Our thoughts on KerbalStuff's closure

[Trollsama]

i'm so incredibly thankful the community is rebuilding a new "kerbstuff"....I can not express my gratitude enough both to everyone involved in starting Kerbal stuff, as well as all the people that are actively working to replace it.

I honestly think having to use curse for my modding would be the end of me playing KSP.... Curse is probably one of the single worst hosting sites i have been unfortunate enough to have to interact with and i have delt with more of them then i like to admit. when KSP first partnered with them i ended up dropping the game for several months because i simply could not find the willpower to suffer through curse for more than a single mod or 2. (i run generally between 20-50 at an given time.... after 1500 hours, stock doesn't cut it ) and discovering  Kerbal Stuff was what ended up getting be back into the game.

DISCLAIMER: 
While i disagree (and oh how i disagree) about Curse being a good option for mod hosting, I still have the utmost respect for Squad. 
One (arguably, and opinion based) mistake could never overshadow all of the amazing work they have done
I dont want anyone to think im talking smack on Squad, KSP, or the dev team with this post.  its more of a "sharing my feelings" with fellow members of the community as we all mourn the loss of what inevitably became a core aspect of the modding community.:(

Edited February 18, 2016 by Trollsama

[Gojira1000]

I suspect Squad would like to have a viable commercial alternative to Curse.

Suggestions of potential providers would be more useful than the "I hate Curse" mantra - we all dislike Curse. That's not the issue. The trick is pointing out a competing commercial provider with equivalent capability and revenue.

[sal_vager]

That is not "exactly where we are" at all Anders, we have Curse, using it or not is your choice.

[Yemo]

3 minutes ago, Gojira1000 said:

I suspect Squad would like to have a viable commercial alternative to Curse.

Suggestions of potential providers would be more useful than the "I hate Curse" mantra - we all dislike Curse. That's not the issue. The trick is pointing out a competing commercial provider with equivalent capability and revenue.

I do not hate curse, I simply do not find it adequate for my personal preferences as a modder.

Nexus is much closer to that.

[ProtoJeb21]

On 2/17/2016 at 9:49 AM, KasperVld said:

Currently the KSP community is already working on an alternative website (working name SpaceDock) based on the open source framework of Kerbalstuff.

Well, THIS is new! And this is great! I thought there wasn't going to be any other way for KSP mods to be downloaded besides GitHub or Dropbox or Curse. I've always favored KerbalStuff's unique and easy-to-use modding systems that other websites don't or didn't have. I'm also thinking that Sircmpwn might have been "Overreacting" a bit. This was just what I was looking for.

[mcirish3]

On 2/17/2016 at 11:49 AM, KasperVld said:

Meanwhile people are free to upload and share mods from any source they wish

*Cough not Cough Mediafire cough*

[Red Iron Crown]

1 hour ago, mcirish3 said:

*Cough not Cough Mediafire cough*

I don't think it's unreasonable to exclude hosts that are serving pornographic ads, given the all-ages appeal of KSP.

[VITAS]

if you guys want to donate for spacedock you can do it here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2903335&ty=p

 

[Matuchkin]

21 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

I don't think it's unreasonable to exclude hosts that are serving pornographic ads, given the all-ages appeal of KSP.

Porn ads? No. Just no.

Edited February 19, 2016 by Matuchkin

[0111narwhalz]

5 hours ago, sal_vager said:

...Spaceport2 wasn't ready...

Speaking of which... Has work on SP2 been canceled, suspended, or is it just waiting for some contract to run out?

[mcirish3]

22 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

I don't think it's unreasonable to exclude hosts that are serving pornographic ads, given the all-ages appeal of KSP.

I 100% agree, I was just saying that this statement:

  On 2/17/2016 at 11:49 AM, KasperVld said:

Meanwhile people are free to upload and share mods from any source they wish

 

Is not exactly accurate.

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

I, for one, am glad that there is a new repository based on KerbalStuff. It is sad that KS died, but it's great that SpaceDock is semi-functional just days after poor Kerbal Stuff went offline...

On February 17, 2016 at 1:03 PM, Glaran K'erman said:

Truly appreciate a response. Wasn't one with "passionate" feelings but I was left questioning some things and I think this answers everything.

Sidenote: just got done dealing with EA "customer service", we should all be thankful for the active relations Squad has with its community.

EA is a nightmare "customer confuser" is a better term for EA's Customer Service

[Commander Zoom]

SQUAD isn't going to give their "official" endorsement to any other site or service.  They already have Curse, and Curse suits their needs just fine.

(Whether Curse serves anyone else's needs is... a matter of some debate and dispute.)

Edited February 19, 2016 by Commander Zoom

[mcirish3]

I almost never used Curse, even after @Red Iron Crown gave me a convincing explanation as to why he had issues with the service.  He, as it turns out, was right on all accounts.   None the less KerbalStuff was better in every way than Curse except reliability.  I tried both and flat out liked KerbalStuff better and since I never experienced any problems with it until right before the end, if RIC had not said any thing to me I would be totally bumming right now.  We would all have been better off if we liked curse more but we don't...I don't.  Curse is a ugly dull site and is not very user friendly or well designed, it just can not compete with KerbalStuff's clean, sleek, user accessible design.  It is too bad there were so many problems lurking in the background of KerbalStuff.   I hope the new service can be brought back soon becuase Curse totally sucks in most ways except it is totally reliable.

Edited February 19, 2016 by mcirish3

[Redneck]

1 hour ago, Commander Zoom said:

 They already have Curse, and Curse suits their needs just fine.

does it really serve their needs if nobody uses it?

[Hary R]

51 minutes ago, Redneck said:

does it really serve their needs if nobody uses it?

The fact is, people do use it: modders do use curse and players do download mod from curse. So yes, curse do serves Squad needs... for now. Until that fact change to a radical point, Curse is here to stay.

[Tig]

2 hours ago, Redneck said:

does it really serve their needs if nobody uses it?

Amen.

1 hour ago, Hary R said:

The fact is, people do use it: modders do use curse and players do download mod from curse. So yes, curse do serves Squad needs... for now. Until that fact change to a radical point, Curse is here to stay.

Let me respond to this and explain why Curse is not the best option for KSP. 

 

First off, I understand why Squad chose Curse at the time.  Again, love you Squad in advance.   But we all know that Spaceport was a bit of a mess... to quote the pertinent aspect from Kasper "we can happily recommend Curse for this purpose, at the very least as a stopgap measure."  And at the time I could accept that as a "stopgap".  Squad needed to focus on what they are best at... developing a video game, not managing a mod website.  So even though we all know that Curse is run by, pardon me, but total asshats, they had the infrastructure already in place. 

With all due respect to HaryR, the time to change is now.

Why?  I played WoW, the average player on a WoW server is at best mildly mentally deficient... is that the nicest way I can say it?

The average KSP player is, if the general discourse on this forum is a valid measure, considerably of above average intelligence... let's face it being good at at KSP literally requires a basic understanding of (the almost cliche joke) rocket science. lol.

In short, we don't need the same moron proof modding that Curse and their ilk provide. 

If you're to dumb to install a KSP mod, then you're too dumb to play the game.  I'm really not being an amazing¹ person... at least I don't think I am... seriously how can you possibly understand delta-v and ejection angles and not understand typical OS folder structures?

@KasperVid and Squad, I understand why Curse was used as a stopgap for Spaceport, but that was a long time ago.  Please, please, please trust your community.  I promise you that your paying userbase is more dedicated and far more intelligent than those money grubbing, amoral, "developers" at Curse. 

Give the people who love this game your blessing and a tiny bit of support and watch your community continue to flourish and, appealing to your pecuniary interest  , provide you with additional game sales.

 

¹PS.  I love that the forum changed the word that I wrote to "amazing" when what I actually wrote was the final sphincter in a donkey's digestive tract.

Edited February 19, 2016 by Tig
Clarification on forum automated word changes :)

[Ruedii]

I understand how legal worded statements can sound like an accusation when regarding trademarks.

Many lawyers are not trained in PR work, and only a few are trained in mediation skills with laypersons.  This is a problem I feel the law community strongly needs to address, and is a problem of the entire socioeconomic system of this crazy planet called Earth, not Squad's fault.  This incident was just another situation in a long line of ones caused by the problem, and the problem is way to big for a small company like Squad to take on in any way beyond possibly providing some helpful interviews to someone wants to do a case study.

Squad's job here was to insure that KerbalStuff was using the trade name "Kerbal" under Fair Use, and not asserting the trademark "Kerbal" as their own.  This was a very important if Squad was to trademark the word "Kerbal." 

[Hary R]

1 hour ago, Tig said:

With all due respect to HaryR, the time to change is now.

You know i'm certainly not the one to say if curse was a good or bad choice (KSP is my first heavily modded game so first time using that kind of site), my statement was merely to reply to Redneck that say that no one use Curse. Time to change is now, may be but can we give a business partnership to SQUAD that rival that of Curse is the question.

Edited February 19, 2016 by Hary R

[Tig]

Quote

does it really serve their needs if nobody uses it?

Amen.

55 minutes ago, Hary R said:

You know i'm certainly not the one to say if curse was a good or bad choice (KSP is my first heavily modded game so first time using that kind of site), my statement was merely to reply to Redneck that say that no one use Curse. Time to change is now, may be but can we give a business partnership to SQUAD that rival that of Curse is the question.

Totally respect what you are saying, but with a caveat... I've modded many games and KSP is unique.  Its not your typical Call of Madden Warcraft Duty moronic racist asshat players that need sites like Curse.  (My wife always joked while I played BF3 that I must be playing exceptionally well if other users were referring to me as a homosexual African American... hope that doesn't offend, my gay and black friends think its funny as hell.)

Well, thank god, that's just not the KSP community!  We have passionate arguments about the appropriate amount of heat generated by a 25km peri aerobrake on Duna... and I love that.  We don't need to cater to the lowest common gamer denominator.

Squad should trust its community to build its own modding website and simply provide its blessing and a modicum of support.  Did everyone read SirCmpwn's note on KerbalStuff?  The site was costing him $100/month and the upgrades needed would be $180/month.  I provided zippo to support him.  Shame on me; shame on all of us.  2 grand a year is a lot for an individual.  Its not for Squad.  Especially when it is a game *driven* by its mod community...

Am I the only one who feels this way?  I don't get the sense that I am unusual in this regard... but I suppose I could be wrong.

I want this game to succeed even further.  I want everyone who had a hand in making it to get rich.  I just think a community based mod website furthers that goal.

 

PS.  It's not unfair to point out that my beliefs on this matter are somewhat self-serving.  Guilty as charged.  But that doesn't necessarily make me wrong...

 

 

Edited February 19, 2016 by Tig

[apbiz]

2 hours ago, Tig said:

 

 

¹PS.  I love that the forum changed the word that I wrote to "amazing" when what I actually wrote was the final sphincter in a donkey's digestive tract.

lol.  btw, tig agree with everything you said, but this last note nearly maed me cry.  gotta love autocorrect censors.

[Hary R]

8 minutes ago, Tig said:

I just think a community based mod website furthers that goal.

I do to... and really hope this dream come true.

I will not argue against that.

As a financial adviser, I think I know some of the reason why Curse is still to stay but that is not the purpose of this topic. My last off topic have already been deleted, it's a good reason for me to not challenge the mods any further.

[StarStryder]

On 17/02/2016 at 10:17 PM, SirCmpwn said:

I'd still like to let this die. My feelings from the original letter still stand - maintaining Kerbal Stuff is a burden that went unnoticed and unappreciated from both Squad and the community.

Having been an admin on a couple of large forums, I completely understand how negative it can all feel. It is the nature the internet that the complainers always seem louder and more numerous that the supporters but, in my experience, when you ask the community they are massively more supportive than you realised. 

People forget to explicitly send thanks but the appreciation is there none the less.

[Redneck]

4 hours ago, Hary R said:

You know i'm certainly not the one to say if curse was a good or bad choice (KSP is my first heavily modded game so first time using that kind of site), my statement was merely to reply to Redneck that say that no one use Curse. Time to change is now, may be but can we give a business partnership to SQUAD that rival that of Curse is the question.

ok let me put it this way my mod was on curse for 6  months. It was on kerbalstuff also for 6 months. Kerbalstuff downloads was like 10,000+ downloads and 41 followers of the mod. Curse got zero downloads. ZERO! I mean sure curse is active now because of Kerbalstuff going offline. But at the time it wasn't. BTW SpaceDock is online and I expect to see the same results. 

Edited February 19, 2016 by Redneck

[Hary R]

18 minutes ago, Redneck said:

ok let me put it this way my mod was on curse for 6  months. It was on kerbalstuff also for 6 months. Kerbalstuff downloads was like 10,000+ downloads and 41 followers of the mod. Curse got zero downloads. ZERO! I mean sure curse is active now because of Kerbalstuff going offline. But at the time it wasn't. BTW SpaceDock is online and I expect to see the same results. 

Ok il' give you that, but it was your mod not every mod that is on Curse. (and not just now)

Still i'm sure that withing the community and modder, Spacedock will be the popular one, I will put my mod on it for the next update. Right now don't have time.