How long will Squid keep updating KSP?

[DarkHawkGames]

On 6/23/2016 at 0:55 PM, Vaporized Steel said:

Nobody knows how long they'll keep updating KSP, but the community is still very active and because it's been updating ever since 2011 it will first die off slowly. So my guess is nowhere soon.

I don't know if KSP will ever truly 'die off.' I think it'll wind up being like...what is it, Jagged Alliance? That has a tiny, beyond dedicated group of fans that still play it to this day.

[Hevak]

Oh and here really  let's break this down. And I'll use the avg numbers i see thrown around the forum a lot. Note this is all hypothetical as neither steam nor squad releases any numbers. It simply illustrates the business aspects in play.

I hear the random number of steam takes 30% from squad and other developers a lot.  Never seen any proof but ok let's go with this. 

I hear most people saying they paid in the $20 range for early acces. Some were more some were less. I paid 26.99 for one of my copies. So let's use an avg price of say $23 the current sale price on steam. Well it's 23.99 but still 23. 

There are currently right this minute 2,213 steam users in game according to steam. 

2213 X 23 = $50,899 in sales. If steam is really taking 30% that = $15,269 which means squad made an extra $35,629 just from the people playing right this minute. That's more than double what they spent for access to steam customers. They spent roughly $6.90 to sell each copy through steam. 

there are 30,346 reviews of ksp on steam. As far as I know you can't review games unless you have it in your library on steam. If you're wondering 776 are negative.  

If every copy was sold at $23 that = $697,958.  Over a half a million dollars in sales. Minus steams supposed 30%  of $209,388 that still nets $488,570. Still nearly a half a million dollars. Still more than half what they spent for access to steams customer base. Again they spent $6.90 to sell each copy of steam. In essence they sold copies of ksp to steam for $16.10 and steam turned around and put them on their "shelf" at a price of $23. How do you think Best Buy and gamestop etc works?

I'm sure many have heard the old adage sometimes you need to spend money to make money. That is exactly what squad did. 

Now add in how many people probably paid more than $23 on steam and those numbers increase.  Or let's take what I feel is a generous leap and say half of those steam users would have gone directly to an unknown game developer's website that has never once made a video game, and wasn't even orignally in any way a video game company. That is if they ever even happened to hear of squad or ksp. Even with that shift squad still made a ton of extra money from steam they otherwise wouldn't have. 

Last time I heard, squad said that finances were not in any way a problem. And that were wildly successful. So how stupid is squad for using steam. Cause all these steam screws over small developers and anti steam posts are basically saying squad is stupid for using steam.  

They made a very basic, and very wise business decision. And it's one that squad I'm sure didn't just enter into on a whim.  In this hypothetical they paid a company $209,000  to get their product in front of however many Customers steam has. They paid $209,000 to sell 30,000+ more copies of their game. This without a doubt made them much more successful than they would have otherwise been. At the very least it made them much more successful in a vastly shorter period of time. These are  really basic business concepts here

Would squad make more money if everyone bought from them directly? Of course. Is that ever going to happen realistically? Never.  how much would they have never made if they didn't use steam though? Enough it probably would of hurt them much more than they are being hurt or held down by the big bad steam monsters. 

Note: some reviews may not neccesarily be actual copies bought from steam. They could have been transferred over by people who bought early enough from squad. And all numbers here are complete unknowns as sqaud and steam don't release any true figures. the point made is still valid though. 

Edited June 25, 2016 by Hevak

[The_Rocketeer]

@Hevak a pint and a chat would be lovely sometime.

[Violent Jeb]

6 hours ago, Hevak said:

Oh and here really  let's break this down. And I'll use the avg numbers i see thrown around the forum a lot. Note this is all hypothetical as neither steam nor squad releases any numbers. It simply illustrates the business aspects in play.

Google can easily tell you sales have surpassed 1M, but afaik they'd prefer we not air out the sales figures.

with that said, I am also willing to bet that the majority of people who will buy, have already bought. While i'm sure an active community and active devnotes will go a long way, I see a successor or dlc as the logical extension to keep the game relevant after they sort the wheels and smooth the edges of unity 5

In the meantime, I stay positive we will see updates until they release a universally acclaimed update, since we haven't really been seeing the most well-rounded or received updates.

[AbacusWizard]

I would rather download a game directly from a developer's website (or Humble Bundle or Good Old Games, if relevant). I do not like Steam. This isn't a moral judgment or an economic commentary; just personal preference. If developers want to put a game on Steam, great; more power to 'em. What bothers me is when a game is only available on Steam.

Anyway, what I guess I'm trying to say is: thank you, Squid, for providing multiple ways for your fans to purchase KSP.

[Hevak]

Well every consumer has their preferences. That's sort of the point. As my first post on this thread said, some people wouldn't have bought the game if not for steam. I do find it interesting that people who hate steam often generally can't give a decent reality based reason why, or those that can are usually the anti drm crowd. And it always makes me wonder why. But the spreading of incorrect or outright false information to try and hurt a company you simply don't like is wrong. And if someones get even one person to not buy a copy of ksp by doing so, it hurts everybody involved.

it makes absolutely no difference where ksp is bought. I'm tired of hearing people bash steam and often anyone who uses it. The only question that needed answering here was what the perceived life of ksp is for an interested purchaser. Why must the anti steam crowd try to push people away?

it sounds like to me the OP who has 5 posts here is new.  They said they wanted to buy the game because it is on sale on steam. That is why they want to buy. This is the most important thing here.

But they quickly get messages slamming steam and contempt for them. This is the first introduction to the ksp community. Might that affect their decision to buy? It could. And as I said if anyone ends up causing one person to change their mind, then they are doing nothing but harming all of us as well as squad, the company they so claim to love and want to support.

true support of squad would be to put your personal bias and hatred aside when that information is not relevant to the discussion at hand. All that should have been said here is. Squad has no plans to stop development for the foreseeable future. Which is what squad has said. You could give an estimate of a time  frame you think it will last. You could give the person a nice welcome to what is generally a wonderful community for a game these days.

true support of squad would be to accept that they have chosen to sell their games on steam. True support would be accepting that and not attacking where people by their games because of personal bias. Because that is what ends up coming across, because while this thread hasn't  most that discuss where to buy end up starting to insult steam users. And in the end you are attacking a decision squad made for the health of their business. 

i have had zero issues with steam. Ksp on steam is ran just like it is from every other source it's sold on. There is no drm on steam for ksp, and that is all that matters here, since that is the usual anti steam argument. So the point of where is "better" to buy is moot. 

My purchasing decisions are based on my safety of the transaction, and the trust had in a company.

my personal views are such. I don't care one bit where people buy Ksp.  I just happy it's still pulling in new customers willing to buy the game. That benefits all of us, no matter where they buy. Where they buy is going to have minimal affect to squad in every way, other than them making profit and selling more units. The two biggest measuring sticks in the gaming industry. And guess which is number one. Units sold. Not how much it made.

World of warcraft was never saying we made 2 quadrillion dollars a month on subs did they? No they reported subscriber numbers and copies sold because that equates to success in the game industry.  Since most companies price their game well enough to insure profit if it sells well. And the number of people playing or buying is what tends to tell other customers, hey this is a good game. And what did Blizzard do when sub numbers started to drop significantly? They stopped reporting sub numbers, because it would "appear" as a negative. But I guarantee they are still makin an ungodly large amount of money off what is still one of if not the biggest MMO games out there. But people leaving the game gives a negative impression. So they don't announce those numbers anymore.

Steam is doing nothing different, it's in no way different from Best Buy, or GameStop, or the now defunct circuit city, or wal mart etc. they are a reseller plain and simple. Like middle men or not, resellers are a vital part of the enconomy. Or do you all hate the grocery store and avoid it? Why not go directly to the slaughter house and the farmers, or Pepsi, or Frito-lay, nestle, on and on and on. Do you hate Amazon? eBay? Steam is doing nothing different, this has been going on for centuries. And it works.

For the record I am very much anti digital distribution I just don't like it. I still buy as much music as I can on cd's instead of iTunes. But it has became a neccesary factor in the gaming industry these days. 

i also find it funny most of the anti steam people have no problem at all being forced into only buying their digitally distributed console stuff from PSN or Xbox live. They don't seem to slam those companies near as much as steam, and in my eyes the do more harm than good. They have a monopoly on their platform they actually do screw over both publishers and consumers far more than steam. Because no one has a choice. But they have come to accept that. They also forget that almost every single console game is DRM'd these days.  So again the vitriol against steam isn't based on reality often times. 

No matter where you buy this game you are making the exact same transaction, plain and simple. Any in true reality, and as been showing many times, Steam is the superior platform for ksp. Since they tend to get updates faster and easier, and squad used it for their only pre release test so for. Oh and that went very well too from what I saw. Squad themselves have said their infrastructure at the store isn't quite up to par, or capable of handling large amounts of traffic. And it has clearly shown at times. All that said if some one came in here saying they were going to buy the game from squads website and wanted to know about they game, I wouldn't throw squad under the proverbial bus over their storefronts short comings. 

If someone came on here and asked which would be the better place to buy ksp, I would simply tell them I have it on steam. I have no problems with it, it's drm free too and you tend to get updates a bit sooner, and you will get updates downloaded much faster often times from steam. And I would recommend that. But any of them is good, you'll be happy you bought no matter where you do.

If they asked for further information, I would just say, well GoG has a longer review process for updates. This tends to delay by an hour or more compared to other platforms. And squads updater from their storefront is reported to have problems at times. But it really doesn't matter where you buy it, as people are happy with all three choices.

because that is truly supporting squad. And that is a true unbiased view and recommendation. I never told them where I would or wouldn't buy it. I never told them where they should or shouldn't spend their money when it really makes no difference in the long run. I didn't throw in any personal hatred for a company that tends to rub off towards their customers. No it was simply just a factual, relevant response. And really most people already know where they are going to buy something, what they usually need convincing of is whether they should buy something at all. That's what should be focused on here. As I said all consumers have their prefrences or bias.

The majority of decent video games that died an early death did so because of vocal minorities that feel the need to spread biased falsehoods about one thing or another involving the game. Just think of all those games that have had their community ruined by people overreacting or flat out trying to divide the community into one side or another, driving people away, or keeping new people away.

If you want KSP to continue development for as long as possible, if you want to have hope for a KSP 2 or who knows what they may make, then let's drop all this bs over where is better or how evil steam is. Who knows maybe Felipe is out somewhere on a nice tropical island enjoying a moment of success after 4 years or so of working on his life's passion and being wildly successful. And maybe Felipe will come back one day with ides for some other crazy off the wall game. Or maybe he is ready and re inspired to make the next KSP and blow us all away again with an amazing game.

i find squad to a bit of a refreshing change from other game developers. They have done things a bit against the norm, you have to admit. They are fairly active and vocal with their customers. Face it some games go days without a single word from anyone from the developer. I'm sure every one of you can recall an instance where developers tend to avoid their community.

i don't care where squad sells their games, I don't care what platform squad ports their game too. I don't care where anyone buys their version of ksp. I just care that people buy it and that squad stays successful, so that we might get some more goodies for ksp for a couple years to come. And who knows maybe after the get on consoles and reach an even wider customer base, and become more well known as a game developer, we might end with a couple more amazing games. 

Food for thought. Kerbals don't have to be confined to space. Kerbals could easily become a franchise theme. Who knows where a funny, cute, slightly whacky, little green creature could pop up. They have only just began exploring their own solar system. They have only just began to reach for the stars. Their future is completely unwritten and wide open. Same with those monkeys at squad. (Its their logo people)

 

Edited June 25, 2016 by Hevak

[Megadeath]

The debate over distribution doesn't really belong here, and is a pretty poor greeting to the community for the op.

As to that, as others have said all indications are development will continue a good while, and it'd be worth every penny if they dropped it tomorrow anyway.

[Sandworm]

Squad is rational.  They will continue development so long as monthly sales are greater than monthly costs.  The day that sales drop below the cost of keeping the lights on, development stops.

 

Given how sales are so closely tied to Youtube and other games media coverage, I am worried.  These days it is rare for a KSP-related vid to break 100k on youtube.  Absent some new eyecandy, some properly-new features (ie not stuff already offered by mods) I give them one or two more updates.

Edited June 26, 2016 by Sandworm

[Ozzallos]

Squid, kraken... I'm actual good with this

[Jim DiGriz]

On 6/23/2016 at 1:32 PM, The_Rocketeer said:

Yeh but it does nothing to increase the financial power or 'weight' of the up-and-coming companies to deal with a middle-man. If you can put the money directly in their hands, in the long run it's better for u both. Companies like Steam find a small niche, and force it wider than it would be otherwise.

They provide a service to me as a centralized way to find games, purchase games, manage games, and install games across multiple platforms.  They provide a service to "up and coming companies" to be able to advertise on steam, to be able to entirely avoid setting up their own software distribution and downloading service and they avoid the barrier of users having to manage another login on another service just to download bits and run a game.  The experience with UBIsoft games purchased from Steam, for example, is annoying because it just installs their own client that you have to run to manage games, which they had to build and is arguably inferior to steam (or at least it gives me two sets of orthogonal things to be aggrivated about instead of me only having to learn about steam's idiosyncrasies).  Steam does take a 'cut' but it seems proportional to the service they're operating and so far they don't appear to be abusing their status.   As I posted before they also have extremely high bandwidth costs and need to scale out to handle major releases of popular games, which will simply not happen on a not-for-profit basis.

So far it really isn't better for us both.  If they start abusing their position, then I'd argue for a competitor and I'd expect one to eventually emerge.  And really its much better for me, and much better for small game companies -- based on the number of early-access indie titles in my library that I otherwise would never have found (*cough* KSP *cough*) I'd say that its working pretty decent for everyone right now, other than people who get upset about a bit of profit motive.

[Zoidos]

On 23.6.2016 at 7:55 PM, Vaporized Steel said:

As for updating KSP and Steam.
If you are going to use steam, make sure you copy/paste your entire KSP directory to a backup folder. Steam will autoupdate KSP and this can render savegames useless and definitely breaks your game if you will use mods (plugins)

You can turn auto-update off, you know?

[Tourist]

Firstly be careful about using the word "squid" around here... it makes the Kraken VERY upset. We all remember what happened the last time..... those poor, poor people.

..Oh well...

Second. My gut feeling on development is about two more years.... three at a maximum. The next Unity update, some graphical improvements, rocket parts overhaul, a few more parts and features (base parts, is my hope). Then they will finally start the task of grafting a token multiplayer onto the game. More bugfixing, a few more parts. Then done. 

 

Edited June 26, 2016 by Tourist

[Daveroski]

Looking at current trends, I think we can expect Squad to be getting royalties from the KSP TV show aimed at the same age group as Family Guy and Futurama sometime in the next  five years.

 

[magnemoe]

11 hours ago, Zoidos said:

You can turn auto-update off, you know?

This is unreliable, it tend to turn itself on again pretty randomly. 
No idea why.

However you can copy KSP out of the stream folder and run it from the other location this copy will not be updated. 

[Zoidos]

26 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

This is unreliable, it tend to turn itself on again pretty randomly. 
No idea why.

However you can copy KSP out of the stream folder and run it from the other location this copy will not be updated. 

Never had this problem. Which of course doesn't mean that others can't either.

But yeah, a backup can never hurt.

[klgraham1013]

KSP saves breaking isn't Steams fault.  We're not in early access anymore.  If an update breaks your save, Squad takes the blame.