Make a site like Kerbal Stuff

[He_162]

A great many people dislike the curse website, and it has less than half the amount of mods uploaded that Kerbal Stuff did, before it went down.

 

The owner has made a message for us on his site.

 

Squad want's their community to be happy, right? Then give us a site we can rely on for our mods, that is easy and fun to use, and supports the community in a much better way than Curse.

Edited May 19, 2021 by Snark
Link to defunct website removed by moderator

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

They have curse forge for modding needs. If you don't like it, tell the mod creators to host the mods on the following

Github

Dropbox

Box.com

Mega.co.nz

etc

 

They used to have SpacePort. SpacePort was terrible (barley any security, ships in the addons page, etc), scrapped it, and went with CurseForge. No need to make something when better alternatives exist

Edited February 15, 2016 by TheCanadianVendingMachine

[He_162]

1 minute ago, TheCanadianVendingMachine said:

They have curse forge for modding needs. If you don't like it, tell the mod creators to host the mods on the following

Github

Dropbox

Box.com

Mega.co.nz

etc

 

They used to have SpacePort. SpacePort was terrible (barley any security, ships in the addons page, etc), scrapped it, and went with CurseForge. No need to make something when better alternatives exist

I get where you are coming from, but it's quite obvious CurseForge isn't working of Kerbal Stuff, a third party site, in just 2 months can double the mod amount, and player usage of curseforge since they have hosted KSP mods.

 

We the players need something better than, "oh, we will just let them handle that."

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

Name all the games which have a dedicated mod page for their needs that ISN'T Community Created or Steam Workshop. Now name all the games which use alternative download sites made by the community, or is one of the few I posted above

 

It's too expensive/takes away too many resources to have a dedicated mod site. I would rather them keep developers on the pay role just to keep updating the game

Edited February 15, 2016 by TheCanadianVendingMachine

[He_162]

1 minute ago, TheCanadianVendingMachine said:

Name all the games which have a dedicated mod page for their needs that ISN'T Community Created or Steam Workshop. Now name all the games which use alternative download sites made by the community, or is one of the few I posted above

 

It's too expensive/takes away too many resources to have a dedicated mod site. I would rather them keep developers on the pay role just to keep updating the game

Yes, but Kerbal Stuff itself, as a third party site, even in their message, now that it is down, show that when the site went up, KSP players per day increased, and when it went down, they decreased.

 

KSP was earning money because such a nice site was available. I wouldn't say that is taking away resources.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

How is SQUAD earning more money from people downloading mods? I am 100% certain that a community website did not cause game sales to rise

Correlation =/= Causation

[He_162]

3 minutes ago, TheCanadianVendingMachine said:

How is SQUAD earning more money from people downloading mods? I am 100% certain that a community website did not cause game sales to rise

Correlation =/= Causation

Squad earns money from the people just starting the game, and downloading it on Steam, etc, more people playing on steam, means more people are buying it.

Honestly, if they made a website, with no ads, and funded it, they would not see much of their money going away, with over a million buys on steam already, and 25-30$ on average because of discounts etc.

 

30 million dollars, 180$ per month to pay for a site like Kerbal Stuff, I do not see much of a loss.

 

They at least have 20 million from this, by the way.

Edited February 15, 2016 by He_162

[SolidJuho]

But they are going to ad there ads so they can even earn money

[He_162]

Just now, SolidJuho said:

But they are going to ad there ads so they can even earn money

I am fine with advertisements, but Kerbal Stuff ran solely on donations, they didn't go down from lack of money, but because they didn't want to deal with the negative feedback from Squad, and every time they made the site better, noone said anything.

 

If Kerbal Stuff can run solely on donations, and a few extra dollars from themselves, then why can't Squad, especially if they have such a large audience to listen to them?

It's always: "How can we steal your money" Isn't it?

 

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

You didn't respond to my point. Correlation != Causation. I am pretty sure the new users didn't go: "Oh look! KSP Finally has mod support! Gee whiz, I am going to buy it now!". It was probably the cause of other sources, such as big Youtubers playing the game

If the guy who made it took it down only because it wasn't getting SQUAD support, he is a child. SQUAD has their (relatively) free alternative that doesn't cost as much as hosting a server

 

Sure, it would be useful for SQUAD to make a community site. But why would they, when there's free alternatives that modders can use at will?

Edited February 15, 2016 by TheCanadianVendingMachine

[He_162]

1 minute ago, TheCanadianVendingMachine said:

You didn't respond to my point. Correlation != Causation. I am pretty sure the new users didn't go: "Oh look! KSP Finally has mod support! Gee whiz, I am going to buy it now!". It was probably the cause of other sources, such as big Youtubers playing the game

 

Sure, it would be useful for SQUAD to make a community site. But why would they, when there's free alternatives that modders can use at will?

Squad would have a community site because the community would love it much more than Curse, and as we have seen, it attracts a much bigger portion of the modding community if the site is actually good. (unlike Curse)

1. They wouldn't be losing much money

2. They would earn more than they lost per month by over 3x based on their Steam sales alone

3. A community modding site attracts double the players that Curse does

4. If they have a few advertisements here and there, they could earn from it, especially by how many players come through

5. The modding community would expand at a much higher rate, making the game much much much more fun to play for over half a million players.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

1. Proof in this claim? I can say that SQUAD WOULD be losing money, and be as good of a source as you

2. Correlation != Causation

3. Proof?

4. Yeah, probably. But then they have to deal with the bad advertisements that come through (see: why the forum doesn't have a banner ad anymore)

5. If a modder doesn't want to mod because they don't want to host on Github, Dropbox, Box.com, Mega.co.nz, own server, they have a very stupid reason not to mod

Edited February 15, 2016 by TheCanadianVendingMachine

[SolidJuho]

But spacedock.info is already coming . Just check mod discussion tab

[He_162]

1 minute ago, TheCanadianVendingMachine said:

1. Proof in this claim? I can say that SQUAD WOULD be losing money, and be as good of a source as you

2. Correlation != Causation

3. Proof?

4. Yeah, probably. But then they have to deal with the bad advertisements that come through (see: why the forum doesn't have a banner ad anymore)

5. If a modder doesn't want to mod because they don't want to host on Github, Dropbox, Box.com, Mega.co.nz, own server, they have a very stupid reason not to mod

1.  April 2015

2. If they earned 20$ per sale on steam, or even 15$ they would still earn well over the amount they need to run a server.

3. Interesting stats from Google Analytics for Kerbal Stuff:

• 4,948,349 total sessions
• 993,550 total unique visitors
• 19,083,579 total page views
• 03:11 - average length of visit

4. Then don't have advertisements.

5. Adding to the ways a modder can get his mod to the community obviously adds to the rates at which the modding community expands.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

1. KerbalStuff isn't the only thing that came out in April 2015

2. Correlation != Causation Just because they got more sales around the same time the community site came out, does not mean the mod site caused these sales

3. So? How many people went onto CurseForge just for that same purpose? Github? Box.com? Mega.co.nz? You can't compare these

4. N/A

5. Explain, please

Edited February 15, 2016 by TheCanadianVendingMachine

[He_162]

8 minutes ago, SolidJuho said:

But spacedock.info is already coming . Just check mod discussion tab

That is good news!

 

I cannot wait!

 

However, I will leave this suggestion here, and reply with less vigor.

[He_162]

4 minutes ago, TheCanadianVendingMachine said:

1. KerbalStuff isn't the only thing that came out in April 2015

2. Correlation != Causation Just because they got more sales around the same time the community site came out, does not mean the mod site caused these sales

3. So? How many people went onto CurseForge just for that same purpose? Github? Box.com? Mega.co.nz? You can't compare these

4. N/A

5. Explain, please

I'm just gonna forget number 2 because you don't understand what I am trying to say... 

1. You would expect a spike to come from that, on that day, and the days after, but the days before that video, it showed, point still stands, also, no big spike in buys after Felix did that video.

2.^^^

3. I can compare these, the stats above are over double that of CurseForge, which is the site SQUAD uses right now, so go ahead, prove that wrong in any way shape or form.

4. k

5. More sites for hosting mods >/= More mods, and a larger community

[juanml82]

45 minutes ago, TheCanadianVendingMachine said:

How is SQUAD earning more money from people downloading mods? I am 100% certain that a community website did not cause game sales to rise

Correlation =/= Causation

Because the game isn't designed to be played without mods.

There is no dV readout. There is no transfer window planner. There is no KAC. There is no way to test if a particular lander design works in hard places like Eve without getting the lander there, over and over, and over until you perfect the design. There is no way to tell the kerbal's profession in flight. There is no way to check altitude above ground without going on IVA. There are "rescue kerbal stranded on the surface" contracts, but no landing predictor. And the list goes on and on and on.

Squad relies on mods to complete the game and make accesible. Which can be a good business practice, since mods are plenty of content for free. But more often than not, free =/= efficiency. So if Squad is going to piggyback on the modders, they could at least partially host the good modding sites. And, honestly, Kerbalstuff or any other alternative could offer torrent or Mega download links for all I care, if it helps them save on bandwidth.

Edited February 15, 2016 by juanml82

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

@juanml82 But KSP is designed to be played without mods... Stock KSP is always getting better features, and frankly that is a huge insult to SQUAD that you say that. SQUAD is hiring new devs (which are/were modders) to improve the base game WITH previous mod-only features.

 

1. Explain to me this: How does a single mod site cause a soar in game sales? Please, I am ready for an explanation I have been asking for

2 (Formerly 3). Please compare these stats to the rise in users the day a popular mod releases/updates. You can't do it? Then don't bring up cherry picked stats

3 (Formerly 5). That isn't relevant. If a modder wants to host a mod, there is a plethora of websites which s/he can use. If the modder doesn't want to use one of those websites, then they have a crappy reason NOT to post their mod

Edited February 15, 2016 by TheCanadianVendingMachine

[TMS]

On behalf of the long-term players who are still waiting for substantial development of the game...

Please don't ever waste your time or substantial profits on this.  The project barely had enough coders (until very recently) to make progress at an reasonable pace.  Diverting effort into something that has been effectively outsourced to Curse would be wasted effort.

[HebaruSan]

1 hour ago, He_162 said:

Squad want's their community to be happy, right? Then give us a site we can rely on for our mods, that is easy and fun to use, and supports the community in a much better way than Curse.

There's a thing called "core competency." It refers to what your company fundamentally contributes that somebody else can't do better for you. In general, you want to focus on your core competencies and hire somebody to handle everything else.

SQUAD's game division is in business to develop and sell Kerbal Space Program. They have developers, testers, probably some internal IT staff, community contact people, presumably a legal/management role, and maybe somebody to liaise with the parent company. They do not have staff dedicated to creating and maintaining a web application to manage a mod repository. (And remember that whatever you estimate their total income to have been, they have had to use that to pay salaries for several highly qualified professionals over a number of years now, to say nothing of other expenses, so we have no idea how much they have left over.)

They're not a web hosting company or a social media company. They run a few public servers, but as a side thing, not their main business. So what you're asking them to do is hire more staff, buy more servers, rent more bandwidth, and set up a whole new support infrastructure (Hey KasperVids, can you pls reset my kspmods.com password??) to manage a free modding web site. To justify the set-up costs and ongoing expenses, they would need to be able to identify a new revenue stream that this would open up. And there just isn't one. Even if you think that more people have bought the game because mods are available for it, SQUAD gets that benefit already, with the hosting solutions that already exist that they do not have to pay for. Instead, they looked for another company that already has systems set up to do all of this stuff, and they found and partnered with Curse. You don't have to like Curse, but unlike SQUAD and unlike you or me or SirCmpwn, they are an actual company that does this stuff and makes money at it to keep themselves in business.

Plus I'm not so sure you'd even like the result. Remember how people screamed and cried about the very recent forum upgrade? Imagine that times a hundred when your favorite mod download freezes due to inadequate server bandwidth or a bug in the database. With kerbalstuff we could rationalize (correctly) that well it's just one dude running a server on a potato in his mom's basement, just be glad it works at all; if SQUAD adopted the platform, those excuses would go right out the window.

[Vanamonde]

Squad has designated Curse as its official mod repository. This is not going to change any time soon. Please stop creating new threads about this, people.