moeggz

First off thank you all for the update and your continued volunteering. But am I reading this quote right and that currently the moderation team doesn’t know who is currently paying the server costs? Or even if they are being paid? That seems to fit Take Two MO of how they have handled this.

This puts this whole situation to rest yes? The game is dead. If another studio buys the IP they may use the old code. In that that is physically possible. But not fiscally. KSP2 is dead the game we have on our PCs will never be finished. No ill will to anyone, I wish him the best in his future endeavors, just hope that those don’t involve games I would otherwise be interested in. See yall in the forum again at the IP sale announcement.

Best wishes to all. We thank you for all the work you did for this game and the community.

Gotta respect the gusto to put the game on sale without any mention of its future. Like a final, “we’re not removing it here is a reduced price for an unfinished game” is understandable but to put it on sale with the store page still mentioning not just colonies but multiplayer is a whole new level of sleazy.

20% off until July 11th. Don’t worry there’s no update on the store page to let people know that as of Monday there will be no studio to finish the roadmap.

I agree management has a much larger share of the blame than Nate (or T2. Everyone likes to talk about how easy it should be for large companies to throw away their money and be happy with delayed and over budget projects, until someone you are paying is behind schedule and wants more of your money. Now also imagine you just lost a billion dollars in the prior year and they want even more of your money.) Because he lied to us. We may differ in view in how much (some or not at all) of the blame is on him. Personally, the fact that much of this is still here say makes me less interested in playing the blame game. Thats hard when you were in the room, nearly impossible for outsiders. But the timeline of events in Shadowzone’s video seems pretty rock solid, parts being collaborated by ex employees who are willing to post publicly. Going by the timeline as presented and nearly universally accepted then we must agree Nate knowingly and purposefully lied to the community. Was he at fault for why the game was where it was at the end? To what degree we may never know. But we know he lied. These lies include: The state of multiplayer (it’s so fun! When in reality it was soft canceled shortly after launch) EA is for feedback! It’s the Kerbal way! (It was always about money and they never once actually wanted our feedback, look at wobble and font.) We don’t want to alienate old players! (They very much wanted the new audience more, things liked by the old fans were thrown away if they were obstacles to a wider audience. Like occlusion for satellites or progression metrics beyond science points.) And the big one, we’re fully funded! (They were on thin ice and knew it from before the EA launch.) As I’ve said in previous comments, this does not make you a bad person. I’m not wishing ill will on anyone. I’m in a financially secure enough position if I was asked to lie to a customer I would find new employment. Thats easy for me to say in my position but harder for others. I can’t judge others who can’t make the same decision and still be confident they can provide for their families. So him lying for his employer doesn’t make him a bad person, and doesn’t mean I wish him any ill will. I still hope he can provide for those he cares for. But it would be rather ill advised to buy any product being sold by the guy who now is known to be willing to lie to get you to buy products. As such, I’m not buying anything from him again, and nothing from T2 again as they have absolutely disrespected this community in the non communication following the closure. If that means you think I’m mad at him, then I hope you can follow my reasoning. I personally don’t think I’m mad at him, just not willing to give him any more of my money. These are wise words and apply to many industries. Thank you for sharing your insights, and I hope those entering new careers listen to what you have to say, whether they will be the ideas guy or the practical engineer, or wear both hats.

Genuine thanks to @ShadowZone for putting this together. You were in a unique position where the devs/community trust you so they could speak with anonymity but you didn’t hide the share of the blame on IG/Star Theory/Uber. Im glad to see some not taking a simplistic view of “suits bad devs good” but seeing how there is blame to share here. T2 absolutely made dumb decisions and led to many of the problems this game faced, but they’re not the only bad guys. They gave double the time and 4x the financial support that was originally agreed on. Uber not knowing the true depth of development is on them, and then continuing the lies is still on the devs. If your manager sucks and is going to make the job take twice is long, you either let them know or calculate that slowdown into your internal projections. Thinking you can still do it on time and in budget with all of the strings T2 put on you is pure hubris. And lying for your job doesn’t make you a bad person per se. But can we all agree that IG lied directly to the community multiple times now? Multiplayer was internally canned for a long time, EA was for funding only they never wanted any of our feedback, and this game was clearly not a rewrite of the game. Us pessimists weren’t crazy, I’m not looking for a “you were right” or anything just can we agree it was a reasonable view and doesn’t make us haters? I don’t wish ill will on anyone but let’s be real. It’s not mean to now say, “I will not buy another project Nate Simpson is attached to again.” Lying as part of the job doesn’t make him a bad person, but he sold his reputation to try and keep this thing going. We now know he’ll lie to make suits happy, and as such his word is worth nothing and I will never buy a game that has ties to him or T2 again.

Game is doomed. I’m now less sure we’ll even get colonies. I know that my personal boycot of Take Two for their disrespectful handling of this won’t change anything. But for me that’s not really the point. It’s just being free of my dollars going to such a business, and on that part my boycott will be successful. And it’s a little ironic, because although my best wishes are to all that are affected, just canceling it probably wouldn’t have warranted a perma boycott from me had they been upfront about it. But this is the worst handling of this issue imaginable.

Extending the thanks and best wishes to Tom Vinita as well. Your optimism will be missed in this community.

I’m with others here. Maybe something this month, more likely July. Then a long, long time of nothing. I do believe Kerbal is dead, but HarvesteR’s ‘sequel’ to KitHack using his custom physics is probably what we are all looking for.

Yup. The prequel sounds fun, I would’ve bought it. But colonies, interstellar, larger part counts, more resources, and “near” future tech that allows for brachistochrone transfers in late game is really the game I was looking for.

Trust me, it would make me very happy for you to be right on this.

Closure would’ve gotten at least some mutual respect, but with the wording of their EA marketing it seems like such clarity may lead to actual difficulties in some countries and territories. They don’t respect us enough to tell us the truth and pay that cost, so they leave us in limbo forever. I’d wager a few more bug fixes are on the way, some form of a colony update and then a long period of near radio silence while they hope everyone forgets this game.

By all reputable accounts 70 people at their Seattle studio out of their about 70 employees. Totally possible there is some clarification hear that makes this less bad… but they have left us with a corpo speak tweet for a week now. The time has come and passed to clarify before the worst was taken as the truth by the court of popular opinion.

The only good thing I got out of trying For Science! Was that the frame rate was acceptable for medium sized crafts. (The science missions were fun, but without gameplay restrictions beyond science points I only played a few as I wanted to experience them for the first time with resource restrictions.) Framerate was terrible on launch but they did make a lot of progress there. It was just the death by a thousand cuts of bugs that kept the game unfun. I don’t have strong opinions on centered or left justified nav ball (outside of it should be an option) but does anyone prefer KSP1’s nav ball over KSP2’s? Outside of the font I mean. Anyways I agree with you here KSP2’s nav ball was better. There’s enough better about KSP2 that makes it hard for me to get back into KSP1, and so I remain in no mans land.

Comparing how long it took from initial paid offering of KSP1 till its last post 1.0 bug fix after multiple full DLCs to the time since the EA launch of KSP2 is not fair. As you are well aware KSP1 was not in development for a long amount of time before .12 (less than a year) while KSP2 has at minimum 4 years of development time before 0.1.

First off, I’m glad you like the game. Your view is valid. So is mine that the game is not currently (and with the news unlikely to ever be) fun. On this quote I can agree with you. Doesn’t matter if it’s dev or publisher, the misleading communication to the community will lead to a breakdown in trust. And the publisher gave a 70ish member team longer than the indie devs got, and got less accomplished. After multiple delays. I’m with you that personal attacks and harassment is wrong, but let’s not act like the world is as black and white as dev=good and publisher=bad. They are currently missing, whatever your thoughts on nearly a week of radio silence after the news may be. The features we were told would be in the game in 2020 still aren’t. There is yet to be any new gameplay mechanic or feature that the first game didn’t have, outside of procedural parts and multiple craft in the VAB. Couldn’t disagree more. For the first time it is being reviewed as is and not based on hope for the future. Even “recommended” reviews say in their review that they wouldn’t recommend the game as is. Is KSP2 unplayable garbage? No not at all. But it’s a more expensive and buggier version of the previous game with a facelift. With the available comparison I don’t think negative reviews are surprising. An EA game is a risk, and we knew that buying it. But I don’t know of any EA game that fails to finish its roadmap that gets good reviews. That’s not an unfair reason to negatively rate the game. What’s the view comparisons to KSP1 videos? I don’t think this is a binary indication of a game being “fun” and an imperfect gradient but if we do look at it as a gradient it seems to be way less community engagement/ total fun than the predecessor. Sequels that are less good than their prior entry (even if not outright terrible as I agree there is some fun in KSP2) are usually not rated highly. This seems like straight forward victim blaming. It’s not the one unable to keep timelines and promises who is at fault, it’s the person who believed in those timelines. All of us who spent money on this game, we are why it failed. Not that it’s literally the only EA game I can even think of to only have one content update over more than a year, but the fans who noticed and complained. Is that really what you’re trying to say? Please explain further because that line of reasoning doesn’t make sense to me. These reviews are for precisely that reason. Someone not online who wants to buy this game should know that it seems highly likely development has ceased. If the publisher didn’t want this to happen they should have clearly communicated sometime in the last week. As it stands, a warning to future buyers is justified. And, idk how bad reviews for a game with no studio is how the game fails, and not the fact that the game now has no studio. Again I think you’re putting the cart in front of the horse. I never buy EA games. At least not for years. When this game came out I said that if it all went up in flames I would rather have been the fool who lost $50 and tried everything I could to support the game and have it still fail than have been a bystander. (Probably makes me an easy mark, but don’t worry there’s no other franchise I care about to this degree won’t be happening again) I bought the game knowing the risk. I did not review the game for months as the only honest review would be negative. I have been actively trying to give feedback on this game since day one. I may be grumpy sometimes but please show me where I have ever cursed out or attacked the devs or a fellow community member. Again I’m not perfect, I’m not saying I am but I genuinely don’t think I could be characterized as a hater. I’ve been passionate but (mostly) respectful. I apologize for all slip ups. But what more could I have done other than bought it, given a really long time before leaving a negative review, and trying to actively give all feedback I could? (Outside of bug reporting. I didn’t have interest in doing that and also paying for the product, so I’ll give you that.) But My point being is I’m giving you all of these views as an active contributor with the opposite view. I don’t think your a shill, so I hope this has fulfilled your request for honest engagement and why I personally disagree with your view that the community is at fault.

This is what I assume has happened. Never officially cancel it. Occasional bug update here and there. I have a feeling colonies will still come out in the next few months and then just string everyone along. Either way absolutely despicable for Take Two to leave this up in the air so long. Lesson learned, never again will I buy a game that’s EA, or from Private Division, Take Two, or a certain serial over hyper creative director. Not much is lost. The list of finished games on my steam wishlist with high reviews is long. And heck I’m going to immediately go back on my no EA thing and go buy Kitbash just to send harvester some cash. Game looks fun but I don’t even really care if it’s ever finished, it’s a protest buy lol.

This is something I and others said multiple times throughout EA. I think a lot of anger at the communication/CMs was misplaced disappointment with the development speed. If the game was fun and developing quickly they could’ve talked as much or as little as they wanted. You don’t really need to have a big dev interview once a month if there’s a content update once a month to show what the devs have been up to. A KERB update post is easily replaced by weekly patches with detailed patch notes. Then they can talk a lot, nearly not at all, be sassy like the Wendy’s Twitter, be very proper or whatever other style they want and it wouldn’t really matter. The frustration always stemmed from this being the slowest progressing EA game I think any of us have ever played. With the devs not active (for the most part) interacting with the community that frustration was expressed to the CMs, and eventually it became (unfairly) frustration at the CMs.

EA in name only. The only feedback was on bugs, and even then it took forever for wobbly rockets to be taken seriously and still no change to font, parts manager, or serious consideration towards com net occlusion. They had their plan and wanted to see it through, which is fine. Just very misleading to say they wanted feedback when they never did. The plan was mostly set in stone. The trouble this game was in should’ve been apparent from the first time the game went on sale. Yes EA games go on sale, but not before they’ve actually added anything (in my experience) and not when their website has the wonderful FOMO inducing statement “Yes, KSP 2 will sell for $49.99 (SRP) during Early Access, and we expect that the price will be raised at 1.0 release.” The EA of this game was only to raise funds, as they never really wanted to EA it was not handled as an EA in any appreciable way, outside of the “don’t judge us for bugs or for its unfinished state” and the slightly reduced price. Look at the recent reviews. While some are claiming it’s unjustified, even the positive ones straight up say they wouldn’t recommend the game, below the “ recommended” title steam gives their review. They got away with their score for so long with people reviewing based on future predictions. Now that those are in doubt and the game is being reviewed as is, a prettier but buggier edition than the first game with numerous missing features, is is apparent just how much they abused the EA system. They sold on hype, contrary to the EA model, and people bought on that hype.

Click over to “earnings” and you’ll see they lost 1.6 billion last year. Revenue isn’t worth much if your company is bleeding money.

Emotions are running high here, but please know that all you guys did for the community was appreciated. We’re mad at the situation and how it’s ending, not with you guys. Best wishes to your future search for employment. Fly safe. o7

Scott Manley was steering away from KSP yes but I do feel if the game was good or got good he would’ve made some videos because 1. It’s still fun 2. It would’ve made money. 3. He likes teaching space and it would’ve helped with that. I’m sure he would’ve done new tutorials, probably one career play through, and the occasional video demonstrating something he’d like to talk about in real space. Having got none of those, I think his views are clear. ShadowZone may have presented a very optimistic possibility, but he made a clear line between the facts and the theories, and presented multiple possibilities. I really do think he made a good video on the situation.

I only lurked for most of KSP1, but I really do want to say that @RayneCloudall of your work for this franchise (paid, and then just as an enthusiastic fan) has really been appreciated. I got nostalgic with some of the names you mentioned in your post. I hope they’re all doing well as well as all of those affected by this change. I’m with you, I’m quite upset with the situation and PD/Take Two but am trying to remember the rather small bad news I got compared to those who (assumedly) lost their livelihoods. Really do wish all of them the best. Your continued persistence in optimism has made me more positive. And your well worded, kind, and earnest (in that it’s coming from a place that genuinely wants KSP2 to succeed) criticisms at times have spoken what I and others were trying to say just so much better. So thank you, and I agree. This much of a gap in communication is disrespectful not just to us fans, but more importantly to the dozens of people who worked hard at this game who now have to figure their ways forward.