Kerbart

When profiling your customers it's really, really, really nice to know that your data is based on unique customers, not on duplicate sets of data. First/Last name are a way of determining that. Along other things.

I think it's a trademark vs copyright issue, and throw in scale. T2 could care less if you have 5 copies on your machine for the various versions, modded, vanilla, resized to solar system, etc, etc. No one will be taken to court about that. Give a copy on a friend and even if T2 finds out, they'll hardly consider it worth it to pay their attorneys to recover that $50 from you. Post it on bittorrent or sell dozens of CD's (or memory sticks?) at your local school and it might be a different story. What they are more worried about is people selling T-shirts with Jeb on it. That's more a trademark issue than copyright ("I drew this Jeb myself, it's not a copy). Trademark violations can be interpreted as "brand abandonment" by the IP owner if not fought, and can be used in court against them. This is why large companies "have to" defend their trademarks aggressively (NFL telling a church league for grammar school kids they can't use NFL team names comes to mind. I'm not saying that was necessary but that's the reasoning behind such behavior). Remember T2 hasn't just paid Squad to sell copies of the game. They also have the right to sell plushies, posters, coffee mugs and 3D printed models. So, if you decide to make an x-rated movie with Kerbals in it, T2 has the legal rope to strangle you. If you decide to market a first-person shooter called "Kerval Space Program: Jeb goes wild" they will come after you. And the less loopholes their EULA has, the more likely they will be in winning those kind of cases. That's why these EULA's are ironclad.

Have you tried suggesting not buying the DLC? Many of those opposed to the DLC seem to think that the mere threat of not buying the DLC would be enough for have Squad/T2 cower in a corner, and cave in and release it for free (because that... would make sense. Right?). I'm sure that will straighten them out! Just think how much sweeter it will be returning from training, and 1.4.17 is there, and all the mods are working fine with it!

Because One wonders how you're posting this if your antivirus software has deleted all browser software from your computer?

Spyware? No. Collecting userdata? Probably. But that's not spyware. Spyware is collecting keywords, and passwords, and what you're emailing and to who. Am I certain? No. But I really, really, really doubt that Squad or T2 would ever do that. The risk involved with that would just be unacceptable.

Ironically, this is exactly what the community has been asking for, for years. “Don't give us new features, just fix what's not working” So here we have a “mostly under the hood” release: New Unity Engine Bug fixes (did you notice that when you adjust the "target end" of struts in symmetry mode they now all move, not just the active ones? It's not even listed on the change log!) A few cosmetic updates that open the gates to modders (textures) An extension of the API (which is only beneficial for modders; obviously there's a commitment towards modders) In short, it's exactly what “we” have been asking for, for a long time, and I'm fine if all future updates have a character like this; improve the mechanics of the game, but not a bunch of new features (each introducing new bugs). The mods? Most of them likely just need to be recompiled and will be up and running within a week.

With the added advantage that by then we'll be in 1.4.3 and you'll have a stable release to base the upgrades on. From what I understand there's a new Unity engine used. I cannot image that will go without any hickups.

The sad thing is that we can expect serious requests in that direction within a matter of days. When will the 1.4 version come out Just checking if there is a 1.4 update already I just noticed that this mod doesn't work with 1.4, any news when that will be fixed? It broke! Hope you fix it soon! Some (most) are with the best intentions and indeed not meant as “hey you lazy ### hurry up” but they all seem to come over like that after a while. Any of you modders has my appreciation and the updates will come when they are ready. Take your time, I'd rather see it fixed once than an endless stream of bug fixes (often “encouraged” by super-friendly and helpful error reports... not!), and “it'll be ready when it's ready.” In fact, I don't want to see any updated mods before the weekend. Enjoy the evenings, watch The Batchelor or whatever you mod-freak people like to watch, and relax, and tackle some of your mods in the weekend, at your leisure!

Excuse me?

It's not an update. It's an addition. Let me start by saying that this is a very weaselly (any relations to ferrets?) cop out and anyone who believes that Squad—or more precise, Harvester—never intended this to be interpreted as "DLC for free" is incredibly naive or [something else]. The language back then was bold, clear and intended to be free from legal wrangling. So yes, back in the day I interpreted it as “we will never charge for anything we add on to the game in the future, period” because there was no reason to interpret it as anything else. Those were the days you'd crash straight into the launch tower as well right after launch. But I digress. You know how else I interpreted that promise? As incredibly stupid and short-sighted. Because no matter how brilliant the game already was back then, revenue was tied to selling new copies and new copies only. Not only do you not have to be a rocket scientist to see the problem with that, the game is sold to aspiring rocket scientists in the first place! Obviously there will be a point you've sold the game to everyone who will want to buy it. Maybe, at that point, you can squeeze a few more drops out of the revenue stream by selling non-English versions but that won't exactly be a market for aggressive expansion. My biggest fear with the game, when I bought it many years ago, was not that Squad would break the promise to never charge for anything else, ever. My biggest fears were: A soundtrack by Nickelback Squad would actually keep its promise. Revenue would eventually dry up, and development on the game would understandably stop. Does it suck they're charging for an upgrade of the game? Not for me. It indicates that if they're doing it well, I'll be enjoying many more updates and upgrades for the years to come. Spending $15 once in a while to keep that going is something I will have no problem with.

Like I said. Read the news. You are aware that Steam has algorithms in place to counter grieve-voting, right? EDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/JimSterling/comments/7mncuw/steam_no_longer_displays_the_amount_of_negative/

Please do elaborate how "we have been sold." For a minute I was scared to find my house sold by Squad but after checking, my name is still on the title. My son also roams around the house, unaware that he has been sold on a questionable slave market in Libya. To what extend have we been sold? To who? For how much? If you even read the news you'd know that "all of us" leaving negative reviews would achieve this: That's right. Absolutely nothing.

Thank you for the excellent clarification. Aren't there a few FOSS licenses that actually state that if you incorporate the software in your product, it would become subject of the same license? T2 would shoot themselves really in the foot in that case. Another obstacle in the perceived (non existing) copyrights grab is ownership in the first place. Where does it put T2 legally when it turns out that your mod isn't “your” mod? Because it's public domain and not owned by anyone? Or worse, you pretended it was yours but it turns out it is not? Surely T2 could claim you are on the hook, but by “silently” taking over the copyrights there would probably be some issues with that claim, while meanwhile they have to fight a copyright lawsuit against the original owner. And to my limited knowledge, copyright cases are one of those type of federal lawsuits where a big bag of (corporate) money does not guarantee a favorable outcome (assuming the plaintiff has a semi-decent lawyer), but rather what the law actually says determines the outcome. Not sure T2 wants to roll the dice on that. It makes more sense for them, if they want to incorporate a mod into the game, to simply reach out to the author, and buy the rights; it saves them from a lot of potential legal trouble later on.

That theory has merit, [ but the rest of the controls (WASD) doesn’t align with the flight axis, but rather with the gravity vector, creating confusion. Either all of them go that way, or none of them; not some of them.] EDIT: DOH! That's exactly what it does. Great explanation.

And if they're meaningful. stuff = do_stuff_and_return_it(); // multiply stuff with x and y stuff = stuff * x; stuff = stuff * y; // double stuff five times for(int i = 0; i<5; i++) { stuff = stuff * 2; } While this is not literally code I've encountered, I've seen plenty of lines comparable to this in my life. Mysterious variable names, and extensively commented... with absolutely useless comments. That's where the homicidal psychopath comes in.

Because there's code that's written so, so badly... Bad variable names, bad comments, bad structure. All of the above. Don't be that person! Here's another gem I was taught a long time ago: It's hard to read your own code, it's impossible to read code written by someone else. And after six months, your code looks like it was written by someone else.

Syntax error: your program goes boom Logical error: your program runs “fine,” it’s just not doing what you wanted it to do. In your case you had a logical error. Syntax errors are always better! ”Write your code as if it will be debugged by a homicidal psychopath who knows where you live” is another piece of advice I give everyone.

Some programmers make it a habit to always put the constant first. If (1 = T$) will give you a syntax error, not a logical error. Especially in a language where the assignment and equality operator are the same (I’m looking at you, Visual Basic), it’s a healthy habit.

I have Squad on the phone. They can't do two weeks earlier, but how about slipping the release date to September 1st to accommodate you?

I hate to disappoint you, but indeed KSP is not GTA. Alienating that usebase would surely hit the pages of the WSJ. Something about KSP? Even if it would alienate the entire Aerospace industry (doubtful), what would the impact on the bottom line of T2 be? It’s not like they have juicy contracts with the defense industry. As for T2’s image with the general audience: science ranks at the very bottom of what the general public cares about. An outfall with a gaming company and a community the general public doesn’t care about over a game the general public never heard of will be less than a storm in a glass of water.

While it’s not unreasonable to think that there’s a bit of overreacting on a boilerplate EULA, I do agree that: 0: the value of “while it was written like that, it’s not supposed to be carried out that way” in a courtroom. T2 should take that into consideration for a game that relies so heavily on modding, that the mere threat of having the ability to say “all your mods are belong to us now” will not be taken so lightly. I’m sure the language is a result from the infamous “hot coffee mod,” but this is a civilized game about science and space exploration, not a racy car theft game.

It feels more like the Buzz Aldrin game. A few things that dawned on me: Kickstarter. The succesrate at kickstarter seems very low. Cool graphics do not automatically make a cool game The graphics are a bit disjointed. The buildings have an entirely different style than the ships, there are cartoonish "talent" graphics and less cartoonish personel graphics, etc. So not a lot of serious work has been done. If everything works out, and that's a really big if, you're not going to see anything playable for at least 2-3 years, is my guess. I wouldn't have stellar expectations. And yeah, then there's No Man's Sky as an example.

While the legalise might be skewed toward T2, the userbase has one truly gigantic ace up their sleeve, and T2 is fully aware of that. We're the ones who provide the cash. While we don't know what T2 paid, I'm pretty sure it's not a trivial amount. Surely they might go ahead and take all the mods and sell them as their own. But it will kill the KSP ecosystem, and with it any revenue they expect to make from it in the future. To be honest, your biggest fear regarding T2 should not be that they "turn evil" and are hellbent on destroying KSP. They want their investment to prosper. The biggest fear is that they're not touching anything out of fear of destroying their revenue stream, and they don't change anything. Then again, neither was Squad; which is why I think T2 is a positive development. It can only get better (looking forward to a long series of high quality expansion packs).

DOesn't it state that you cannot make copies for someone else?

Texture replacer? And simply replace the skybox bitmaps with NZ (all-black) ones?