Moons

Besides thet we also dont know how many people worked since when- how many are in full time etc. And honestly im having a hard time thinking that the game released in EA right now is the work of 50 people working for 3 years full time. Chances are ther eis a lot of part time, working on different projects or simply lots of content not beeing released in the EA version but obviously nobody knows.

Way worse - and they would have way less sales to begin with. Please just stop making excuses when its so obvious ... Sons of the Forest has 170k players right now Forst 1 24k - according to your logic that doesnt make sense? SOTF released on 23.02 and players dropped - in a longer period from 424k to 172k. Why are people so obsesssed with whitewashing - this is helping no one. This game has problems and they have to be solved soon if this game should ever recover from this. Finding excuses for everything wont help anybody.

Who else would be responsible - the publisher decides on the budget, release and price and in this case the publisher actually bought the rights to this game and created a developer for it? This isnt some external studio etc. ... Even if the Developer had issues - those issues would be management and funding issues - and that would again be a problem of the publisher ...

To be honest i never understood that - they seem to combine the worst elements for the most performance impact at the least good looks. My personal opinion: Kerbals are rather comic-like so it would make sense to have stylized low poly models with stylized textures - for trees, for buildings etc. - that would enable them to give planets etc. way more general details - instead - for example looking at the trainign centre - it looks as if they put maximum polygons and textures in the smallest things and to compensate for the performance this costs 99% of everything is emtpy. It feels as if they are concentrating on the wrong things - it was the same in the first game - for example something important in KSP2 would be good looking clouds, and minimalistic but more buildings. It looks like many buildings instead of using textures are actually using higher poly models - which to me for example makes no sense in a game like this. Looking at the video above to me the art style also doesnt look consistent.

Yeah i wont buy it - not even in a normal sale. It s not only important to me what a game costs but how a company interacts with its customers. You can talk about that all you want but i dont care and neither does the industry. The price of a game is not based on what you wrote at all - have you never wondered why 99% of games cost almost the same ammount of money - especially AAA - no matter the difference in development costs? In reality its pretty simple - games cost as much as Experience has demonstrated that people are willing to pay - tahts it. At most the costs set the lower limit. And yes i only dont care if a game got more expensive because development had issues - like in this case change of developer etc. - to me its simple - ammount content + overall quality = price im willing to pay -> that will be compared with the price of other games and if it seems to high then i wont buy it. Also 160k a year per person? In general what is the point of making up numbers on the fly to come to a conclusion?

And its 100% the fault of the publisher from my point of view. Knowing the state of the game the only logical reason would have been a delay of EA - or at least having a reasonable EA price like 99% of all other EA games - i wouldnt even call selling a game at an AAA price in an alpha/beta state EA at all ... Chances are they wont recover from this - and it was obvious that this would happen from the start to anyone that knew the state of the game and the general concept of EA - you cant just charge full AAA price at EA release for an alpha/beta and expect that people have absoluetely no expectations. If the game would have been released like this at 30 USD there would be positive reactions and many fans wouldnt have been put off. I own KSP1 and all DLC since day 1 - i was 100% certain i would buy this game on release - then i saw the price and now chances are i will never buy it because i dont believe it has a future. I also had a lot of trust in the company behind it - all of that is pretty much gone now. If that was the goal - mission accomplished.

[snip] Fact is - this game started with 26k players and dropped to about 3k in a week - thats not normal - thats alarming and pretending its not wont help this game at all. It sholud be pretty obvious that actions (price drop etc.) have to be taken otherwise this game wont recover from all the negative press, reviews etc. it got because it sold in the state it is at a AAA full release price. Thats a drop of almost 90% ...

The mixture of coping and elitist mindset of some people is just absurd ... "the useless masses" - seriously if those are the people that are supposed to save the game then its already lost ...

You do realize that is probably at the same level of accuracy as reading the tea leaves? So someone found random words and code therefore XY - someone else said the code of A has been rewritten and was able to conclude that within days after release therefore XY ...

A lot of conclusions with almost no information - just because there is code and some file-names doesnt mean nothing ... Since this game has been developed by another studio before chances are there is also a lot of old code etc. - long story short - i wouldnt draw any conclusions from this. But some people also want to draw conclusions from not released builds etc. - and most of the time people will draw the conclusions they want to have. (not even sure how to look at that or how its named since i dont care ...)

Why would an early access game in a beta state be on a service like GeForce now? It seems to be running on a few game/remote-streaming services but ive never heard of them - but that doesnt mean much since i dont care about that: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/shadow-by-blade Take it as you will but you should seriously inform yourself before using them - i doubt that an early access game will run well. And its probably more like a remote PC that streams to your PC but you have to inform yourself - i have no idea.

As far as i know whenever such terms become a topic lots of them simply fail. The problem is most of these things never go to court since each individual case isnt worth it and chances are that even if you have a legal insurance they will simply pay you the damage instead of paying for a lawsuit - which makes sense - if the damage is for example below 50 Dollars and a single hour of an attorney costs 200+ its probably not a hard decision. To be honest - i never understood how this industry managed to strip consumers of pretty much most rights consumers normally have. Politics obviously isnt interrested in regulation at all in this area even tough its the biggest entertainment industry right now - which is weird.

Well to me it means much when the old game has more players than a new release days after release. I also enjoy early access - but to me this isnt early access since they pretty much just sold an alpha at a full AAA price while giving me all the negatives as a consumer and none of the positive things of EA. EA means when i buy i buy as is and i have no guarantee that the game ever gets finished and/or in what state - therefore its normal for EA games to cost way less. To me what they have done seems pretty de-valuating to me - they want the full price of an AAA game now, they dont want to give me any guarantees for the finished product, they released the game in a rather bad state with not much content and im supposed to pretend that thats okay. In my personal opinion that doesnt show much respect for the community and im not even talking about the EULA in regards to privacy and modders ... I also bought Sons of the Forest - the game is buggy - doesnt have that much content yet - but guess what - im okay with it because i see it as an investment/purchase and for that reason i only had to pay about 30 USD for it. It feels like the community is appreciated as investor and helping to make the game better. But when someone wants the full price of an AAA game for a really really early EA game then i feel more like a walking wallet ...

To be honest - looking at the game and the price wouldnt it be better to wait for a bit? Also if nothing is done looking at the player count i wonder how long this game will last - especially in regards to mods - modder usually stay with popular games and this game also requries a lot of performance without any mods so i wonder how much room there is for mods. KSP1 now has 3200 vs KSP2 1500 which is pretty bad. Also - to be honest - i trust steam more than other platforms and prefer the steam update system. Dont get me wrong i like KSP in general but i dont want to support this business decisions (especially EA and price vs quality/content) - i hope if enough people show them that this isnt okay then they will eventually have to react in a meaningful way. And i alos do wonder if this game will become the next KSP1 since looking at the fast drop of players i wonder if modders will really switch to KSP2. And yes i think mods are what kept KSP1 releveant and interresting for so long.

Not only that but the peak player count isnt high aswell - it barely was much better than for KSP1 - and KSP2 actually had a lot more marketing and was already a well known brand.

Ermh EPIC since it started was giving away even AAA games for free. They have lots of users but i doubt lots of people actually buy things in their store if they have another choice - i also have an EPIC account with lots of free games but havent bought anything ... Its not hard to have "users" if you gift hundreds of games for free. At one point they even gifted GTA5 to their users for free. Also if i remember correctly they argued that the consumers would get a part of that cut - guess what never happened ... Just think about it - they have given away games for free since 2019? and even doing that they never catched up with steam. Free game List: https://gamerant.com/epic-games-store-free-games-list/ And to support my claims: https://www.vgchartz.com/article/452389/epic-games-store-customers-spent-on-average-just-4-in-2021/ If that includes their ingame Stores in Fortnite etc. than thats probably even worse.

Its pretty obvious that Steam is the biggest store for games - epic is mostly used if there is no other choice or if its cheaper so steam probably is a very good indicator. It is beyond me why anyone would buy games on the EPIC store if there is any other choice - because EPIC - in my opinion - is probably the most anti-consumer store i can think of with lots of missing features to silence consumers. There is a reason why there isnt a forum or real reviews. Just now saw that there is some weird "user score" that isnt explained at all with a pretty high rating for KSP2 - take that as you will ... I will never support that store - i can still remember how they pay off companies for a thing we never had on PC - timed exclusivity - they even did that so short before release that games suddenly werent purchaseable on steam anymore - for example Metro Exodus ... Not to mention their lawsuits because of ethically questionable practices: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/business/ftc-epic-games-settlement.html

For example: Privacy: To me that pretty much means that they can do almost anything - and i wonder - i bought a product - yet i feel like im the product and even pay for it ... Modding: What does that even mean - does that mean modders pretty much give away any right to whatever they create? And im pretty sure something like this doesnt work in real life: From the little things i know about the legal system of most countries - especially when it comes to consumers - terms that give one party the right to change an agreement afterwards however they want simply dont work. The same applys to "auto accept" - i mean what would that mean in reality - i would just ranomly lose the ability to use a product i purchased because they change their terms randomly years after release - but if i still use it i agree to everything automatically? I know that many companies do those absurd EULAs etc. but that doesnt change the fact that this has to stop.

Serious question: Do you - and the team - really think Discord is worth it? Wouldnt it be better to reduce communication to platforms that are actually publicly visible to most people? In reality anything said at discord can never be found because google doesnt search trough discord - so lots of informations is just lost in the chaotic system that is discord and people interrested in the game also wont finde discord since its not public via search engines etc. Twitter - mostly for news and statements (but to be honest i think twitter is useless these days since it seems to block users without login) Forums - main way to communicate - it makes sense to use the Steam forums and the official forums here. To be honest i think thats one of the main issues of public communication these days - there are just way too many platforms and you cant use all of them at once in a good way that doesnt require lots of work. I often wonder if it wouldnt make more sense to just use one form like a forum and simply link to said forum from ever other platform so people know where the main hub for information is.

I dont think so - i also dont think that the critique is directed at the dvelopers but at the publisher. The decision in wich state and at what price to release isnt a decision made by the DEVs - at least thats what i think when it comes to big publishers. And i also think gamers have been way to lenient with gaming industry - for that reason whe now have gambling mechanics like lootboxes, absurd MTs prices - you can sell worthless cheaply made skins in amyn games probably made in a hour for up to 20 Dollars. Big companies are simple - they want to maximize profits and they will do so by increasing prices, reducing content, adding MTs etc. until there is too much resistance that leads to making less money than before. If there is no resistance because people believe this is a situation of mutual understanding and interrest than everything will just get worse for consumers until they will react. Not only for the consumers but also for the developers - it should be pretty obvious for anyone that outside an indie developer most of the big decisions are made by someone else and developers are normal employees. I obviously have no idea and cant know - but if i had to guess im pretty sure that the developers probably also didnt want to release in this state at this price and beeing lenient on the publisher probably wont help the developer at all. Pretending that everything was fine would just justify a release like this in the future. But yes i think its important to differentiate between different people and what they can actually do - but reading trough the forums i dont get the impression that most people blame the developers.

But thats the point - thats not what you bought. With EA you bought the game at its current state with the risk of it never beeing finished and not knowing the feature complete version if it ever happens. You bought EA not a pre-order with BETA Access. The problem is - the game right now is having huge issues - having half the numbers days after release as a game that was released a decade ago (KSP1) is a very bad sign. For this game to become a success it needs lots of players that will lure even more players and modders in. But that right now is not happening and chances are that if it doesnt recover soon it will never recover with all the negative press and reviews. And if they seriously increase the price even more at launch im 98% sure that they will never recover - they also wont find many casual players with a game with hardware requirements that hard - recommended is a GPU that almost cost 800 Dollars (3080). In reality its probably in your best interrest that the game becomes cheaper becomes a success and gets more features - as it is now i wonder how long it will take until the publisher loses faith in the product. But i wouldnt give the DEVs the blame - in reality whoever decided to release the game right now at this price in this state (bugs, content, hardware requirements) pretty much made a flop a pretty bad launch self fullfilling prophecy. If not even players are switching to the new KSP then Modders for sure wont aswell - and that will just start a downwards spiral. KSP1: 6200 KSP2: 3400 And KSP2 should still have the benefit of beeing new just days after release ...

Which was to be expected if you sell an EA game at 50 Dollars. You can buy most AAA games at about 50 Dollars if you buy from third party stores. Uncharted Legacy of Thieves launched at 50 Dollars on steam. The games that launched at 69 Dollars actually flopped hard - mainly because of the price - on PC for example Forspoken. And to be honest 70 Dollars is a price at which i will simply ignore a release. And im sorry to say that so directly - but believing that KSP2 would justify a 70 Dollar price tag is just absurd. I wont even pay that much for an AAA game and even with all the features currently stated with a perfect release with no bugs it would never justify 70 Dollars to me. And looking at how many of the new PC releases at 70 Dollars turned into huge flops with lots of negativity chances are consumers actually for once are putting an end to bad business practices. Release sales are very important to companys and the mixture of flopping release sales combined with negative reviews actually hurt a lot financially therefore i hop 70 Dollars game will soon stop to show up.

That would be normal since a professional company has different people for different roles and it would be chaotic if every person was allowed to talk in public as a spokesman of the company but there are ways in between but all of this has to be set up by the management. I think the main problem of modern community management 2 things: - the separation of community management and developers (obviously a community manager cant say much without beeing involved in what is happening) - the modern gaming industry that has become big business - and combined with the launch price of 50$ everything a community manager will say will actually be understood as binding promises This probably makes it even harder. But to be honest some games to me showed how good community management can work - its a mixture of simply showing the community via interacdtion that problems are known and beeing worked on and that the frustration is understood and looking for some socially capable developer/programmer etc. that can act as a sort of interface between the community and the developers - i think the job should be to give people the impression that work is beeing done and that their voices are beeing heard. I know thats a hard thing to do but if it works its millions of times better than reduced communication. And last but not least im really not sure if Discord is the best place to do that - it just feels like such a chaotic way of communications and since its not in google most people will never even see those interactions.

Pretty sure there is no TOS against that since that is pretty much how 99% of all EA games work - Kerbal is doing the same - just in a very strange way (start at AAA price and raise even more at release) and there even were EA games in sale etc. - pretty sure there arent many limitations as long as your not going completely crazy. The problem is - what you describe isnt EA but a Pre-Order with Beta/Alpha Access - you can do that aswell but if you think thats the same then you are mistaken - having a pre-order with Alpha/Beta Access would mainly give consumers way more rights in regards to the final product and would be way more binding. EA pretty much is investing in a game that may or may not ever be finished never knowing what features the final game will have. I'm sorre the problem isnt the cunsomers and fans of the game or the EA system in general but the absurd way the EA system was used by KSP. The only other game that did something similar was Baldurs Gate 3 but even they had way more content with almost no bugs at the start and never actually intended to use EA in a way EA is meant to be used. In general i think EA should be blocked for any game with bigger publishers. And as i stated - no i dont think its okay to charge full AAA price for an EA games and then pretend calling it EA magically makes it immune to critique. In general its pretty werid when a game by an AAA Publisher uses EA. What EA is supposed to be: a way to fund a game for smaller devleopers and get money way before the product a way to get more community interaction from the start a way to have some of the risk taken by the consumers but that risk and payment way before release also has to be compensated financially What its not is a way to get almost 100% of the money up front while levering many consumer rights and shifting productions risks to consumers without financial compensation. They could have just sold the game at full price as a pre-order with Alpha/Beta Access - why didnt they do that? Since i saw a lot of different price-models etc. on steam i doubt that there are many limitations on steam in regards to those things.

Im not so sure about that - i would agree if it was a normal release since it would devaluate the product. But in this case its an EA release that was priced way too high and is now leading to lots of negative feedback, reviews and press that will never go away - that will damange the brand and the game way more in the long run and could even make this the last KSP game. I just read that elswhere and it made sense since it would explain the extremely high GPU requirements - but maybe its was jut false information. Well i dont think so - i think with all the publicity and the mods it already reached most of its potential playerbase. Even with lots of tutorials the base game mechanics are probably too niche for most people so i dont think its a good idea to concentate too much on a different audience. A prime example from my point of view for a mistake like that were Torchlight 3 and Command and Conquer - they pretty much tried to get a completely new audience and thought their main audience would buy anyways. In reality they didnt get the new audience and lost the old audience. And as i stated - i think it would probably be way more cost efficient to cooperate with youtubers - because not only can they do community interaction better - they can also draw in lots of new players.