Helping Squad to make KSP more awesome #Crowdfunding

[Robotengineer]

Squad has enough funds, it will be the willpower to keep working on the game that will *likely* eventually cease development.

[Linear]

<-- Business school guy here.

The money they have already made is irrelevant to continued development; that money is already made and they keep it even if they stop development right this moment. Development of KSP will likely only continue for as long as new revenue exceeds the operating costs (by whatever margin the backers consider acceptable), or while they are developing towards another revenue peak (like release of a paid-for expansion, or release on another platform, etc).

(Speaking very much unofficially, I have no inside knowledge of Squad's financial or product planning.)

New revenue will come in with decent, fun updates that get people talking, using the tens of millions of dollars raised by previous sales.

[Red Iron Crown]

New revenue will come in with decent, fun updates that get people talking, using the tens of millions of dollars raised by previous sales.

I'd imagine there is a revenue peak with each update, but the big ones for the core game on PC are already past. We're entering the tail of sales on the PC core game. The past sales are irrelevant, if projected new revenue doesn't cover the ongoing development costs then it makes little sense to continue. The play (from a business perspective) is to use those past revenues to drive new product development, new products that have their revenue peaks ahead of them.

I'd certainly love for them to continue KSP development in perpetuity, but that is extremely unlikely for very tangible reasons.

[Speadge]

<-- Business school guy here.

The money they have already made is irrelevant to continued development; that money is already made and they keep it even if they stop development right this moment. Development of KSP will likely only continue for as long as new revenue exceeds the operating costs (by whatever margin the backers consider acceptable), or while they are developing towards another revenue peak (like release of a paid-for expansion, or release on another platform, etc).

(Speaking very much unofficially, I have no inside knowledge of Squad's financial or product planning.)

u know that THIS means, that once they would get the money from any crowdfunding or else, they would stop development.. cause they have the money already.

Business school might be nice - but it is the opposite of ideas like "full price for early access games" and "crowdfunding".

Those are best examples for "developers get their money BEFORE they can bring sth that is worth the money" just because we all have trust in them.

And because of all the feedback about KSP still beeing beta, they should have enough balls to finish this product before even butting 1hour effort in a new game just for getting new/more money.

They would lose our trust way to fast this way.. and "squad" will be done very soon...

[Kerbart]

Business school might be nice - but it is the opposite of ideas like "full price for early access games" and "crowdfunding".

Those are best examples for "developers get their money BEFORE they can bring stuff that is worth the money" just because we all have trust in them.

KSP was neither crowdfunded or charged full price for early access, so that's rather irrelevant. And while we love noble ideas like "for the love of the game" and "we owe it to our community" the reality is still that developers need a place to sleep and need to eat. So you'll need to pay them. And even if you don't, you'll still need to pay for servers and bandwidth. In the end, when the cashflow dries up, development will stop.

You're better off with Squad right now working on new content they can charge for, like expansion packs -- as they'll have an incentive to continue development and hopefully do some bugfixing too, than with Squad focussing purely on bugfixes "because the owe us those" -- because the incentive for them will be "the sooner we finish it the better"

[Red Iron Crown]

u know that THIS means, that once they would get the money from any crowdfunding or else, they would stop development.. cause they have the money already.

Business school might be nice - but it is the opposite of ideas like "full price for early access games" and "crowdfunding".

Those are best examples for "developers get their money BEFORE they can bring sth that is worth the money" just because we all have trust in them.

Early access and crowdfunding are a bit of a social contract, while there is no legal obligation (usually) to produce anything beyond the early versions there is a moral obligation to do so and not doing so costs significant goodwill. Plus there is the more practical drive to get to that 1.0 sales bump. All that goes away after release. People might not be happy with what the product is (and you can't please everyone at any rate), but the moral obligation is discharged and the carrot of increased sales is gone.

And because of all the feedback about KSP still beeing beta, they should have enough balls to finish this product before even butting 1hour effort in a new game just for getting new/more money.

They would lose our trust way to fast this way.. and "squad" will be done very soon...

The vast majority of KSP feedback is positive, whether from professional reviews or user reviews on Steam and the like. A tiny, tiny minority is still calling it beta (though they are a vocal minority, especially around here). Like it or not, KSP is in the post-release phase of development and all that entails for sales and further development. "Balls" don't pay the bills, that's just childish.

[xiombargdei]

its interesting to read so many people say that "Squad has enough funds" when nobody can provide precise figures.

[Alshain]

its interesting to read so many people say that "Squad has enough funds" when nobody can provide precise figures.

I can guarantee they have sold at least 20,000 copies on Steam alone because that is how almost many players have been on at one time. That doesn't seem like much but remember KSP can be played offline from Steam and it isn't the only distribution method, and finally not everyone plays at the same time. So it's probably much, much, higher.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Alshain

[TMS]

Try a million sales:

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/330vsi/squad_removes_steam_spy_data_from_public_view/

[Linear]

its interesting to read so many people say that "Squad has enough funds" when nobody can provide precise figures.

Your baseline is going to be 1000000*lowest steam price. Then add considerably more.

[PsychSpec]

I think that Squad themselves crowdfunding to update the game seems more than a little weird. However, and I know this is controversial, modders crowdfunding could be ok, like with a Patreon account. We see this already with games like Cities Skylines, where modders receive donations for their funds. It could give modders the incentive and ability to create higher quality mods and deal with more of the bugs that you are talking about. There are plenty of issues with this model, and I'm certainly not an expert on it, but that's the only way I see crowdfunding and KSP ever being linked together.

[foxkill2342]

Squad is simply losing their player base at this point. When you flop a release as bad as they did players are inevitably going to leave. I still love the game, but I am watching the community die as a result of 1.0's release. Money isn't the problem here, KSP has lost its appeal.

[Red Iron Crown]

Squad is simply losing their player base at this point. When you flop a release as bad as they did players are inevitably going to leave. I still love the game, but I am watching the community die as a result of 1.0's release. Money isn't the problem here, KSP has lost its appeal.

Have you got any source supporting that fewer people are playing KSP since 1.0? All the indications I see show more people playing than ever.