1.1 is seriously bugged, but comes it as a surprise...

[T3Kaos]

33 minutes ago, DChurchill said:

Did you read any of this thread?

Nope - Didn't catch this one. Reading it now. Thanks.

[Tex_NL]

Just now, T3Kaos said:

Nope - Didn't catch this one. Reading it now. Thanks.

To re-cap: Squad can neither deny nor confirm it. Confirming it would basically mean a suicide. Denying it would only strengthen suspicion and create conspiracy theories. All they can do is ignore it.

[rkman]

2 hours ago, Plusck said:

Nobody has said Squad employed anybody outside Mexico.

Yes they have: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/4hw5x7/in_regards_to_pdtvs_post_damion_rayne_former_ksp/d2t7hdm

 

[Tex_NL]

6 minutes ago, rkman said:

Yes they have: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/4hw5x7/in_regards_to_pdtvs_post_damion_rayne_former_ksp/d2t7hdm

 

This is one of those things that puts huge question marks next to Squads behaviour. Why on earth post this on Reddit? THIS is your forum! THIS is the place you should post news first! NOT through third party media!

Edited May 10, 2016 by Tex_NL

[rkman]

1 minute ago, Tex_NL said:

This is one of those things that puts huge question marks next to Squads behaviour. Why on earth post this on Reddit? THIS is your forum! THIS is the place you should post news! NOT through third party media!

Hold on - it is not exactly Squad that has said they hire outside of Mexico, but rather some of the 'Nobody's' who Plusck said had not said that Squad employs anybody outside Mexico...

[Red Iron Crown]

4 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

This is one of those things that puts huge question marks next to Squads behaviour. Why on earth post this on Reddit? THIS is your forum! THIS is the place you should post news! NOT through third party media!

Nothing from Squad there. The thread itself is from a former employee and the linked post is from a modder. AFAIK the only official statement is the one on the KSP website.

[adsii1970]

I have been reserving my comments on this tread until it became unbearable for me. Let's face the facts...

Squad is a business and is in business to make money - that is the nature of business. While it started as one person's dream to create a computer program based on the concept of spaceflight. It became necessary, for legal and financial reasons, to create a company to manage the day-to-day aspects of creating this product - the Kerbal Space Program. As the program became more sophisticated, it became necessary to hire more people and with that comes the potential to inherit problems. These problems can range from personality conflicts, inefficient employees, micro-managers, bruised egos, etc. (not that I am saying that anyone at Squad has those).

It can also create unique problems, such as too rapid of expansion to make the company fiscally secure. This contributes to horrible conditions such as low wages, rush projects (1.1, anyone?) and even rapid turnover of employees... oh, yeah, and the risk of extreme employee/former employee discontentment. In any case, Squad should not take part in THIS DISCUSSION ON THIS TREAD at all. This is why many small employees the size of Squad normally requires employees to sign non-disclosure agreements that include employer-employee relations (as I now hope Squad is considering).

What is more disturbing is the number of people here ready to condemn SQUAD for the allegations. No business could ever withstand the scrutiny I have seen forum members apply to Squad. Squad should never have 1). promised a time frame for 1.1 as this increased the tensions placed on staff and added to the anxiety of those eagerly awaiting 1.1. 2) and never differentiated between release dates for Steam/KSP Store. While the testing beta was a good idea, not releasing it to the KSP Store customers created additional PR issues for Squad that it really didn't need and increased the pressures for a rushed release of 1.1.

Folks, give Squad a break. This process is a learning curve for someone/or everyone involved in the management at Squad. Not only is KSP a product that is still under development, but so is the company. There is a learning curve for new small business owners, which is essentially what this is. Be patient and things will get better.

To simply be one of those who say, "forget, it... Squad treats its employees nasty and I am not going to recommend or buy a product..." is not only condemning Squad to fail and increases the likelihood of KSP 2.0, or other Kerbal based games never coming into being because well - YOU WILL KILL SQUAD by killing their sales. At the least, you'll force them to have to sell it to some larger company, such as Electronic Arts...and you think they'll treat their employees better than Squad? Yeah, right... Become a part of the SOLUTION and not the problem... You don't cure a patient by killing them. You won't improve Squad or KSP if you kill Squad...

[Plusck]

2 minutes ago, rkman said:

Yes they have: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/4hw5x7/in_regards_to_pdtvs_post_damion_rayne_former_ksp/d2t7hdm

 

Except that it does not say anywhere that Squad employed employees outside of Mexico.

It says "US and EU based workers were getting paid far too low to keep themselves with just KSP". This means they were necessarily either part-time / multi-employer employees, or contractors. It also only says they were "based" which does not mean they were employed outside Mexico - at most it means that were allowed to work from home outside Mexico... unless Squad has foreign branches which would make paying under minimum wage a legal impossibility in those jurisdictions.

So in any event, again, people are jumping to conclusions.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

I have been reserving my comments on this tread until it became unbearable for me. Let's face the facts...

Squad is a business and is in business to make money - that is the nature of business. While it started as one person's dream to create a computer program based on the concept of spaceflight. It became necessary, for legal and financial reasons, to create a company to manage the day-to-day aspects of creating this product - the Kerbal Space Program. As the program became more sophisticated, it became necessary to hire more people and with that comes the potential to inherit problems. These problems can range from personality conflicts, inefficient employees, micro-managers, bruised egos, etc. (not that I am saying that anyone at Squad has those).

It can also create unique problems, such as too rapid of expansion to make the company fiscally secure. This contributes to horrible conditions such as low wages, rush projects (1.1, anyone?) and even rapid turnover of employees... oh, yeah, and the risk of extreme employee/former employee discontentment. In any case, Squad should not take part in THIS DISCUSSION ON THIS TREAD at all. This is why many small employees the size of Squad normally requires employees to sign non-disclosure agreements that include employer-employee relations (as I now hope Squad is considering).

What is more disturbing is the number of people here ready to condemn SQUAD for the allegations. No business could ever withstand the scrutiny I have seen forum members apply to Squad. Squad should never have 1). promised a time frame for 1.1 as this increased the tensions placed on staff and added to the anxiety of those eagerly awaiting 1.1. 2) and never differentiated between release dates for Steam/KSP Store. While the testing beta was a good idea, not releasing it to the KSP Store customers created additional PR issues for Squad that it really didn't need and increased the pressures for a rushed release of 1.1.

Folks, give Squad a break. This process is a learning curve for someone/or everyone involved in the management at Squad. Not only is KSP a product that is still under development, but so is the company. There is a learning curve for new small business owners, which is essentially what this is. Be patient and things will get better.

To simply be one of those who say, "forget, it... Squad treats its employees nasty and I am not going to recommend or buy a product..." is not only condemning Squad to fail and increases the likelihood of KSP 2.0, or other Kerbal based games never coming into being because well - YOU WILL KILL SQUAD by killing their sales. At the least, you'll force them to have to sell it to some larger company, such as Electronic Arts...and you think they'll treat their employees better than Squad? Yeah, right... Become a part of the SOLUTION and not the problem... You don't cure a patient by killing them. You won't improve Squad or KSP if you kill Squad...

Good point well made, asdii1970

[rkman]

20 minutes ago, Plusck said:

It also only says they were "based" which does not mean they were employed outside Mexico - at most it means that were allowed to work from home outside Mexico...

It means they lived outside of Mexico (where Mexican labor laws/minimum wage do not apply) and were employed by Squad. Which means Squad employed people outside Mexico (and for all i know it's not one of the things that Squad denies).

Edited May 10, 2016 by rkman

[Plusck]

Just now, rkman said:

It means they lived outside of Mexico (where Mexican labor laws/minimum wage do not apply) and were employed by Squad. Which means Squad employed people outside Mexico.

And again, if that were the case Squad would have to apply the laws of the place where the employees habitually do their work, at least in all of Europe and (from what I have seen) many states in the US. So that would look like an easy win in their home courts for any hard-done-by employee.

And the word "worker" is, as I have already said, ambiguous. It does not necessarily mean "employee". "Contract workers" may be employees or they may be self-employed contractors.  If the former, they are protected by labour laws. If the latter, they are supposed to be sophisticated enough to determine the time needed to do the job and cannot be "forced" into working extreme hours in any event.

[T3Kaos]

15 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

I have been reserving my comments on this tread until it became unbearable for me. Let's face the facts...

Squad is a business and is in business to make money - that is the nature of business. While it started as one person's dream to create a computer program based on the concept of spaceflight. It became necessary, for legal and financial reasons, to create a company to manage the day-to-day aspects of creating this product - the Kerbal Space Program. As the program became more sophisticated, it became necessary to hire more people and with that comes the potential to inherit problems. These problems can range from personality conflicts, inefficient employees, micro-managers, bruised egos, etc. (not that I am saying that anyone at Squad has those).

It can also create unique problems, such as too rapid of expansion to make the company fiscally secure. This contributes to horrible conditions such as low wages, rush projects (1.1, anyone?) and even rapid turnover of employees... oh, yeah, and the risk of extreme employee/former employee discontentment. In any case, Squad should not take part in THIS DISCUSSION ON THIS TREAD at all. This is why many small employees the size of Squad normally requires employees to sign non-disclosure agreements that include employer-employee relations (as I now hope Squad is considering).

What is more disturbing is the number of people here ready to condemn SQUAD for the allegations. No business could ever withstand the scrutiny I have seen forum members apply to Squad. Squad should never have 1). promised a time frame for 1.1 as this increased the tensions placed on staff and added to the anxiety of those eagerly awaiting 1.1. 2) and never differentiated between release dates for Steam/KSP Store. While the testing beta was a good idea, not releasing it to the KSP Store customers created additional PR issues for Squad that it really didn't need and increased the pressures for a rushed release of 1.1.

Folks, give Squad a break. This process is a learning curve for someone/or everyone involved in the management at Squad. Not only is KSP a product that is still under development, but so is the company. There is a learning curve for new small business owners, which is essentially what this is. Be patient and things will get better.

To simply be one of those who say, "forget, it... Squad treats its employees nasty and I am not going to recommend or buy a product..." is not only condemning Squad to fail and increases the likelihood of KSP 2.0, or other Kerbal based games never coming into being because well - YOU WILL KILL SQUAD by killing their sales. At the least, you'll force them to have to sell it to some larger company, such as Electronic Arts...and you think they'll treat their employees better than Squad? Yeah, right... Become a part of the SOLUTION and not the problem... You don't cure a patient by killing them. You won't improve Squad or KSP if you kill Squad...

Good point, well made. However I would have an addition to this. Squad have been massively benefiting from their affiliations with Agencies such as NASA et al. to boost sales of into classrooms etc. Given that they are clinching additional sales and positive representation from what is essentially government affiliation as a sales booster, tacit or otherwise, then they have an increased responsibility to at least attempt to behave ethically and not to manipulate their position in an Activision (West and Zampella - remember that horror show which resulted in almost a decade of continuing absolutely crap, mediocre CoD games) profiteering style. Agreed, Squad, should not come down into the bleachers and set to about this however they should, at the same time, declare or publish and official statement concerning these issues as non-action, from a public relations and marketing perspective will be seen as tacit admission to the accusations instead. A good example of this type of action working was demonstrated in 2014 when Tesco was shown to have horse-meat in their mince meat, and instead of just admitting or denying they actually very publicaly put their hands up and said - yes, this happened, we're to blame, we're sorry, we're going to do better. Which saw an increase in their sales due to perceived 'honesty' on the part of a large corporation.

Food for thought perhaps.

[adsii1970]

Just now, m-theory said:

Good point well made, asdii1970

Thank you, @m-theory. I know that everyone has their opinions about what is "proper" corporate behavior, but the problem is that unless you've operated a small business, know someone who has operated one, or the like, it is impossible to demand "ideal" working conditions in an "un-ideal" world. Sometimes, if you believe in a dream strong enough and want to be a part of the dream, you do what you have to do to make it a reality.

Just a few minutes ago, as I was typing my response, I thought of all the men and women around the world who believed in space exploration enough that they paid the ultimate sacrifice - which definitely wasn't the "ideal world" but they did what they had to do for the bigger picture - for something they believed in. How many of you play organized sports? Ever get a broken leg or arm from it or maybe another injury? Yet you do it anyway for the good of the bigger picture and for the personal satisfaction you get from it... I don't work for Squad, but yet I still do artwork that is used by the forum community (some of it you see in the signature of other forum members, which is really cool)... and I do it not because I get paid for it, but because I believe in the "dream" of KSP...

 

[justidutch]

If any of you have ever bought clothes instead of making them yourselves, you have supported child labour.

If any of you have ever bought a piece of tech like a smartphone, computer, washing machine, hair dryer, etc etc etc etc, you have supported child labour.

Cars, software, food… the list goes on and on.

 

Or how about this thought: any of you ever download mp3s or movies?  After doing so did you send any funds to the artists who created that content?  You think a musician or actor doesn't deserve to get paid for all your illegal immoral downloads?

 

Perhaps we should encourage Squad to raise the price of the game by a few thousand percents so they can afford to pay developers North American wages?

Edited May 10, 2016 by justidutch

[adsii1970]

15 minutes ago, T3Kaos said:

Good point, well made. However I would have an addition to this. Squad have been massively benefiting from their affiliations with Agencies such as NASA et al. to boost sales of into classrooms etc. Given that they are clinching additional sales and positive representation from what is essentially government affiliation as a sales booster, tacit or otherwise, then they have an increased responsibility to at least attempt to behave ethically and not to manipulate their position in an Activision (West and Zampella - remember that horror show which resulted in almost a decade of continuing absolutely crap, mediocre CoD games) profiteering style. Agreed, Squad, should not come down into the bleachers and set to about this however they should, at the same time, declare or publish and official statement concerning these issues as non-action, from a public relations and marketing perspective will be seen as tacit admission to the accusations instead. A good example of this type of action working was demonstrated in 2014 when Tesco was shown to have horse-meat in their mince meat, and instead of just admitting or denying they actually very publicaly put their hands up and said - yes, this happened, we're to blame, we're sorry, we're going to do better. Which saw an increase in their sales due to perceived 'honesty' on the part of a large corporation.

Food for thought perhaps.

Yes, but there is a slight difference - Tesco is an established company with lots of capital, assets, and investors. Squad has a - - fan base (that's rather cult-like, if I might add - and yes, I, too, am a Kerbite). Tesco also has to do the PR to retain customer trust, as well as having an administrative staff that includes regularly employed PR experts, legal experts, and others... Squad has... people in management that are also software developers and dreamers. It would be like comparing your local used car salesman that has a corner lot on the outskirts of town that works out of a portable building to the established Ford, Mercedes, Audi, or other named brand dealership that also happens to sell used cars...

Squad may have a lot of great contacts, such as Elon Musk, NASA, ESA, and other space agencies or other even other space industry leaders and even may be involved in educational ventures (educational pricing normally involves a deep discount on the idea that it will lead to future non-educational sales to former students-now-turned-customers, as EA/Maxis did experience with SimCity). However, that does not translate to instant capital (funds) in the bank NOW. Relationships lead to increased FUTURE revenues, much like the endorsement by professional athletes leads to increased sales of Nike or Adidas and those large companies can afford that kind of endorsement-translates-to-future funds because they already have investment capital, tangible assets, and liquid cash on hand, not counting revenue generated off product licensing.

Squad, on the other hand, probably has very liquid cash on hand, beyond equipment - very little assets, and a small amount of investment capital, plus some revenue off product licensing...

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, justidutch said:

Perhaps we should encourage Squad to raise the price of the game by a few thousand percents so they can afford to pay developers North American wages?

I think what people are really railing about here is the injustice of global capitalism, and while I am not at all opposed to activism against harsh economic realities it's not going to be solved by damaging a small company (and their employees) what makes a video game.

[rkman]

17 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Tesco is an established company with lots of ...

Squad has a - - fan base

Squad has... people in management that are also software developers and dreamers.

Squad, on the other hand, probably has very liquid cash on hand

Squad the KSP dev team is subservient to Squad the advertising company, which has had clients such as Coca-Cola.

"We didn't have any expectations for the game," Ayarza says. "I'm not a video games fan.   
Ayarza is a businessman, trained as a financier with an MBA from the University of Miami."
"Ayarza has finished the script for his first movie, which will be produced by Squad. Goya is creating a record label and composing, all funded by Squad."
http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/1/27/5338438/kerbal-space-program  

(Ayarza is one of the founders/owners of Squad)

At least 1 milllion copies of KSP sold on Steam, word has a total of 4 million sold.  

Edited May 10, 2016 by rkman

[adsii1970]

2 minutes ago, rkman said:

Squad the KSP dev team is subservient to Squad the advertising company, which has had clients such as Coca-Cola.

"We didn't have any expectations for the game," Ayarza says. "I'm not a video games fan.   
Ayarza is a businessman, trained as a financier with an MBA from the University of Miami."
"Ayarza has finished the script for his first movie, which will be produced by Squad. Goya is creating a record label and composing, all funded by Squad."
http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/1/27/5338438/kerbal-space-program  

(Ayarza is one of the founders/owners of Squad)

At least 1 milllion copies of KSP sold on Steam, word has a total of 4 million sold.  

Yes, but let's play the game for a moment. I bought mine pre-release when .18 was the demo (I think I bought ver. 2.2) and I bought it on sale. I paid $3.99 (I had to look it up to make sure). I am sure that there is a small fraction - maybe half at most, that paid the full price for KSP as $40.00.

A quick Internet search plus a scan of Dun & Bradstreet shows that Squad doesn't even make enough income for a rating - or even a listing. I admit I do not know how many people are employed by Squad, but I will be willing to bet it is a lot like the way most Americans run a small business. For example, I helped out a friend of mine with his computer hardware for a company he ran; on paper, I was the CISO -Chief Information Systems Officer and Marketing Director (I designed his graphics for business cards, stationary, etc.) and both were unpaid positions in reality... His wife was listed as the Chief Finance Officer, and his children also had "official" titles, too.

With that said, I still say squad probably has more fish in the fish tank than employees...

 

[rkman]

1 hour ago, Plusck said:

And again, if that were the case Squad would have to apply the laws of the place where the employees habitually do their work, at least in all of Europe and (from what I have seen) many states in the US. So that would look like an easy win in their home courts for any hard-done-by employee.

And the word "worker" is, as I have already said, ambiguous. It does not necessarily mean "employee". "Contract workers" may be employees or they may be self-employed contractors.  If the former, they are protected by labour laws. If the latter, they are supposed to be sophisticated enough to determine the time needed to do the job and cannot be "forced" into working extreme hours in any event.

Just so long as it is clear that Squad employed people outside Mexico.  
So in those cases where labor law applies at all, it is not only Mexican labor law.  

I agree that if it's really that bad, Squad could be sued over it. Though the fact that they have not been sued over it and possibly never will does not mean no labor abuse took place. Either way the community can not do a lot about it. I do not think it is cause to boycott Squad (the devs nor the owners) or the game. 

However it still leaves the issue of funding of KSP development and the quality of the product. I think the low wages, long hard crunch, and interns doing 'important' work, are of the same pattern as not hiring expertise in Unity, project management and design - resulting in a game that is still buggy and unpolished a year after release. And deep problems such as garbage collection will likely only be resolved when it is fixed in Unity, at some unknown date in the future.  

While in the mean time the founders of Squad are funding a movie and a record label that they could not have funded without the success of KSP.
Their "kamikaze personalities" (Goya's words) has taken them far (it brought us KSP), but on occasions it causes them to push things to far (got Felipe to say "i quit").
In the case of software there is a lot of 'give' in the quality of the product, which unnoticed by the MBA trained, disinterested-in-video-games leadership can get quite low before a majority of customers finds it unacceptable. A large, genuinely dedicated fan-base that cheers the game on every occasion and boos any criticism, makes it even easier to 'get away' with a high bug count. 

 

 

7 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Squad doesn't even make enough income for a rating

It does mean Squad is much more than some small struggling indy dev team, as you (and many others) seem to think.

"Squad has people in management that are also software developers and dreamers MBA-trained financier without interest in video games (and a video artist)."

Edited May 10, 2016 by rkman

[Pax Kerbana]

4 minutes ago, regex said:

I think what people are really railing about here is the injustice of global capitalism, and while I am not at all opposed to activism against harsh economic realities it's not going to be solved by damaging a small company (and their employees) what makes a video game.

Maybe. However if Squad was well managed nobody would be. Is Sqaud did things the right way, not the cheapest way, the game would be done now and they would be working on the next big project, with the owners hoping for a buy out.

I used to think Squad was making a great name for themselves, but now am waiting to hear that they're closing up shop, never to be heard from again. The owners have their money and they're dreaming other dreams.

Its a trap most people fall into, do things as cheap as possible and maximize profit, thinking this is the way to success. It can be, but often is limited to a few years before the management realizes they don't have any trees left to cut; in their rush to clear cut they've destroyed any future growth and simultaneously rendered the land worthless.

When people do things right, and emphasis being great at something, the success is ultimately more profitable in the long run, especially for the owners if they're bought out.

Its unfortunate, but Kerbal will never be finished.

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Pax Kerbana said:

Maybe. However if Squad was well managed nobody would be. Is Sqaud did things the right way, not the cheapest way, the game would be done now and they would be working on the next big project, with the owners hoping for a buy out.

Five years ago I joined a small software company for what was a relatively low wage at the time, for programming work anyway, but the way I figured it the company was taking a chance on a guy who only had patchwork experience writing software in a variety of situations.  They brought me up to a reasonable wage after I'd gone through the motions and was established at the company.  I was skipped over for a raise the next year because the company was slightly under water but trying its damndest to get profitable, trying different management techniques, tracking metrics, different approaches to the business model, stuff I really don't care about or understand because my head doesn't work that way.  All I cared about was that we always seemed to be moving ahead and that I had a great working environment.  My wife encouraged me to look for another job later in the year, especially if I was passed over for another raise, but that didn't happen.  Last April, on my fourth year anniversary at the job, the CTO came to me with blessings from the new CEO (the former's wife) and brought my pay up to the level it's at now, claiming he was embarrassed that I was paid so little for so long even in this area of the U.S. (despite me being happy as a clam just to work at such a great place).  The company, meanwhile, had grown from the little 12-person outfit scraping by to a respectable place employing nearly 40 people and doing business with some of the biggest local companies in the area, all while staying true to their ethical vision.

The point being, "doing things right" takes time, money, blood, and tears.  You don't immediately "do things the right way", sometimes you have to make sacrifices.  And in a situation like Squad's, where the side product unrelated to the main business may not have even seemed like a decently profitable enterprise up until about two years ago, or wildly popular until about a year ago, "doing things right" may have meant taking the parent company under with the unprofitable product.  Hopefully you've noticed that Squad has made some real changes, hired new people (I mean, really, we've got more than double the number of devs now I think), and is now focused on making the game great.  They've realized the potential and made the changes required to make KSP a core product of their business.

It sucks that getting to a point where you are "doing things right" might require sacrifices or contracting out to the lowest bidder, it really does.  But until and if the landscape of global capitalism changes, that's the reality you have to deal with.

[justidutch]

1 hour ago, regex said:

I think what people are really railing about here is the injustice of global capitalism, and while I am not at all opposed to activism against harsh economic realities it's not going to be solved by damaging a small company (and their employees) what makes a video game.

By no means did I say that in seriousness, more as a facepalm-type statement to point out how misplaced some peoples outrage is, IMHO.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, justidutch said:

By no means did I say that in seriousness, more as a facepalm-type statement to point out how misplaced some peoples outrage is, IMHO.

Yeah, I wasn't really replying to you so much as the people you were addressing.

[waterlubber]

5 hours ago, Tex_NL said:

To re-cap: Squad can neither deny nor confirm it. Confirming it would basically mean a suicide. Denying it would only strengthen suspicion and create conspiracy theories. All they can do is ignore it.

With the exception of confirming it, with an apology, and giving living wages to their employees.

 

I would forgive them. Most people would; we already know what they did.

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, waterlubber said:

With the exception of confirming it, with an apology, and giving living wages to their employees.

See, now that's a reasonable request (although I'd say something like "wage based on comparable wages for similar work in the employee's living area" because saying "livable wage" just means "minimum wage" as that's what it was originally designed to be, in the U.S. at least).  "Damaging Squad" doesn't really help anyone but the vindictive souls.