Take-Two Kills "Essential" Grand Theft Auto V Mod

[Terwin]

Many people seem concerned that T2 is all about profit and this will be the end of KSP.  Remember, T2 did not just buy KSP, they bought the IP(as in they own Kerbals and can now release kerbal-branded everything).

Also, it is not just profit, it is high profits with minimal investment.

Adding DRM to a released product is hard.  Anything tacked-on will be trivial to circumvent, and anything integrated will require a massive re-write.  (considering how much of the core functionality is over-written by things like FAR(Aerodynamics), Kerbalism(background processing), and RO(lots of stuff, I am sure), there may not be a lot of code left where they can add DRM that is not *already* circumvented by existing mods, and I do not think any lawyer wants to be in a position to try and argue that even though A existed for years before B and has not substantially changed since B, A is specifically and maliciously intended to circumvent B)

It is far cheaper for T2 to produce a re-skinned mario-kart clone, and two dozen other low-barrier-to-entry games using Kerbals than to go back into the existing KSP code(which is still being re-factored and cleaned up) and try to add DRM that is more effective than a post-it note saying 'please do not steal this.'

Actually, if they made it racing rocket-ships with magnetic turns that could be pretty cool(obviously the default setting would not have 'realistic' physics on the turns, but it would provide a good reason why you need to choose between more steel(easier turns, but slower acceleration) or more carbon-fiber(more acceleration, but harder to turn), with magnets as power-ups and ...)

I would expect most of the required development effort for those would just be appropriately funny cut-scenes and skins(that may or may not make Kerbals look a lot like the 3 stooges which may or may not be accurate depending on your views...).  Easy to port to all consoles, etc.

For monetizing KSP, DLC is the obvious choice, even if the core product will need occasional updates to make sure everything needed for the DLC is supported.  Anything beyond that is probably too-much effort for the expected profit.(it is possible even DLC for KSP is too much effort for the profit, but they are using 'Making History' as a trial balloon to see if it is worth pursuing further) 

KSP is a niche product and I strongly suspect T2 is more interested in the Kerbals themselves than in KSP.  I am expecting a large number of children's games featuring large-headed green people of Kerbin(which are already established and clearly not a derivative work, even if they share the same easy-to-draw characteristics of some well known characters, they even have the start of a non-violent but curious culture that would mesh well with children's games)

 

[richfiles]

Me: Gets out of bed... 

Quote

@Terwin
Many people seem concerned that T2 is all about profit and this will be the end of KSP.  Remember, T2 did not just buy KSP, they bought the IP(as in they own Kerbals and can now release kerbal-branded everything)...........

Me: Crawls back under the covers... 

Edited June 19, 2017 by richfiles

[regex]

1 hour ago, Terwin said:

KSP is a niche product

I'm curious how you define "niche product" in video games. Skyrim, for instance, sold 30mil copies and is #10 on the list I'm looking at, with the vast majority of the top fifty averaging below 20mil, meaning KSP is a very strong "niche product" as it is nearing two million units sold (probably more). Amongst indie developers that's got to count for something, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if 2 million is a very strong seller among "niche products". I mean, I thought Factorio was a pretty "niche product" but they've sold over one million copies so far.

Edited June 19, 2017 by regex

[Terwin]

1 hour ago, regex said:

I'm curious how you define "niche product" in video games. Skyrim, for instance, sold 30mil copies and is #10 on the list I'm looking at, with the vast majority of the top fifty averaging below 20mil, meaning KSP is a very strong "niche product" as it is nearing two million units sold (probably more). Amongst indie developers that's got to count for something, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if 2 million is a very strong seller among "niche products". I mean, I thought Factorio was a pretty "niche product" but they've sold over one million copies so far.

GTA V sales top 80 million units as of May.  When GTA IV topped 20M units sold, it was announced that the franchise had sold over 100M units(before the release of GTA V).  

As such, things that are worth while to do for GTA V or GTA in general are not necessarily worth the time and effort for KSP.

As the comparisons made in this thread are to GTA or GTA V specifically, one must remember that GTA has sold roughly 90 copies per copy of KSP sold, and GTA V has sold roughly 40 copies per copy of KSP sold, with GTA also selling for a much higher price than KSP.  (and this is not even counting the GTA online micro-transactions)

I love KSP and I think it is a great product, but it just does not have the bottom-line impact of the product that it is being compared to in this thread.

And as GTA V is sold on four different console systems, with more than 45M units shipped several months before the windows release was even available, I would hazard that it also has a smaller percentage of mod-users than KSP(as far as I know consoles do not generally support mods).

In fact, looking at the sales numbers and the release dates, one might come to the conclusion that non-console users of GTA are mostly an after-thought(both GTA IV and V were released much later on Windows, with no support for other PC operating systems listed), making the maximum size of the GTA mod-using community an inconsequential fraction of the GTA community as a whole.

 

After reading the rest of this thread and then looking at these sale numbers, I sort of get the impression of someone looking at the regulatory hurdles of building a 100 story sky-scraper in Manhattan and bemoaning the impossibility of building a 3000 sqft ranch-home in rural New Mexico.

[regex]

In comparison to GTA V, yes, it's a "niche product", but in terms of other games, especially indie games, it's a pretty decent seller and hardly niche, that's the real issue I have with the classification. It seems to be thrown around on these forums a lot as if it's some sort of badge of eliteness when it's actually a pretty popular game.

So popular, in fact, that a major publisher thought the IP was worth enough to buy it.

24 minutes ago, Terwin said:

After reading the rest of this thread and then looking at these sale numbers, I sort of get the impression of someone looking at the regulatory hurdles of building a 100 story sky-scraper in Manhattan and bemoaning the impossibility of building a 3000 sqft ranch-home in rural New Mexico.

Now this, this is definitely spot-on. Nice comparison.

[Neroziat]

On 6/18/2017 at 1:59 PM, Starman4308 said:

So, so very evil for enforcing that mods don't use a library that helps crack into protected content. It's not like they're the IP owners or anything; who are they to say how GTA V can or can't be used?

A large, experienced group of fellow developers to help polish up the game and produce DLC?

I think you underestimate how much work it is to take a mod and turn it into commercial-quality code. It's not nearly so simple as "fork Github repo, profit".

This not-terribly-important thread is exactly where it should be: in the forum for things not KSP related, such as GTA V modding.

evil as in they sent a group of thugs to a devs house and performed a mafia style C&D because a guy was "developing" a multiplayer alternative (wasnt even released yet)

Polish up how? by adding better textures? the game already has quite a bit of polish. And by dlc you mean paid mods, because mods right now do far more than the upcoming dlc will.

Commercial quality code? Is that why you need patches on day one of a released game to get through the first level? Whereas in KSP Within 3 weeks of a new version most popular mods are updated and pretty darn stable.

As another user pointed out, there was a thread under announcements, that got moved here. And this thread is super important.

 

I think you just want to be bitter in your posts and make light of my valid arguments. This is a very serious issue. I'm guessing you bought one too many shark cards.

 

also, i never advocated leaving bad steam reviews, but my point was that if people were not allowed to voice their concern here anymore then the only place left to voice a concern would be the reviews for steam. i mean you could complain on your blog, but that's so 2004.

we can hope they (take two) will do the right thing, but history has shown otherwise.

[TheRagingIrishman]

1 hour ago, Neroziat said:

Commercial quality code? Is that why you need patches on day one of a released game to get through the first level?

Do you not hear all the people complaining when this happens? Are you seriously saying that you're fine with sloppiness?

1 hour ago, Neroziat said:

Polish up how? by adding better textures? the game already has quite a bit of polish.

No I don't think he means textures. I think he means some much harder stuff. For example, KSP is built on Unity which is built on Mono/net which allows the use of C#. This comes with some pretty serious garbage collection problems. KSP, with a small group of devs, doesn't have anyone whose job it is to do nothing but work on GC (yes they made a ton of improvements in 1.1.3->1.2 but that was done by following best practices, advice on which is not hard to find). T2, as a massive game developer/publisher, knows people who specialize in GC. Quite a lot of people (myself excluded) would disagree with you on saying "this game [is] polish[ed]".

1 hour ago, Neroziat said:

And by dlc you mean paid mods, because mods right now do far more than the upcoming dlc will.

Can you show me a mod that does the same thing as the mission planner will in the DLC? Also, the stock game is full of mods that have been incorporated/interpreted (list of stuff that started as mods: planes, subassemblies, rover wheels, resources, fuel transfer, docking, aerodynamics, some of the contracts, commnet, kerbnet, and many other things)

1 hour ago, Neroziat said:

As another user pointed out, there was a thread under announcements, that got moved here. And this thread is super important.

Nope there is still a thread in announcements (also, no one could have made a thread about T2 and GTA in announcements as only Squad staff and mods can start threads there). That thread is about KSP and T2. This thread is about GTA and T2. Therefore, this belongs in the Lounge, where all non-KSP related stuff goes.

 

Thanks for reading and if I said something that offended you, I'm sorry

[Starman4308]

2 hours ago, Neroziat said:

evil as in they sent a group of thugs to a devs house and performed a mafia style C&D because a guy was "developing" a multiplayer alternative (wasnt even released yet)

Ooh, mafia style. I like how you make that C&D sound. Dangerous. Exciting. Like something straight out of Grand Theft Auto.

2 hours ago, Neroziat said:

I think you just want to be bitter in your posts and make light of my valid arguments. This is a very serious issue.

I may be a tad frustrated with yet another kneejerk anti-big-business reaction garnering far too much support from people who know far too little about the situation, and those who make mountains out of molehills.

2 hours ago, Neroziat said:

I'm guessing you bought one too many shark cards.

Okay, I totally get what you're saying, but I have one very important question.

What's a shark card?

2 hours ago, Neroziat said:

also, i never advocated leaving bad steam reviews, but my point was that if people were not allowed to voice their concern here anymore then the only place left to voice a concern would be the reviews for steam. i mean you could complain on your blog, but that's so 2004.

Yes, you could go complain on your blog. You have a right to free speech. You don't, however, have the right to speech on somebody else's platform. Steam reviews have a specific purpose, and reviews complaining solely about business practices are not that purpose.

You are not entitled to GTA mods. You are not entitled to abuse Steam reviews to complain about topics unrelated to the quality of the video game in question.

[Ven]

6 hours ago, Starman4308 said:

...Steam reviews have a specific purpose, and reviews complaining solely about business practices are not that purpose.

...You are not entitled to abuse Steam reviews to complain about topics unrelated to the quality of the video game in question.

If people believe that those business practices effect the game, then they have every reason to post their opinions as a review, regardless on how overblown their reactions really are.

[stibbons]

3 hours ago, Ven said:

If people believe that those business practices effect the game, then they have every reason to post their opinions as a review, regardless on how overblown their reactions really are.

If it's their opinion of how it's affecting the game when they write that review, then I'd agree with you. Negative reviews based on some hypothetical doomsday scenario, though, are completely invalid.

[RA3236]

10 hours ago, Starman4308 said:

What's a shark card?

Basically GTA money that you can buy using IRL money. $8 million in game is like $108 AUD atm

[WanderingKid]

For those curious, an actual copywrite attorney (Leonard French) discusses the possible defenses for OpenIV if they chose to defend themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcoOxiaQppo&feature=push-u&attr_tag=PRlVdhgiUMizlC_V-6

 

[TheEpicSquared]

On 6/20/2017 at 11:36 AM, RA3236 said:

Basically GTA money that you can buy using IRL money. $8 million in game is like $108 AUD atm

So... microtransactions.

[DestinyPlayer]

I hope that at least we can all agree that, even if T2 had a legal and business reason to do this, it was still the most stand-up guy decision they could make out of all the other decisions. After all, Let's Plays are technically illegal. But we can still hate the companies that kill them. Legally allowed to do so, but still a stand-up guy thing to do.

Probably a bad example, but I can't remember something else that's in the grey zone legality-wise.

Edited June 22, 2017 by DestinyPlayer

[Superfluous J]

7 hours ago, TheEpicSquared said:

So... microtransactions.

I don't know Australian money offhand, but $100 is far from "micro"

[TheEpicSquared]

1 minute ago, 5thHorseman said:

I don't know Australian money offhand, but $100 is far from "micro"

Macrotransactions then  

[Superfluous J]

19 minutes ago, DestinyPlayer said:

After all, Let's Plays are technically illegal.

No, they are not.

Let's Plays of games where the owner of the game's copyrighted materials says you can do a Let's Play (i.e., most every indie game out there including KSP) are perfectly legal.

Let's Plays of games where the owner of the game's copyrighted materials says you can NOT do a Let's Play (i.e., I'm sure there are some but I don't know of any. I did get muted for posting a video with the title song for Just Cause 3 though) are illegal.

Let's Plays of games where the owner of the game's copyrighted materials do not explicitly say either way are a murky middle ground. Fair Use is - in spite of the longstanding efforts of the Music And Film Industry Associations of America (MAFIAA) - a strong legal argument with a lot of precedents. Not that any LPer would have the funds to go against a big publisher if they were sued or anything.

[DestinyPlayer]

1 minute ago, 5thHorseman said:

Let's Plays of games where the owner of the game's copyrighted materials says you can NOT do a Let's Play (i.e., I'm sure there are some but I don't know of any. I did get muted for posting a video with the title song for Just Cause 3 though) are illegal.

Nintendo, I think? Not sure, but my point is that it's still a stand-up guy thing to do, no matter the technical legality, at least in my opinion.

[Superfluous J]

9 minutes ago, DestinyPlayer said:

Nintendo, I think? Not sure, but my point is that it's still a stand-up guy thing to do, no matter the technical legality, at least in my opinion.

Yeah I did some more reading in the past few minutes. I've not really looked into it for years. The last time I did any real checking on it was when I got my partnership with my gaming network. The reason I joined (and stay) is for the protections they offer if someone files a takedown on my videos.

It looks like Nintendo is the biggest stalwart of the old guard. But big names including Microsoft, Bethesda, and Valve explicitly say that LPs are fine. And then there are all the studios that offer "no licensed music" options in their settings specifically to cater to LPers, and others giving free copies to LPers to get them to play the games online.

EDIT: And yes, it is the right thing to do, to allow people to play your game publicly. But it's not really done to be "good people" but because it's free advertising.

Edited June 22, 2017 by 5thHorseman

[kerbiloid]

KSP is not just a sandbox, it's a specialized nerds' sandbox.
While Factorio, Minecraft, Skyrim (if with mods) are sandbox for everybody.

T2 would run a franchise series of games with BDArmory, Airplane Plus, etc, based on KSP engine.

[RA3236]

News update: T2 isn't dealing with SP mods anymore https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/en-us/articles/115009494848?flash_digest=6e8cd105bcd89bfaf7c0f042e2e37ef32e5f610d

[Pixel of Life]

12 hours ago, RA3236 said:

News update: T2 isn't dealing with SP mods anymore https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/en-us/articles/115009494848?flash_digest=6e8cd105bcd89bfaf7c0f042e2e37ef32e5f610d

In other words, what they're saying is basically "singleplayer modding is okay, unless we suddenly decide it isn't for whatever reason". If T2 want to be phallic objects about it, they can still take down any mod or tool they want, for any reason, even if that support article doesn't classify said mod or tool as being against the "rules". This "announcement" changes nothing.

Edited June 24, 2017 by CaptainKorhonen

[Superfluous J]

32 minutes ago, CaptainKorhonen said:

In other words, what they're saying is basically "singleplayer modding is okay, unless we suddenly decide it isn't for whatever reason". If T2 want to be phallic objects about it, they can still take down any mod or tool they want, for any reason, even if that support article doesn't classify said mod or tool as being against the "rules". This "announcement" changes nothing.

In other words, they can do anything that any other video game company can do.

[stibbons]

In other words, absolutely nothing has changed. Take Two are still free to issue takedown notices to single player mods that infringe their IP. Which is exactly what they did in this case. That's really all that happened.

[Jarin]

7 hours ago, CaptainKorhonen said:

In other words, what they're saying is basically "singleplayer modding is okay, unless we suddenly decide it isn't for whatever reason". If T2 want to be phallic objects about it, they can still take down any mod or tool they want, for any reason, even if that support article doesn't classify said mod or tool as being against the "rules". This "announcement" changes nothing.

It means that we're returning to the status quo, and Open IV can resume development once things are hashed out a bit.