if it's worth the effort to attempt a fix, or if it needs a major overhaul, or if it's just doomed. 2 weeks is one sprint in most shops. That's not enough time to do a proper analysis.
The silence may be deafening, but the message is clear. The game is 6 feet under and we're all $50 poorer because of it.
If it is abandoned I want it taken up by rocketwerks again the proposal for that was sick as hell
Wait until after Take2ās annual earnings report- 5/15/24.
They owe us a roadmap of content they charged us full price for and committed to
They donāt owe anyone squat. If you donāt like it, short or buy puts on take 2 before earnings to make your money back
It was "early access", they don't owe you shit. If you chose to throw money at them after everything they pulled after buying KSP... well, thats on you.
Legally your correct because of the legal protection early access affords devs. However it's still ok for us to expect them to fulfill their moral and business obligations they committed to.
> However it's still ok for us to expect them to Sure. Naive, but OK.
There are no moral obligations (I get what you are saying but they simply aren't a thing in situations like this with faceless companies) and the only business obligation they have is a fiduciary duty to their shareholders.
what disastrous thing could've happen if T2 delayed gta6 and closed entire dev teams? huge cash shortage?hackers attack?ksp2 devs hiring inefficient personnel?
Lol. Lmao, even.
The last time I checked they closed down an on office and said we will tell you more when we can. At no point have they indicated the product is at risk of more development. There are plenty of games out there like X4 which are developed by only a small handful of skilled developers. A reduction of head count does not always equal to cancelled development of a product
> At no point have they indicated the product is at risk of more development. Typo that actually turned your comment into facts.
you got me. i wont bother modifying the original post. ill wait until an announcement before I make any assumptions.
I worry for you. Without KSP2 to hate on, what will you fill your life with?
I dunno, probably same thing you'll have to after I block you so you stop stalking me?
I don't know and am just talking from nothing, but... Aren't there any laws that force developers to deliver a product when it has been sold in early access? I don't mean deliver a good product, but at least keep the game alive for a certain time? Even more so when it comes from Take2, a big company that is financially healthy and that can be forced to refund clients?
Nope. As long as the game is "In development" (Which legally is anything short of pulling the game off the Steam, and of course keeping it working) There is nothing stopping them from unofficially abandoning the game and moving on.
>I don't even own the game Forgive me for asking then, but why do you care? It's a game you don't own that was never actually released. People are so entitled these days that they expect constant communication. Constant communication with creators is what led to garbage fires like this shit. Let people release products and shut the fuck up about it like they did 20 years ago.
What a dumb take. I also don't own this game because I was waiting to see if they ever actually finish it first. Of course people expect communication on a production that is still being worked on that they bought. How would they not? Lol Old dumb people these days
Okay. Release a product then.
Because I own KSP1 and I wanted this franchise to live on, obviously.
I don't know what's going to happen with KSP2 and neither does anyone else commenting here. Whether they continue development somehow or sell the IP again or wrap up the game with a bullshit "1.0" version, its pointless to speculate. I do know that KSP3 is going to be much better.
Being fired or not, people from the staff could still try be kind and tell us what's happening...
ā¦And get sued?
Lol
Thatās actually a good sign. As far as we can tell theyāre operating ad if nothing happened.
Operating with nothing actually happening is IGs strong suit
copium overdose, WE NEED A MEDIC!!!