Our thoughts on KerbalStuff's closure

[r4pt0r]

3 hours ago, SirCmpwn said:

Kerbal Stuff guy here. Someone pointed out to me that this official statement exists. Thanks for the response, Squad. I appreciate its candidness, and that it exists at all, and I figured I'd stop by and add even more clarification.

Eventually I gave up, but I believe I made it very clear that Squad's choice to support Curse and continue supporting Curse over Kerbal Stuff was the wrong choice and that I wanted to seal the deal and make Kerbal Stuff official. I had also reached out to them in the past and offered things like admin positions on the site for KSP staff. Kerbal Stuff wasn't developed to be an "unofficial, independent alternative", it was developed because Curse sucked and I wanted to make something better available.

I misspoke when I originally used the words "legal action" in my public letter, and have since edited it after KasperVld reached out and pointed out that it could be misread. I never saw letters from lawyers, but there was a discussion that I felt very threatened about. I was *told* to change the name - it wasn't an open dialogue. There were several weeks of arguing back and forth about this, followed by a long period of silence that was never properly resolved. I never heard the words "you can use Kerbal in the name" from Squad, even after bringing the matter back up several times. The discussion was hostile.

- - -

I'd still like to let this die. My feelings from the original letter still stand - maintaining Kerbal Stuff is a burden that went unnoticed and unappreciated from both Squad and the community. I will extend a warm "thank you" to the hundreds of players who have emailed me words of late thanks and encouragement, and a cold "love you" to the dozens of players who emailed me rude and spiteful comments, but the decision remains final. A lot of people have also suggested donations - none of this is because of money. I can afford to host Kerbal Stuff very easily. Thanks, though, honestly.

SpaceDock has my blessing. I have also given them a copy of the database (all personal info removed). Hopefully they can meet your modding needs in the future so no one has to deal with the awful mess that is Curse. Maybe in the future Squad will even reconsider their choice to support Curse and go with the superior alternative? Time will tell.

We can only hope. Thanks for your work. Talos bless you.

[adsii1970]

10 minutes ago, r4pt0r said:

I wish curse would just die.

of all things - a curse. Now that is irony.

[NecroBones]

1 hour ago, MrChumley said:

I also want to briefly address the source of apathy that caused this to happen.  As a (very minor) mod maintainer, I understand some of the reasons that caused this all to come about.  

If you really like a mod, or service, especially one that is given freely at no charge,  a simple "thanks", and acknowledgement goes a long way. 

 

I'll start out by once again giving out a huge thanks to Sircmpwn, whose efforts did not go unnoticed. Even if many of us weren't that vocal about it.

 

Having said that, the thing is, while a simple "thanks" does indeed go a long way, the thing is, it's just reality that people are pretty quiet when everything works as expected. Working in the IT field, it's what some of us call the "IT Curse". When everything is working well, no one seems to notice or care. But then it's a huge crisis when things are not working right. If you've done your job well, you'll probably hear nothing. So you kinda have to learn to take silence as "silent praise". It sucks, but it's reality. If you're seeking praise, making a utility website isn't the way to go.

 

I really do wish this could have gone differently. But since Sircmpwn was awesome enough to provide data and code, the community isn't left in as harsh of a state as it could have been. He didn't need to do that, but kindly did so, and I think we all owe him a lot of thanks, one way or another.

 

[Moarmau5]

1 hour ago, NecroBones said:

Having said that, the thing is, while a simple "thanks" does indeed go a long way, the thing is, it's just reality that people are pretty quiet when everything works as expected. Working in the IT field, it's what some of us call the "IT Curse". When everything is working well, no one seems to notice or care. But then it's a huge crisis when things are not working right. If you've done your job well, you'll probably hear nothing. So you kinda have to learn to take silence as "silent praise". It sucks, but it's reality. If you're seeking praise, making a utility website isn't the way the way to go. 

*praises silently*

[Red Iron Crown]

Moved out some posts about Curse's features to a new thread here:

 

[steve_v]

3 hours ago, NecroBones said:

Working in the IT field, it's what some of us call the "IT Curse".

This effect is not unknown in other fields of endeavour, though the name varies.  

[Wanner364]

Sad , love KerbalStuff! 

[Curveball Anders]

13 hours ago, SirCmpwn said:

Eventually I gave up, but I believe I made it very clear that Squad's choice to support Curse and continue supporting Curse over Kerbal Stuff was the wrong choice and that I wanted to seal the deal and make Kerbal Stuff official. I had also reached out to them in the past and offered things like admin positions on the site for KSP staff. Kerbal Stuff wasn't developed to be an "unofficial, independent alternative", it was developed because Curse sucked and I wanted to make something better available.

As far as I know no commercial game studio or publisher has ever integrated links to an outside mod (or similar) storage unless there's been a binding commercial contract between the parties (as between Squad and Curse for instance).

Several has just like Squad has both allowed and actively used official channels to help and promote all kinds of third party development. (CCP/EvE Online has been doing that for 10+ years, including hosting 3:rd party developers as speakers at FanFest, but never added such links to the actual game).

Because there's a very nasty chasm of business considerations, content control and legal red tape between using official channels to promote something, and to integrate a third party site or tool in the actual product.

On the other hand there's several 'unofficial, independent alternative' sites that have outlasted the actual game(s) (and studios and publishers) by many years

[stratvox]

Yeah, the thing about the kerbalstuff/curse divide is that we have no idea what the terms of the contract between Squad and Curse are, or (especially) what the costs to Squad for breaking that contract would be. I far preferred KS to Curse, but I also recognize that there are commercial/contractual/legal realities that may have prevented Squad from acting in any other way than they did once their contract with Curse had been inked.

SirCmpwn, you built a fantastic site, full kudos to you for it, and I'm sorry that you felt you had to end it. As was said above, thank you very much for making your code available for others to continue the work, as well as hosting the site for however long did (I'm a relative newbie to this game and community so I actually have no real idea  ).  I do hope you'll stick around and continue to play and rant on the fora.

'Cause you know, fora are for ranting. It is their natural manure

[psih]

One of these days some game company will have enough sense to actually ask a web development company to actually develop a website/mod hosting/etc for them and support it, and update it, and not just give it to some weird partner or something, who are just not interested to push it in terms of functionality, UI, doing actual good search backend (like use special search engines and tune them), and so on. There is just so much functionality missing, that is actually easy to implement, if you know what are you doing. 

Yes, building it up may cost, but if you ask professionals - it's not as much as you would think, and at least you have control over infrastructure, can apply enough resources and so on.

It's just sad for me, as a web developer, web dev company owner and KSP player, to watch how projects just go to some average partner or are done by people that are not into web development professionally, or just have poor management that does not understand the specifics of a game and need for tool (this is more for the gaming industry as a whole). 

 

Sorry, but I just had to get this off my chest.

Edited February 18, 2016 by psih

[swjr-swis]

11 hours ago, NecroBones said:

Working in the IT field, it's what some of us call the "IT Curse". When everything is working well, no one seems to notice or care. But then it's a huge crisis when things are not working right. If you've done your job well, you'll probably hear nothing. So you kinda have to learn to take silence as "silent praise". It sucks, but it's reality.

Amen. I learned pretty quickly to take contentment from having an empty inbox... it meant everything was working as it should.

The odd appreciative word every now and then was still nice though.

[Tw1]

20 hours ago, Glaran K'erman said:

Truly appreciate a response. Wasn't one with "passionate" feelings but I was left questioning some things and I think this answers everything.

Agreed.  It was detailed, and eloquently put.
Sad to hear kerbal stuff going. Goes to show I haven't got any new mods for a while...

[John FX]

Whatever happened to the idea of having a curse client for KSP?

That idea seems to have quietly run away to die in a shadowy corner...

 

IMHO Kerbalstuff was a much better alternative. It actually did what the community needed instead of trying to shoehorn in a pre-existing site to sort of supply it.

[Redneck]

so what is curse exactly? Is it meant to be a "Plan B" in the case something like what happened to KerbalStuff happens? Seems to me Officially supporting "SpaceDock" you wouldn't need a "Plan B" if spacedock shared admin rights with squad? Does anybody really use curse? Why keep it around?

[Curveball Anders]

11 minutes ago, Redneck said:

so what is curse exactly?

Curse is an established corporate entity that Squad partnered with to handle mods and other uploads.

They are also known by some as Belzebub, the Bringer of Hellfire, the site that will infect your brain with hideous viruses and force you to buy chubby barbie dolls and apple products.

Edited February 18, 2016 by Curveball Anders
grammaries

[sal_vager]

That isn't very nice @Curveball Anders, or accurate.

From Wikipedia...

Quote

Curse, Inc. is an online game portal and network of gaming websites founded by Hubert Thieblot in 2006. The company is headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, and has offices in San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Brighton, UK, and Berlin, Germany. Claiming to be the "number one resource for core online gamers,"^[2][3]Quantcast estimated monthly unique traffic in 2013 in excess of 30 million visitors.^[4] Curse has several primary functions, the most notable of which include an add-on and modification service called Curse Client^[5] for such games as World of Warcraft, Rift, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Terraria, Kerbal Space Program, and Minecraft, a collection of over 1000 gaming wikis (many of which are official) known as Gamepedia, and a Voice Over IP (VOIP) service called Curse Voice.

Curse has sponsored professional teams that compete in League of Legends and Call of Duty,^[6][7] which in addition to various high-profile wins have garnered sponsorship from companies such as Nissan,^[8][9][10]Alienware,^[11][12] and Cooler Master.^[13][14][15] In January 2015 Team Curse merged with Team Liquid under the name of the latter organization.

While Curse initially offered modifications and add-ons alone through their Curse-Beta website, offerings have expanded to include Wiki services, the Curse client, CurseForge, CurseVoice, Union for Gamers, BukkitDev, and in-house content produced for YouTube.

 

[Curveball Anders]

1 minute ago, sal_vager said:

That isn't very nice @Curveball Anders, or accurate.

From Wikipedia...

 

What part isn't very nice?

That they are a corporate entity or that some regard them as the reincarnation of "something very nasty"?

_I_ don't have any issues with Curse, I was just reflecting on the fact that _some_ very vocal members of the community appears to view them as the coming of <insert local and cultural variation of Ragnarök>

I think that I was both nice and rational in that post (but then, English is my second language).

(ok, I shouldn't have added the part where I equalled chubby barbie with apple products)

 

[Kerbart]

30 minutes ago, sal_vager said:

That isn't very nice @Curveball Anders, or accurate.

From Wikipedia...

 

Well, it's not @Curveball Anders's fault that the new forum is missing a sarcasm tag... I doubt anyone would take his comment seriously! But yes,  Curse is a commercial 3rd party entity that exists as an game portal and in case of KSP, as a host for mods.

As Curse offers services for free yet needs to pay for trivialities like bandwidth, servers and the wages of its employees (who, how silly, do not want to work for free to resolve server issues you didn't even know existed at 3 AM in the morning) it uses different ways to generate income.

As Anders pointed out, in the eyes of some (not necessarily himself), places Curse just a smidgen above The Antichrist himself (mostly the eyes of those that don't have to make an income for themselves yet, is my assertion). Others, who have lived in a reality where they have learned that about the only thing in life you can truly get for free is a punch in the face, realize that the money to host these mods has to come from somewhere and have a certain understanding for the practice of Curse to show ads on their website, and charge money for faster downloads.

All that is pretty moot though, as you can use CurseForge, a subportal for Curse, where you have no ads, no timed downloads, etc. All the benefits of Curse, without the bad things. Makes you wonder why people don't use when they are complaining about the Evil that Curse inflicts upon the world, but I digress.

Are there benefits to Curse then? Well, the whole KerbalStuff saga has shown that to us. There might be many perceived faults with Curse, but the service it provides is stable and continuous. You can host your mods on Curse without to wonder if it will still be there tomorrow, or if it will take an hour to download. Compared to the excellent 3rd party sites ran by enthusiasts, Curse lacks many things. The two properties it has going for it, are pretty magnificent though: uptime and continuity.

So yes, in a way, Curse can be considered "Plan B" — Squad can assure you that there's always a place you can have your mods available for the public, without that place shutting down overnight for whatever the reason is. Whether a modder wants to utilize the "it'll always be here" option is up to them.

Edited February 18, 2016 by Kerbart
Added “As Anders pointed out, in the eyes of some (not necessarily himself)” to ensure that the “Curse=Evil” opinion does not reflect his own vision.

[C1DEAN]

 

Thanks for the very clear and detailed explanation Kasper. In no way do I blame Squad for the closing of the KS website, in fact, I'm very grateful for squads interaction with the KSP community :).

I would like to also add, however, that I would have liked to see KS become the official KSP mod website

Edited February 18, 2016 by C1DEAN

[Redneck]

my point is simply this. why use a mod site that nobody uses alot and really isnt liked by alot of people? why not get behind the site the community DOES use and like? And just schedule regular backups to a behind the scenes site that is easily restored in case ,like with KS, the unthinkable does happen. Community is happy,modders are happy,and protection is enabled,and in case something like KS does happen Squad are heros when the mods are restored

[Curveball Anders]

43 minutes ago, Redneck said:

my point is simply this. why use a mod site that nobody uses alot and really isnt liked by alot of people? why not get behind the site the community DOES use and like?

Because of legal and other excrements.

[sal_vager]

Something people have not mentioned yet is a simple thing called "duty of care", at the time Squad was shutting down its own mod repository (oh for a real repo so I can apt-get, maybe one day...) Spaceport, Spaceport2 wasn't ready, and didn't want to leave modders and players with nowhere for addons, that wouldn't be good for anyone.

They needed a solution, they needed an experienced company that could stand on its own, that knew the industry, that could be relied upon to provide a consistent service and that could handle its own legal issues if any.

So they approached Curse who said yes, Curse was and still is a company who specializes in this sort of service, could provide the hosting and could be relied upon to remain in business, so the problem was solved, a mod host that could operate for the foreseeable future was found, the KSP modders would have a stable platform, everyone should have been happy.

Don't forget that KerbalStuff didn't even exist at this point.

Except some people hate Curse as a business, they have heard bad things from friends of friends, or read bad things online, it doesn't matter that you'll read bad things about pretty much any site or company you care to name.

Plus KerbalStuff couldn't satisfy any of the other requirements for a long term stable solution, there were many occasions when KerbalStuff was slow or simply unavailable.

In the end it was right to go with Curse, modders and players are free to use it or another site of their choosing, or both, it's there as a stable long term option.

The alternative was to just leave the community to sort out its own hosting, but what kind of message would that have been?

[Tig]

3 hours ago, Kerbart said:

As Curse offers services for free yet needs to pay for trivialities like bandwidth, servers and the wages of its employees (who, how silly, do not want to work for free to resolve server issues you didn't even know existed at 3 AM in the morning) it uses different ways to generate income.

As Anders pointed out, in the eyes of some (not necessarily himself), places Curse just a smidgen above The Antichrist himself (mostly the eyes of those that don't have to make an income for themselves yet, is my assertion).

 

With all due respect, I have no issue with any company making a profit.

 

That said Curse's behavior has been, in the eyes of many, egregious.  Adware/malware/spyware?  No thanks.  There are many people, myself included, that think astroturfing should be outlawed.  In any case, its morally bankrupt.  And as an ex-WoW player don't even get me started on the crap they pulled with the wiki.

 

I still don't understand Squad's decision, I'm sorry Squad, love your game, but I don't understand your business partner decision.  They are the antithesis of everything that makes this game great.

 

As to the closure of KerbalStuff, and @SirCmpwn specifically, I never complained about downtime or "missing" features.  But, I like many of us, I also never gave any thanks or appreciation.  The following statement is belated and unfortunately diminished by its timing, and for that I am ashamed.  Thank you for all your time and effort.

 

@Squad, Without the support of the many under-appreciated modders and community members I probably would never have bought KSP.   I wouldn't have recommended it to a number of friends.  It is time for the association with Curse to come to an end, and support and assist a modding site that does it for the love of the game instead of a site that abuses, imo, its visitors.

[Curveball Anders]

1 hour ago, sal_vager said:

The alternative was to just leave the community to sort out its own hosting, but what kind of message would that have been?

Which is exactly where we are.

The community deals  with it.

And the message from Squad is, we deal with core, you deal with mods.

 

[Redneck]

14 minutes ago, Tig said:

I still don't understand Squad's decision, I'm sorry Squad, love your game, but I don't understand your business partner decision.  They are the antithesis of everything that makes this game great.

 

As to the closure of KerbalStuff, and @SirCmpwn specifically, I never complained about downtime or "missing" features.  But, I like many of us, I also never gave any thanks or appreciation.  The following statement is belated and unfortunately diminished by its timing, and for that I am ashamed.  Thank you for all your time and effort.

 

@Squad, Without the support of the many under-appreciated modders and community members I probably would never have bought KSP.   I wouldn't have recommended it to a number of friends.  It is time for the association with Curse to come to an end, and support and assist a modding site that does it for the love of the game instead of a site that abuses, imo, its visitors.

Well said my friend well said. And yes thanks  SirCmpwn

Edited February 18, 2016 by Redneck