Jump to content

Deported B.V. and Flying Tiger Entertainment, Inc. today announced the following:


SQUAD

Recommended Posts

18 hours ago, SingABrightSong said:

Since Flying Tiger is no longer doing the port, I suppose they've been De-ported? :P

Indeed. :wink:

The question is now, who will do the port? Will @SQUAD do it internally, or hire someone else to port for them?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/14/2017 at 10:03 PM, TheKosmonaut said:

Maybe I am jumping the gun here but I would hope for it to be made for Switch rather than Wii U  

Why just one?

The Wii U is powerful enough for the console version of KSP.  It really isn't that demanding a game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/14/2017 at 10:12 PM, klgraham1013 said:

Who is this, so called, Deported B.V. (if that is their real name) and how have they fooled the world into believing they are the true and rightful owners to Kerbal Space Program!

Scandalous indeed!

 

Deported B.V. is the Publisher of Kerbal Space Program and parent company of Squad. 

The way the Indie Gaming World works is it's divided into "Developers" such as Squad who are small teams, and Publishers who either own part or all of the developer company, or hold a contract with them.

The Developer is usually placed someplace favorable for the lead developers (Mexico City in the case of Squad).  Meanwhile the Publisher is usually based in some place favorable for the purposes of fiscal trade (i.e. close to a large base of investors and banking, preferably with favorable trade laws for major markets, both of which normally come hand in hand.  Major locations for Publishers are U.S. (Silicon Valley, Seattle, NYC, Boston and Northern VA are the most common cities),  Japan, U.K., and Netherlands.  (Deported B.V. is located in the Netherlands)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, Ruedii said:

Deported B.V. is the Publisher of Kerbal Space Program and parent company of Squad. 

The way the Indie Gaming World works is it's divided into "Developers" such as Squad who are small teams, and Publishers who either own part or all of the developer company, or hold a contract with them.

The Developer is usually placed someplace favorable for the lead developers (Mexico City in the case of Squad).  Meanwhile the Publisher is usually based in some place favorable for the purposes of fiscal trade (i.e. close to a large base of investors and banking, preferably with favorable trade laws for major markets, both of which normally come hand in hand.  Major locations for Publishers are U.S. (Silicon Valley, Seattle, NYC, Boston and Northern VA are the most common cities),  Japan, U.K., and Netherlands.  (Deported B.V. is located in the Netherlands)

Ahh, I still remember the times when 'Indie' stood for 'Independent.'

Actually it still does. What you described is mainstream game development business. KSP was created by an employee of a mexican PR company, Squad, which agreed to let him create the game at work time and publish it. When KSP became a hit and outgrew their other business, they split it off into another entity. That entity is Deported B.V. Most likely there exists a third company, a holding company that owns both Squad and Deported, although international stock ownership is notoriously difficult to figure out. But Squad absolutely certainly is still a PR company as you can see if you visit their home page at http://squad.com.mx/SquadSite/.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 04/15/2017 at 4:03 AM, TheKosmonaut said:

Maybe I am jumping the gun here but I would hope for it to be made for Switch rather than Wii U  

Not a chance. The Wii U neither. They have announced as much. That and the fact those consoles have little chance of running an acceptable version of the game. The newest consoles have a part limit of something hilarious like 300. The upcoming consoles would run the game fantastically though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 15/04/2017 at 4:59 AM, magico13 said:

They never really officially discussed it as best I am aware,but for all intents and purposes for consumers Deported is Squad.

Deported will be Squad when it's in Squad and Deported's interest. They won't be Squad when it's in the customer's interest.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 15/04/2017 at 6:04 AM, Shpaget said:

From the day one the community openly questioned their capability to port KSP

If only Squad could read what people say here. They could have been forewarned and saved themselves time and money and user wrath.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, John FX said:

If only Squad could read what people say here. They could have been forewarned and saved themselves time and money and user wrath.

I understand that you feel Squad does not listen to their community enough, but whether there's truth to that or not I don't believe that really applies in this case. I think it's far more likely that by the time the announcement was made and the community could react it was already a done deal.

All we can hope for the future is that Squad does listen and doesn't make decisions based on saving as much money as possible. They learned a lesson with FTE, and hopefully it sticks. But to your point specifically, until they announce plans in advance (which they have rarely, if ever, done) the community -- however vocal -- will have very little influence in these types of decisions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Mako said:

All we can hope for the future is that Squad does listen and doesn't make decisions based on saving as much money as possible.

All i hope for, is that more than 5% of incoming DLC revenues will be used for future updates. Currently im afraid its even less than that. The Millions already hidden in Amsterdam are lost forever.... so lets hope for the Future...

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 15/04/2017 at 3:15 AM, klgraham1013 said:

The only people who read EULAs are the companies who write them.

If only!  If only!  Your lawyer will have to read them too, if the company thinks you ran afoul of them.  At least your lawyer will be paid well for reading that legalese.

On 18/04/2017 at 1:36 PM, Ruedii said:

Why just one?

The Wii U is powerful enough for the console version of KSP.  It really isn't that demanding a game.

KSP is not a demanding game ... and it's not about space and rockets and planes and little green men with absurdly large heads & helmets who don't care much about safety, right?

It might be that a console port, knowing exactly what hardware there will be, can move the physics calculations (partially) to a coprocessor or GPU or whatever, but otherwise, KSP is a very demanding game --- due to physics, not due to graphics!

17 hours ago, John FX said:

If only Squad could read what people say here. They could have been forewarned and saved themselves time and money and user wrath.

Now, remember that the users on this forum are only a small (but vocal) minority.  And while this time their fears re FT came quite true, we here do not have all the data they had when they decided.

Maybe FT claimed stuff that made it seem much better.  FT may not even have lied there.  Could be as easy as poaching 2 or 3 lead programmers from a known-good porting company.  "Hey, we know that as FT we have not done something like KSP, but A and B and C are now on our team, and they have @LEGENDARY_PORTS under their belts, so yes, we can do that now."  Maybe these lead programmers jumped off and/or were doing a more ... financially interesting port.

Anyway, the thing is over and done with, the Flailing Tiggers are no longer involved, there is a future (there always, always is a future.  No matter what.) and there is still hope.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Obviously Squad are not at the beck and call of all forums users but when a large amount of people express concerns about your new chosen partner, business or otherwise, it might be prudent to have a closer look at them, what they claim, and whether that matches reality. Warning bells should sound for any new development they are basing their reputation on. New hires especially.

It seems in this case a closer look was warranted.

Edited by John FX
Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, John FX said:

Obviously Squad are not at the beck and call of all forums users but when a large amount of people express concerns about your new chosen partner, business or otherwise, it might be prudent to have a closer look at them, what they claim, and whether that matches reality. Warning bells should sound for any new development they are basing their reputation on. New hires especially.

It seems in this case a closer look was warranted.

You aren't wrong. And I can think of two examples where they did that in the past:  the Round-8 tank and the Tier 0 Space Center. These two stand out as somewhat similar because they are examples of Squad trying to do things faster?, easier?, (cheaper?), the community called them out, and they took it into consideration. Of course it's possible that there are at least as many examples in the same time frame where community feelings seemed to go unnoticed. 

Again I will make an argument that the FTE choice was a bit of a different situation. Not only did Squad have people giving objective, negative reactions to the choice of FTE, they also had some (significantly) less than objective reactions to the idea that KSP could even work in on a console at all in any capacity, nevermind the people calling for Squad to focus on finishing the PC version before committing to new platforms. It is only a small stretch of the truth to say that these people were correct, as well, but only due to hindsight. At the time Squad also heard reactions from supporters of the cosine project. The case can be made that they did listen to one of the communities general reactions to the news of the console port and involvement of FTE.

I remember looking into FTE after reading about peoples' concerns. Based on what I found I did not have a great deal of faith in FTE. I also remember thinking there's not much choice and we'll just have to see how it goes.

We saw how it went. At this point all we can do is hope they learned from this lesson. If Squad truly wants to stick with the video game business they'll no doubt have opportunities for more lessons. Hopefully they learn from all of them do the right thing to make their product(s) great.

Edited by Mako
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, by the time the port was announced, they had probably already signed a contract with FT. Not much can be done after that except take a loss with nothing to show for it. 

Sometimes you have to give the little guy a chance, much like Squad gave Felipe a chance. FT undoubtedly made a good pitch, and in one devnotes ages ago it was stated that FT had some experience with Unity 5 and was showing Felipe's team a thing or two about it. 

Bur I suppose it was a bit much to hope for lightning to strike the same game twice. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly I'm amazed they got it to run on consoles at all. I remember when the ports were first announced I thought, "There's no way this game will run acceptably on the relatively weak single thread performance of a console." For all the struggles that FTE and the console ports have had, I think they deserve just a little bit of credit for making it run at all. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Honestly I'm amazed they got it to run on consoles at all. I remember when the ports were first announced I thought, "There's no way this game will run acceptably on the relatively weak single thread performance of a console." For all the struggles that FTE and the console ports have had, I think they deserve just a little bit of credit for making it run at all. 

I do sincerely appreciate your positive attitude, and I've been trying harder in my personal life to be more positive, but I have to point out that FTE claimed they would get the job done, and they did part of it. Of course we should admit they got it running, but that's what they said they would do. I don't know if doing what you said you would do deserves much of a pat on the back, even if you finish the job. Also, any porting company wanting the contract would have said the same, and should have been able to deliver at least the same quality if unless they were complete frauds.

Most importantly though: if Squad had any doubt that FTE could deliver a good port then why would they hire them in the first place? That scenario doesn't make sense; it is bad for the business and the product.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Mako said:

Most importantly though: if Squad had any doubt that FTE could deliver a good port then why would they hire them in the first place? That scenario doesn't make sense; it is bad for the business and the product.

Simple, they gave the contract to the lowest bidder, failing to do due diligence and going with a company who already had a bad reputation. It was a cost cutting measure. They did it to save money. That's why.

 

Funny how without so much as explaining officially why FT is gone (let alone apologizing), they just announce a new porting company.

It's basically just common knowledge that the port was poor and overambitious, the company chosen was a bad move, and yet there's not even the responsibility to admit that it was a mistake that cost console users at least a year.

"we just switched porting companies for the fun! nothing went south at all"

 

Dishonest stuff like this is why I can't recommend this game to people because you never know what SQUAD is actually going to do. It's called lying by omission.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I suppose the thing to do is see the good side, the port is now in the hands of what sounds like a good company capable of the job.

You can't change the past, all you can do is look at it and hopefully learn from it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Violent Jeb said:

Simple, they gave the contract to the lowest bidder, failing to do due diligence and going with a company who already had a bad reputation. It was a cost cutting measure. They did it to save money. That's why.

You missed my point. I know that Squad chose FTE because they were the cheapest. It seemed likely at the time and it's obvious now.  However, my point was: lowest bidder or highest Squad must have believed they would at least get their money's worth from FTE. Otherwise they would be so bad at business that they shouldn't be capable of still operating and it'd be a miracle they made it this far in any industry.

Let's say you're remodeling your kitchen. You get quotes from various contractors. They all say they can do the work in the required amount of time. The prices vary, and the one with the best price is able to convince you that they can do the job. So you sign the contract with them. It makes sense to save the money because you believe the job will still get done, right? If the lowest-price contractor wasn't able to convince you, would you still sign a contract and give money them?

@Red Iron Crown does have a point that i was hoping i didnt completely dismiss, and I appreciate the positivity in that post so I'll try to be positive too. Hopefully Squad paid FTE so little that whatever work FTE did, no matter how broken, was worth it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Mako said:

...Squad must have believed they would at least get their money's worth from FTE. Otherwise they would be so bad at business that they shouldn't be capable of still operating and it'd be a miracle they made it this far in any industry.

Let's say you're remodeling your kitchen. You get quotes from various contractors. They all say they can do the work in the required amount of time. The prices vary, and the one with the best price is able to convince you that they can do the job. So you sign the contract with them. It makes sense to save the money because you believe the job will still get done, right? If the lowest-price contractor wasn't able to convince you, would you still sign a contract and give money them?

@Red Iron Crown does have a point that i was hoping i didnt completely dismiss, and I appreciate the positivity in that post so I'll try to be positive too. Hopefully Squad paid FTE so little that whatever work FTE did, no matter how broken, was worth it.

Emphasis mine. This game is absolutely a one-off miracle in an industry squad had zero experience in.

So lets return to the remodeling example. If the cheapest guy convinces me that he is capable of doing the job, that's one thing. Then, the following day, I hear from not one but several of my friends [people I should hold in high regard], that this contractor has shafted many people on various jobs. If I hear that, I am certainly going to the next person in the ladder. Even if I heard it from a somewhat questionable source it would still be sufficient risk for me to hedge my bet and move on to someone who has a proven track record, even if I had to pay a hair more. Even at half of what the next bidder quoted, they still lost. The other factor is that if they were so much cheaper, that should have raised red flags as well.

Look, i'm not trying to be a raincloud but i'm also not going to sit here and look at the bright side when SQUAD can't even acknowledge the situation. For my money, i'd have hoped squad would have either done it themselves or shelled out a bit extra to go with an esteemed company from day one. This says that they squandered money which I gave them. All I can do is learn from the mistake and keep others from being mislead.

If you choose to look at it and say, "well hopefully SQUAD didn't waste too much of my money with FT, at least the game boots on console", then that is entirely OK. We all have different opinions.

EDIT: I just wanted to put it out there that I am talking about the people at the top. I have nothing but respect for the people who actually work on the game given the circumstance they are in.

Edited by Violent Jeb
Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Violent Jeb said:

EDIT: I just wanted to put it out there that I am talking about the people at the top.

 

Movie scripts and music recording studios don't pay for themselves!  

I hope they learned their lesson too.  I hope the console folks get the game they deserve.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...