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Kerbal Stuff Closed to the public


Rigel Agar

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On 2/16/2016 at 5:26 AM, Kertech said:

The search function on curse is rubbish though

It's irritating that to work around this through google

This is being fixed. The CurseForge search works a bit better than the Curse.com search and is being improved. Once the code base CurseForge is built on is ready (I have no idea what's left) it will be used to replace the Curse.com backend and fix a lot of the current issues Curse.com has while adding the improvements CurseForge already has. (This is my understanding of the solution planned)

 

On the topic of ads:

The ads on Curse.com mod pages (there are none of CurseForge) are used to cover the author rewards program where authors can earn points for downloads and exchange those points for Paypal, Steam or Amazon cards.

People often seem to have an unrealistic view of how much ads are worth. A few ads on 1 site does not cover author rewards, server costs and salaries for coders, admins, reviewers, moderators, etc and have profit left over. Most people seem ok with the idea of ads as long as its offsetting the personal cost for a single person running 1 site. I am unsure why people get annoyed by ads offsetting the cost for a team of people maintaining multiple sites and giving the community content creators who host with us some reward for their time and creativity. 

 

TLDR: The ads on Curse.com are

1.) Optional, you can use CurseForge.com and not have ads at all or use adblocker.

2.) used to give rewards to the community content creators. 

 

Side Note: The reason Curse needs to pay salaries is because hosting a central repository is a thankless job. People complain if anything goes wrong (understandably) and if everything is working, it often feels as if no one appreciates the volunteer work. Being paid a salary means someone like me doesn't burn out reviewing hundreds of files a day, monitoring 8 different forums for problems, and answering support questions that are frequently abusive. 

I have made content that was used by millions of people with no appreciation and tons of complaints. I have been a volunteer for community sites. In fact, that's where Curse found me, volunteering as a site admin/manager and content creator for Minecraft. Then they offered to pay me to do the same thing but on a schedule. Having worked with both sides volunteer and employment, while I like the idea of community sites, I prefer the stability of sites where the admins/moderators are paid a living wage. 

 

Community Hosted and Run Platform:

- Usually 1 person covers the costs - meaning they have to work a job too 

- Volunteer staff: frequent burn out, difficulty scheduling coverage, has to take a back seat to real life and real jobs

- Susceptible to closure when the founder gets bored, is tired, loses interest or any number of other issues that could occur

 

Professional Platform with paid staff:

- Cost is not restricted to 1 person

- The staff are paid, they don't have to worry about feeding their kids or having shelter.

- Since staff are paid, if staff get bored with the topic, it doesn't matter.

- Easier to schedule coverage

- More stable, less likely to have service interruption

- Highly unlikely to vanish (I'd say impossible, but I try to never say that) 

 

I am sad that the founder of KerbalStuff felt it was time to move on. Having been there though, I understand exactly how depressing it can be when the people using what you created seem to only complain. Even when some people do express gratitude/appreciation , the complaints can overwhelm you and leave you feeling trapped and depressed. That's why I gave up on volunteering. Its much easier to handle criticism, complaints when its a job you are paid to do instead of a hobby you do because you love it. The complaints end up killing the fun of a hobby. 

 

 

 

Edited by Jadedcat
elaboration and explanation
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Sorry if this is not the right place to post this, but I'll go ahead anyway. When I heard that  Drew "SirCmpwn" DeVault was shutting down the Kerbal Stuff website, I was a little shocked but I after reading the message he posted, I fully understood why. I would like to say A big thanks to Drew, and every other Modder out there that Invest their money and time in working tirelessly to make KSP a better game day after day.

If anyone else is grateful for all the cool mods and the Kerbal Stuff website, then give a shout out in the comments below.

-P.S: This is my first post (:   

 

Edited by C1DEAN
Fixing Title
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1 hour ago, Concodroid said:

Why? What are squad's goals in doing this? SQUAD'S GOALS! :D:rolleyes:

In doing what?  SQUAD has nothing to do with the shutdown of Kerbalstuff.  SQUAD moved to curseforge because that spaceport wasn't working, and curseforge offered professional mod hosting so that more energy could be spent of their product, KSP.

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"I felt a great disturbance in the Community, as if millions of modders suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced."

While I don't use mods much, ouch. What a blow to mod developers. Glad that they can still recover their content. 

While I have no great love for ads, I understand that Curse needs them to fund it's own existence. As long as the mods are still being updated, I'm not too concerned where I download from.

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 He was doing a "thankless job" and got tired of it.. Also, I guess Squad went after him for use of "kerbal" in the name. Someone else is taking care of fixing C-kan. Dunno whats going on from here. Probably just a bump in the road.. Que sera sera.

Edited by Talavar
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As the Spaceplane Freak, I want to give my gratittude to @SirCmpwn for dedidcating himself to us, for as long as he did. No thanks were given from @SQUAD, and many others complained about it being slow. Let us take a moment of silence to the great site we have lost.....

And shame Squad, for not even going as far as acknowledging it positively.

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I'd like to add this to the discussion RE: Spacedock.

     1: Have multiple people contributing to support. This way you can have a bad day, or (in worst case) hand off to another person seamlessly.

     2: Have multiple people contributing to running costs. This will reduce the porportion of income each contributor must supply. It'll also allow for seamless handoffs if a member finds themself unable/unwilling to contribute financially.

     3: Commit to the idea of it being a thankless job. Turns out, you're many times more likely to complain than to praise. It's a sad truth, exacerbated by the fact we're on the internet,

     4: Allow users to see that the repository is being maintained by only a few people, especially when it's under distress.

 

It is likeky--nay, certain--that the chaps in charge of Spacedock have taken these points into consideration.

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I for one would like to thank to @SirCmpwn for his thankless work in providing us a place unique to KSP to store and obtain mods.  I guess that makes it not thankless, but too little too late.  I for one would not be upset with a few ads on that page to see it stay running. 

I have no qualms against @SQUAD for what happened, it wasn't their doing.  I read what @Jadedcat wrote, and I understand their position.  Maybe curse can learn from this, see how a dedicated modding community was not happy with their product, and make changes (albeit minor) to accommodate those desires.  But they don't have to.  They have a business to run, as does Squad.  

 

But again, many thanks to @SirCmpwn, we're sad to see you go. 

Edited by gargamel
Whoops! Added "no"
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On 2/16/2016 at 1:16 PM, Jadedcat said:

This is being fixed. The CurseForge search works a bit better than the Curse.com search and is being improved. Once the code base CurseForge is built on is ready (I have no idea what's left) it will be used to replace the Curse.com backend and fix a lot of the current issues Curse.com has while adding the improvements CurseForge already has. (This is my understanding of the solution planned)

 

On the topic of ads:

The ads on Curse.com mod pages (there are none of CurseForge) are used to cover the author rewards program where authors can earn points for downloads and exchange those points for Paypal, Steam or Amazon cards.

People often seem to have an unrealistic view of how much ads are worth. A few ads on 1 site does not cover author rewards, server costs and salaries for coders, admins, reviewers, moderators, etc and have profit left over. Most people seem ok with the idea of ads as long as its offsetting the personal cost for a single person running 1 site. I am unsure why people get annoyed by ads offsetting the cost for a team of people maintaining multiple sites and giving the community content creators who host with us some reward for their time and creativity. 

 

TLDR: The ads on Curse.com are

1.) Optional, you can use CurseForge.com and not have ads at all or use adblocker.

2.) used to give rewards to the community content creators. 

 

Side Note: The reason Curse needs to pay salaries is because hosting a central repository is a thankless job. People complain if anything goes wrong (understandably) and if everything is working, it often feels as if no one appreciates the volunteer work. Being paid a salary means someone like me doesn't burn out reviewing hundreds of files a day, monitoring 8 different forums for problems, and answering support questions that are frequently abusive. 

I have made content that was used by millions of people with no appreciation and tons of complaints. I have been a volunteer for community sites. In fact, that's where Curse found me, volunteering as a site admin/manager and content creator for Minecraft. Then they offered to pay me to do the same thing but on a schedule. Having worked with both sides volunteer and employment, while I like the idea of community sites, I prefer the stability of sites where the admins/moderators are paid a living wage. 

 

Community Hosted and Run Platform:

- Usually 1 person covers the costs - meaning they have to work a job too 

- Volunteer staff: frequent burn out, difficulty scheduling coverage, has to take a back seat to real life and real jobs

- Susceptible to closure when the founder gets bored, is tired, loses interest or any number of other issues that could occur

 

Professional Platform with paid staff:

- Cost is not restricted to 1 person

- The staff are paid, they don't have to worry about feeding their kids or having shelter.

- Since staff are paid, if staff get bored with the topic, it doesn't matter.

- Easier to schedule coverage

- More stable, less likely to have service interruption

- Highly unlikely to vanish (I'd say impossible, but I try to never say that) 

 

I am sad that the founder of KerbalStuff felt it was time to move on. Having been there though, I understand exactly how depressing it can be when the people using what you created seem to only complain. Even when some people do express gratitude/appreciation , the complaints can overwhelm you and leave you feeling trapped and depressed. That's why I gave up on volunteering. Its much easier to handle criticism, complaints when its a job you are paid to do instead of a hobby you do because you love it. The complaints end up killing the fun of a hobby. 

 

Disclaimer : I work for Curse. Curse pays me to review mods and manage forums/communities. I do not speak for Curse. I speak for myself as a community member, modder and gamer. Anything I say is based on my knowledge of a situation and is my opinion and not that of anyone I am associated with personally or professionally. Nothing I say should be taken as a promise or guarantee of anything by anyone. 

 

 

Thank you, for the insight into Curse and CurseForge. I apologize for my criticism, but I feel the page layout is a but cluttered and mildly confusing, although not to the point of not being able to find the download button. May I suggest looking into using system psychology to improve the human interface of the layout, I feel it would behoove the team to revisit how a person looks at the screen and rationalizes where the features are. Mind you, this is my observation.

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18 minutes ago, Eskandare said:

Thank you, for the insight into Curse and CurseForge. I apologize for my criticism, but I feel the page layout is a but cluttered and mildly confusing, although not to the point of not being able to find the download button. May I suggest looking into using system psychology to improve the human interface of the layout, I feel it would behoove the team to revisit how a person looks at the screen and rationalizes where the features are. Mind you, this is my observation.

The moderators made me a lovely new thread over here: 

Don't really want to derail the discussions on KS. I'd be happy to answer (almost) anything over there though. 

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I'm sorry but what happened to KerbalStuff? 

I find CurseForge... em ... not the best for me. :(

Everytime I type in the search for a MOD, it always says "no search found"

Is it just me or am I doing it wrong? 

Just getting a bit frustrated that I have to find it individually looking through pages and pages. 

 

Is there any other easier way? 

Please give me suggestions?

 

Thanks!! 

 

 

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On 2/17/2016 at 10:32 AM, SpaceplaneAddict said:

As the Spaceplane Freak, I want to give my gratittude to @SirCmpwn for dedidcating himself to us, for as long as he did. No thanks were given from @SQUAD, and many others complained about it being slow. Let us take a moment of silence to the great site we have lost.....

And shame Squad, for not even going as far as acknowledging it positively.

----> 

See here.

I have to admit, other than a few visual mods, I mostly play stock and don't plan to download any more mods for the time being, but the closure seemed to be.. well, sorrowful. The closure didn't come from lack of funding, or technical issues, but rather a loss of morale and enthusiasm on the owner's part. It really comes to show that.. even if it doesn't seem like it, emotion does have a part in managing such large things like this. SirCmpwn felt that his work wasn't being appreciated enough.. and closed it down. I understand and fully support the fact that his closure of Kerbal Stuff will lead to better things for him and his life. Godspeed to him for his continuing avenues in life.

 

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I think that the resentment toward Squad is deeper than whether or not they had a hand in the closure of KerbalStuff..

A large portion of the community (although I'm sure not the majority) seems to feel a little jaded; at least with those that have been around for a while. It not really that Squad is to blame for KerbalStuff's closure (especially since what hurt's the most is the sudden closure - without much notification). Its all the other things that happened over the years. Remember the additional planets that were going to be added to the game? People were upset when resource gathering kept being pushed back (I still do not use it though lol). The clouds that still have not been added. After years in the alpha stages of development, the beta-launch was rushed within a couple months. The multiplayer system that has not been mentioned in a while, etc... (let's not forget the forum catastrophe!)

So many features and mechanics that slipped through the cracks over time. Each one of us had that one or two specific items in the old 'planned features' list the WE wanted but did not get (or at least not yet). It made some of us feel like Squad was not listening to US. Some people have even stated that Squad will not implement certain features because modders could do it instead, even though that hasn't happened yet (Implemented: DRE, KJR, portions of FAR, etc..).

I had mods up on the old Kerbal Space Port site, and aside from the comment/remarks section (which filled up quickly with negative comments from people who did not know how to install mods - modding was different back then) I though it was pretty good. I was even eager to see Kerbal Space Port II. I was not expecting the outsourced mod hosting site we got. When I started a new mod I began looking for a host, and decided upon KerbalStuff. Why? Because it was specific to KSP, and it was community driven. Besides I could always upload it to Curse if I didn't like it. As it turned out, it was perfect. As a mod uploader, I cannot express how great of a tool it was to leverage. Many, many features that I will now forever consider essential. Plus, at the time it was being developed, WE (us modders) were providing input to develop the features WE wanted (like analytics). A mod site developed by the community FOR the community!

That is why a lot of people feel that KerbalStuff is superior to Curse, and rightfully so. With Curse (for some) it feels more like we are putting our mods on someone else's shelf in someone else's store so that they can make money off of our work (more than likely the REAL problem some people have with ads). Creating mods is time consuming and often difficult, and we care more about these creations that most would think. Take a look on these forums at the time and effort put into making the first post of a mod organized and visually appealing. Instead of simply stating what the mod is/does along with a picture of the item/action; modders create elaborate posts with different fonts, sizes, and colors - pictures, videos, graphs, charts, etc.. All of this because of the love we have for our mods, and the community that we bring them too. It is because of this care for our mods that many of us cling to KS, and honestly for some people - if Squad had taken over KS, it likely would have lost some of its appeal (whether most people realize it or not).

Unfortunately, that is also why some people want to blame Squad. As stated above; for some people it is just Squad, once again, not listening to us. KS is what people wanted. There is no arguing the facts - there were twice the amount of mods on KS than Curse. KS was more popular. And, I suppose many thought Squad should have stepped in to financially help a site that was doing superior to there own chosen successor to KerbalSpacePort. After all Squad has been know to outsource from the community before; programmers and modelers of exceptional mods have became employee's on multiple occasions..

However, as I have already stated, if Squad had stepped in and taken it over as the official mod hosting site - it would have lost some of its appeal. It would no longer be a mod site developed by the community FOR the community. I for one, am grateful that they left it alone (unless it was to be managed and developed BY the community - which would make no sense). Although, I wish we would have been more supportive of @SirCmpwn (myself included).

As far as Squad not listening to the community, I personally feel that they do. When they told us that Windows 64-bit was unstable, did we believe them? No, and we let them know it. The community spotted a 64-bit hack and many people tried it. Squad took notice, and released a 64-bit version for windows; and as they had told us, it was highly unstable. After many mod developers decided to no longer support the 64-bit version (and outcry that it was unstable, even though they had told us that), Squad removed the 64-bit Windows variant.

Squad is not just some griefer looking to wreck your gaming experience (that would make no business sense), nor are they a pay2play/pay2win micro-transactions developer. They already have our money, and are trying to give us the best gaming experience they can (as well as attracting new customers).

Finally, to @SirCmpwn: Thank you for providing an excellent hosting site. I understand that it took a lot of time and effort to build and maintain; and I am truly grateful for the work that you put in.

Edited by Yarbrough08
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On 2/16/2016 at 5:39 PM, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

In doing what?  SQUAD has nothing to do with the shutdown of Kerbalstuff.  SQUAD moved to curseforge because that spaceport wasn't working, and curseforge offered professional mod hosting so that more energy could be spent of their product, KSP.

Squad Goals. It's an inside joke :cool:

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From kerbalstuff.com:

 

On June 1st 2014, I started working on Kerbal Stuff. 20 months have passed. 1,191 mods have been uploaded and 20,407 users registered with the site. Today, I am officially closing Kerbal Stuff. I'll explain how it came to this.

I built Kerbal Stuff after the announcement that KSP mods were to be officially moved to Curse. At the time, and still today, I did not feel that Curse would do right by the kommunity. I stepped up to build an alternative that would be much better than the mess Curse would provide. I built Kerbal Stuff to do right by the kommunity where Squad wouldn't.

I opened up a beta and got some modders on board, and Kerbal Stuff was very well received. It's fair to say that Kerbal Stuff decisively won the battle over Curse, providing hosting for nearly double the number of mods. It boils down to Kerbal Stuff simply being better at it. Kerbal Stuff had no ads for its entire lifetime, emailed users when their mods updated, and cared more about the modders and the players.

Undoubtedly Kerbal Stuff has had a direct impact on Squad's revenue - how many players must have hopped back into Kerbal Space Program after getting an email about their favorite mod receiving an update? In the past month, despite frequent downtime and slow page loads, Kerbal Stuff has served 1.2 million page views over 279 thousand sessions for over 84 thousand unique visitors.

As thanks, Squad continues to endorse Curse as the official source for KSP mods. They refuse to even mention Kerbal Stuff in public. During the early days, they even tried to have the name changed to omit the word "Kerbal", citing a trademark that didn't exist (they later registered the trademark).

Even setting Squad aside, running Kerbal Stuff is a largely thankless job. In fact, for the most part, I just hear complaints. Most people don't actually care about the effort put into it. Whenever I've taken the time to add features or make improvements or meet the requests of users, no one has shown any appreciation. I stopped volunteering my time and energy to extend this website, because my efforts were always met with silence or complaints.

I don't have expectations of anyone. I don't expect anyone to gush over how great any new features I implement are. I don't expect Squad to support Kerbal Stuff as the official source for mods. However, these factors have contributed to the apathy I have for the ongoing maintenance of Kerbal Stuff. I'm not willing to invest more of my time and energy into making Kerbal Stuff faster or more stable. I have been well aware of the slowness and instability, but I simply have no motivation to fix it.

I would like to thank those who have been supportive. Thanks to the volunteer admins for helping maintain the site. Thanks as well to the modders who chose to host their mods on Kerbal Stuff, and the users who chose to use it as their source for mods.

All of the mods hosted on Kerbal Stuff are available via this torrent. The source code for Kerbal Stuff will continue to be available on Github. I can be reached at [email protected].

- Drew "SirCmpwn" DeVault


Interesting stats from Google Analytics:

  • 4,948,349 total sessions
  • 993,550 total unique visitors
  • 19,083,579 total page views
  • 03:11 - average length of visit

Kerbal Stuff costs about $100/mo to operate. After upgrades to support the high traffic, it would be about $180/mo.

Fun fact: Squad keeps the numbers secret, but as of April 2015 the estimated copies sold of KSP on Steam were about a million.

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While I totally appreciate and understand peoples' opinions on the situation with KerbalStuff, and I know no one will really read or heed this, but Holy Cow!!...

Is there REALLY that much more than can be said that hasn't been said or posted already, and by now?

Its getting to where most of the recent posts are just rehashes or duplicates of previous posts...

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