bitzoid

I built the Iktomi from Tharsis and landed a crew on Duna with minimal incidents: No micrometeorite storm was encountered. Zero Kerbonauts were eaten. ---- Here's the original:

Today I fired an Orange Tank straight into the Sun. Everybody on Kerbin seems quite happy with it gone. My scientists tell me the thing was chuck full of all the rubbish and waste, so it's probably good we got rid of it.

I built a new supply shuttle SSTO for the space station I built yesterday and successfully transported a tiny exploration mote craft to the station. Along with some snacks -- the scientists aboard the station requested biscuits as compensation for having to give up simulated gravity for several minutes. The exploration craft is tiny enough to fit through the station rings so we could deploy it after having docked the shuttle. The docking port is placed on an alligator hinge so it doesn't touch the bay doors when stowed. It should be pointed out that the shuttle still has some atmospheric instabilities during re-entry. Rumours about crimes towards kerbalkind committed during landing are a pure fabrication and should not be paid any attention to whatsoever.

After half a year of KSP hiatus I decided to get back into the game and built a rotating and illuminated Space Station around Kerbin at 305 km altitude. I hope the nice blue light relaxes the Kerbonauts aboard the station. Can you find Minmus?

Oh, this is an excellent point. So far I was under the (admittedly unfounded) impression that S.T was, in so many words, a tight-knit team. If the relation inside the company was, however, sour, I would actually reverse my current view completely. I think our solidarity should be with the devs, not the company (in general, and very specifically here).

In theory I agree, but not in principle (if that makes any sense to you). My way of looking at these things is that despite the fact that big scary evil X cannot be changed by my actions alone, I don't have to participate. Too many times (as evidenced here in the forums), people adopt the attitude: "Oh well, there's nothing you can do, that's just the way things are, might as well just go with it." But this is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Just because we cannot be perfect, it doesn't mean we cannot try to better.

It almost sounds like the motive wasn't that the studio wasn't delivering, doesn't it? *I asked facetiously.*

Yes, and furthermore; @ShadowZone 's video implies, as do others here in the forum, that Star.Theory initiated talks about selling to PD. The bloomberg article is, however, fairly vague on that point. It merely states they were in discussions about selling, but were not satisfied with the offer. This does not necessarily mean they actively wanted to sell. It could also mean that PD was trying to get them to sell. This is a small but important distinction as it brings with it further implications and frames the situation.

[snip] It is okay to be frustrated but that's just rude. Blaming or attacking the devs is not cool. They are the wrong target.

@ShakeNBake Good to know there are a couple anticaps here.

Thanks for making an announcement here. However, your post doesn't really explain anything. Especially the part I cite above. If Michael Cook is such a great guy, how does that fit with the information we learned from the bloomberg article? How does this fit with the clash that obviously happened between star.theory and private division?

I find it odd that people are entering the point into the discussion that star.theory MIGHT have been wanting "too much" for a sell out. Think about what you just said. It is their company. They can ask for whatever value they want. If its too steep, nobody is forced to actually buy it. EVEN IF they actually wanted to sell the company (which we don't know) and EVEN IF they were asking for a googol USD (which we also don't know), that has ZERO bearing on the morality of their company being effectively stolen from them. That's not how things work. Try to distinguish between legality and morality. They only occasionally overlap.

I'm saying that it must have been clear to the employees the moment their sole project was pulled from the studio that this was not going to end well. The "come up with new ideas" thing was a last-ditch effort, nothing more. Also note that the employees would likely be forsaking all royalties from the eventually released game after pouring two years of work into it.

It seems to me that the real point is missed by many commenters here. The outrage should not be concerns over the quality of the game. That might be affected, it might not. The real point is the way a small studio was gutted and its employees forced to abandon it. Yes, forced. It is extremely hard to abandon a project that is close to your heart, let alone face the financial consequences the employees would have faced if they had declined Take Two's offer. And now, after that show of force, the publisher will be able to get away with any pressure they put on the devs. Regardless of the face value of the final product; KSP2 will be forever tainted. Saying: "I'll wait for initial reviews instead of first-day-buying KSP2" utterly misses the entire point.

One simply has to acknowledge the accomplishment of surpassing EA in ugliness. That is no small feat. Well done, Take Two, well done.