chefsbrian

This was more or less my expectation, as the 'improved' launch complexes and buildings would be colonies. Pressing a button and upgrading the KSC wouldn't mean much compared to adding modules to your Minmus base. Alas, a vision that'll likely never come to pass in the games we have available.

Too late, I'm afraid. While Nate's still out there, KSA has already picked up major elements of the core team such as Nertea and Blackrack, so you've already lost the key technological concept and planetary visual concepts. And while I don't want to speak poorly of anyone else from Intercept who is still unemployed, the reality of things is that after six months, the best, brightest, and most capable among them have likely already found new jobs doing new things. That's the thing about bright, talented people, everyone else knows they're that and wants them. And its not realistic to expect anyone to return - after all that happened, would you want to come back and go through all that all over again? It would take an infeasible financial offer to do so. Its also worth keeping in mind that this is a publisher, and not a developer that picked up the Private Division legs. Its vastly more likely that they look to hire/license/hand off KSP2 to a complete studio in a whole, who likely have their own team and intent for the project. And that's outside the fact that I consider both financing a resumption of KSP2 and a studio being willing to do so to be unlikely. Its more realistic that a new team gets hired for an entirely new 'KSP2' under the original concept of "Modernize KSP1 as a platform for future DLC/Content" or even for a team to start making KSP1 DLC again just to prove interest and generate some revenue while 'learning the ropes'.

Annapurna was only the publisher there, as they were only the publisher on all the titles associated to them. Their only in-house developed game isn't out yet, so we have no idea how their game development talent plays out. That's not to doom and gloom it, unproven hands are just as likely to be good as bad, only that saying that this new group are the developers that made Journey or Stray is like saying that KSP2 was developed by the same guys who made Red Dead Redemption 2. The best plausible news out of this is that there is now someone in place who can discuss bringing in a new studio to try and finish KSP2, or move onto a new KSP game - I consider both exceedingly unlikely in the immediate future, but its now gone from "Pipe dream" to "questionable but possible decision"

Not likely? I understand the initial thoughts, but remember what was actually bought - Take 2 sold Private Division, the publishing label. Not studios they work with, the ones that were owned proper got the full axe, and Musk isn't going to value the names - he knows what he wants to call it all anyway. Musk also wouldn't really value IP the same way a normal buyer would, since again he likes to rebrand and make his own stuff - the KSP IP isn't really worth anything to him when he'd probably just want to call it "Starship Space Program" and make all the humanoids wear SpaceX flight suits, right. And the tech stack isn't really worth anything to him - If he wants to pursue AI assisted game development with a studio, that would make salvaging a mostly human project harder, probably to the point of being unrealistic. Art and music assets aren't a big deal either for him, the former already don't align with the visual themes his companies tend to go for, and the latter isn't something so good all on its own to be worth buying an entire publishing label. And he has no real use for a publishing label - He's one of the richest men in the world, he can self finance a game studio releasing a game, no problem. Its not completely impossible or stupid for him to have bought it, it just doesn't seem like he'd actually get anything from it.

Man, its been a wild couple weeks for Space Fans, huh? First KSA, now this. Right out the gate, odds are good that KSP was at least a primary interest of the buyer, alongside the existing infrastructure of a publishing house. The latter is of debatable value, but that most certainly come down to the sale price, as opposed to actual debates about the viability of the business. Indie publishers aren't scarce, but neither are interested indie devs these days, if you've got the backing capital, that's probably good. However, this also probably means the final death knell of KSP2 as we know it. While the new owners would inherit the KSP games on steam and their future revenue, the existing revenues are already in Take2's pocket. This puts KSP2 in an incredibly awkward position for the new owner where its basically not capable of making them money, at least not for a long time with a significant expense. The entire studio's gone, and judging from what we've heard of the events leading up to it, its exceedingly unlikely that the games in a pristine "throw new bodies at it and refer to the documentation" handoff state. While its not impossible for them to reconstruct a new team or hire on a new team, they'd be sinking massive cost and effort into just refamiliarizing with the project. This is probably a terrible business call just because the majority of the sales have likely already been made, at least until you theoretically finish it and turn it around. Between having already hit EA at near full price and having completely flopped and destroyed its steam scores and perceptions, you'd have to be actually chugging straight copium to hear that there's a new owner and buy it off of that alone. And this isn't even starting on the technical feasibility of just throwing a new team in, or if such a team would even be interested - Especially with many of the core and major names not just fired, but off and working on a competitor and definitely not coming back. You have an incredible uphill climb, with significantly diminished revenue potential to finance it off of. It would be an extreme stretch for it to make any kind of sense. No, unfortunately, the best way forward for this business with KSP2 would be to kill it. Even if you wanted to make a KSP game to sell right out the gate, you'd be better served with a new team working from scratch. The only long term consequence of axing KSP2 as it exists today would be a complete inability to launch any near future KSP games into early access without massive backlash. Considering the original hope was to just make a KSP2 as a graphical overhaul of 1 with some modernizations in the technology stack, you could do that and release as a full game in a reasonable budget, as TakeTwo initially wanted. No need to face the Early Access guns then. Maybe you offer a KSP2 owner discount at launch if your struggling to garner community goodwill, but otherwise, we're on our own. And that'd be the good outcome. The bad outcome is still axing KSP2, and just not making anything new for a while in it at all. And just to touch on KSA - its extremely unlikely that Rocketwerkz has bought an entire publisher. It doesn't really mesh with their existing properties to bring in the PD contents, and they aren't really in the business of publishing. Its also extremely unlikely that the new IP holders would be able to make a deal with Rocketwerkz to turn KSA into KSP3 or something - Rocketwerkz has already settled on a plan and built a team, they already have the capacity to publish, and its unlikely that the new IP holders would just hand complete creative control of the IP over to Rocketwerkz. The idea of having to compromise on the vision for something they're already executing and fully capable of delivering on (in their eyes) is unlikely to be appetizing, and the new IP holder has a LOT to potentially lose if Rocketwerkz ends up fumbling KSA. This opinion may change as the nature of the new owners reveals itself, but a quiet purchase like this screams some private equity firm looking to do their usual exploit, extract and sell, as opposed to benevolent gaming overlords. Also on KSA - People, dear god, calm the hype train. They're still in early orbital mechanics and rendering work on a custom engine. I've been following dev, the logs and videos and stuff (as much as I can, some of it is over my coding level for sure) and while they have an extremely promising tech stack and a very good attitude regarding how to best approach it, there's functionally nothing here. Its less than a tech demo, and yet we've already got people speculating about how they're gonna design specific rockets and flights and whether it'll have an integrated Real Scale mode or not. There's nothing wrong with being hopeful, but unless your a programmer or game developer, 95% of what's going right now really isn't gonna be of interest to you. Stick a pin in it, keep your hopes in check, and swing round in a year to see if its actually grown from an engine concept to a game project.

Bit unusual to be a six-monther instead of a one to three year deal, but there's dozens of plausible explanations ranging from "Thats what we had the spare budget for in the org stack that inherited KSP2" to "We just need it to go long enough for a new org structure to properly inherit it later" to "in six months a decision about the future will have been made" to "In six months the new studio will take it over". Either way, the fact someone did it means someone both has the authority and care to do so, whether by explicit decree or by the cost being so marginal that it was easier to ask for forgiveness on the expense incurred than to risk asking forgiveness for losing the forum.

Nope, pretty much any project that tries to touch anything that comes out of it would get sued into oblivion not just by Take2, but by the various middleware that's included in the project under license. Even if Take2 plays dumb and for some reason does this, everyone else down the stack won't because that's also their livelyhoods that just leaked. Corporate acquisitions are always hell, and in gaming its particularly bad due to the sheer nebulous value of IP and the way IP's rolled in and out of various hands like crazy over the decades. It wouldn't be unrealistic for it to take 3-6 months just to itemize and clarify what's actually being sold to a potential buyer, much less the actual buyer negotiations, and that's assuming they already have interested buyers. T2's not in a position where they are going to feel any serious financial pressure to offload PD right this second, their investors are eagerly looking towards GTA6 and that, barring absolute catastrophe, will probably keep them happy for a couple years. They can wait until they find the "right" deal, the IP and names don't cost much to hold onto.

If possible, I recommend applying for a refund if the game is still not working for you. Studio's shuttered, and there's still be no successor developer given the game, and its likely there never will be at this point.

Well if we're hyping/pitching ideas, the whole 'expanded' premise of KSP2 to me was always "Make an actual kerbal civilization". And that's where I'd go. The biggest controversial change I'd probably make is that vehicle assembly might resemble KSP, vehicle disassembly would not - I'd be baking things down into singular physics objects at launch/dock/undock to try and sidestep a lot of the worst of the physics problems. I'd also entirely be ok with a somewhat reduced simulation accuracy - my goal would be verisimilitude, not realism, it should feel like its working realistically, even if that means cutting out counter intuitive but realistic aspects. Structural failure may split up a craft into fragments, but they're non-recoverable or functional, and 'little' things like an antenna popping off wouldn't be in the scope. Ship works until it don't, then it comes apart permanently and preferably in a glorious fashion. While this doesn't make the space simulation vastly easier, it does make it vastly less error prone from edgecase physics schenanigans. Taking a functionally single-entity physics object and moving it off/on rails isn't going to incurr phantom forces the way a joint and spring system will, and only has to content with the usual floating point inaccuracies over time. Rather than breaking new ground, we've reduced the ship flying portion of the mechanics to mostly a known problem space, people have done this before. What I would want to expand more is the ship mechanics in so far as what parts actually 'do'. Early tech, modern era stuff would be very similar to KSP - multifunction tin cans, mostly barrels of boom with a few pieces slapped on for utility purpose. Short lived, single mission type craft. But once you start doing the interplanetary civ thing, with orbital stations and a moon colony and whatnot, I'd want to see the new unlocked parts open the realm for semi-permanent ships, and the design considerations they have - crew comfort, cargo, zero-g exclusive design sensibilities, etc. Think less Saturn 5, more Expanse. I wouldn't want this to be onerous, but the design goal would be to tie your colonial/civilization infrastructure into being useful for these new permanent ships, and limiting them at the same time. That orbital colony isn't just a shipyard with people in a can, but berthing for these new ships. They might not have the long legs to go across the solar system just yet, so hopping world to world and expanding to meet the needs of your ships would become a significant aspect. Mission planning and ship design for general mission categories would become more important than autostrut and "will that bend in half and explode at full thrust". We'd lose the flight sim design considerations, and gain new ones. I'd do this because space flight, dock, assembly etc is in pursuit of creating craft to go do things under a "build a civilization" concept - the thing you do with a ship is the part of interest, and the less places that the game development/design can fail in regards to that, the better. I'd instead focus on trying to make the science and expansion of the kerbal civilization more involved - Research should be a protracted thing, even with equipment, and bring some design considerations to the ships beyond slapping a cylinder on and calling it a day. I'd absolutely steal colonies and resources as KSP2 hinted at them being, although I'd probably drop flying supply routes in favor of a more abstracted system in the background, consuming resources to provide logistical support. Supporting the homeworld with its new little colonies, and using both together to expand and build up would be the main loop. Increasing your off-world population and returning new materials to the homeworld would drive unlocking new experiments to perform, experiments would drive a science system that yields new parts and colony options, and the cycle feeds itself. Locationally rare resources would make this cycle naturally encourage expanding out, and deeper techs with more exotic materials would unlock new parts for ships and colonies alike, under a tree design as opposed to a linear one - the fissile materials on the local moon would open up nuclear drives and power sources, but if you ignored them and dead headed to the nearest world to unlock fusion, you'd still be able to just use that tree. Having both could unlock intermingled options. I'm not sure I'd want to tackle interstellar at first, but if I did, I'd actually be inclined to abstract it somewhat. Rather than having all the star systems physically there at all times, you have the active one with the active ship, and everything else on-rails, ticking up to finish simulating when they're loaded back in. For the engine literate, I'd effectively treat them as separate scenes or scene data sets, with only one actually existing at a given time. Fly past some far out point in a given system, and its an interstellar transition, abstracting a prolonged maneuver to allow entry into the system you were flying at, at a velocity and time based on your ships capabilities and choices - if you have the fuel, you can do a full 50/50 burn and come out the other side as fast as you came in, or you could spend longer coasting, etc. If your ship isn't capable of reaching the star, or you flew really off target, etc, you are lost to the void. The main relevant element here is it completely leaves the simulated volume for that trip. This would all be highly experimental and I have no idea what would work or be fun in any high confidence. Its just my observation that over simulation here doesn't actually give us anything meaningful from a gameplay perspective, but incurs a lot of headaches. The long term goal here is that the player is building ships, potentially with more freedom on a part to part level due to reduced simulation accuracy, but a potential I could carry on with my thoughts for colonies and resources at a finer level of detail, but its late. I think what I would summarize is that if I sat down and decided to show Take2 how its done, I'd honestly not really be making a Space Flight Simulator. I'd be making a Space Civ Simulator, with flight as the main method of interacting with the world. Very different design goals at the end of the day, because I don't think full flight and vehicle simulation and the gameplay incentives/loop of a civ builder are actually the path to a coherent gameplay experience. We already saw cracks in this in KSP2 where there were some big nebulous questions about the onerous nature of setting up mining or logistics in a flight sim to facilitate colonies, and the solutions they proposed were to simply abstract away the flight sim. Rather than using that as a bandaid solution in the edge cases, I'd just embrace it as the actual solution to the problem from the get go, and design from that starting point immediately.

There's been no depot activity in any of the steam repo's since July 1st - if someones doing something, its solo and they're not pushing anything to any of their usual channels. The only other publicly tracked changes to anything visible on the steam is the steady downwards tick of the overall review score, which tracked to 37% back on Monday. This guy was just trolling for jesters, become a weird steam forum cultural thing to compete to appear to be the stupidest forum member to collect them. Popular ways include defending the seemingly indefensible, posting deliberate controversy, etc.

Probably for the best. There's not a single thing that he can say that wouldn't, at best, be a mass ban generating event. At worst, the sort of thing that ends up with people having federal agents knocking at doors asking about certain statements posters made. In return for all that, we'd get nothing. There is nothing he can say, nothing he can promise - both in the literal sense and in the authority sense. Nobody will believe a word he has to say, nobody will believe any apologies he makes are genuine, and he no longer has any authority or power to act upon any promises or statements he may want to make. For better or for worse, Nate is poison in this community and franchise now. He can probably never touch KSP again in his career, and quite likely can't touch the space genre as a whole from any leadership or authority position. Too much bad blood that people actually know of, words spread inside the general niche, and the likely same story goes for any early access or indie projects. He'd have to wander off into sports, or shooters, all mainstream stuff under major publishers where barely anyone knows about people like creative directors, to avoid damaging projects he's associated with.

Even the great spaghettifier has had to come to terms with whats happened. Fun Video though

Surprisingly enough, this is likely the bottom of the list and one of the first things that'd be spoken of - because in all likelyhood, none of this was really planned. The story that is, not the NDA's. A lot of these things are left to interpretation and future assessment based on new things that were added, and what the community responds well to. Maybe ideas went around the office, but KSP is extremely far from a narrative game, and the effort involved in that narrative would have been similar. Even games with major narrative bents both have narrative go public when they die, and verifiably have their narratives massively reworked merely months before release - Half Life Episode 3 with Epistle 3 is a great example of the former, and Half Life Alyx is a great known example of the latter. Odds are the extend of the story content was some art direction notes about how to design the easter eggs you can find, to avoid one being a gold statue and the next being something looking like a crystal computing array outta stargate. NDA's in practice (Theoretically they can say anything) generally cover material, quantifiable things - Specs, internal reviews and documentation, so forth. Trying to apply them to off the cuff discussion of the sorts that likely encompassed the story is difficult to actually enforce in reality. The likely biggest thing that'd keep it from leaking isn't going to be legal documents or expectations though, but just the fact that it was probably Nate who has the closest to ideas for it, and then a few bits of easter egg banter in the office. Everyone else probably just knows "We didn't have anything yet".

I look forward to the Shadowzone video on this AMA

Depending on the level of Trust you put in Take Two Interactive, this is correct. If you believe them more than you believe your own eyes, then KSP2 will continue to receive updates and the studio has not been closed. If you are more inclined to believe your eyes and the reporting of outside parties looking in, claimed sources etc, then Take Two Interactive axed everyone in Intercept Games and is looking to sell off the entirety of Private Division, the publisher arm KSP2 was under. This is with them also entertaining offers for individual IP's such as KSP2, and everything under the PD label is open to offer, it seems. Private Division has yet to manage to release both a critical and commercial hit, and instead has a history of middling games with middling sales, or critical hits with commercial failures. With overbudget millstones like KSP2 around their neck, this final outcome isn't hugely surprising. The speed and complete lack of grace by which it has occurred is surprising, along with the deliberate fog of war of pretending absolutely nothing is wrong.