25,000 copies sold (Steam)

[Sunscreen]

Just something to bear in mind- Im not sure if CKAN running KSP-1 shows up on those steam numbers. I refunded KSP-2 after deciding it wasn't for me and went back to the original. A whole variety of reasons behind that choice which are my own, but I felt that an element of caution is required if one is speculating on numbers that all the required data might either be unavailable or provide an inaccurate assessment.

[RayneCloud]

I would like you all to remember that we can't see Epic, or PD Store based sales. We can see number of players on GMG, roughly 470 or so. (Hence why we tend to ignore GMG as any sort of analytical tool, way to low user adoption rates.) So, I'd just advise caution on using steam as the only metric even though it's  the only platform we have concrete data on. I know that sounds, off, but just keep in mind that while we can see steam, that epic sales and store/website based sales might be even higher.

[Sunscreen]

That's true, but there would have to be underlying reasons why that might be the case that would be unrelated to KSP2 issues (excepting personal data concerns). I don't see any reason to assume a significant deviation in purchasing trends between different outlets beyond minor personal concerns driving people to different choices. The spikes in purchasing/refund behaviour will probably begin to flatten as people either hold off, purchase then refund to hold off, purchase with a view to development updates or purchase to transition fully to ksp 2. With that, short-term assessments are probably unhelpful as the dynamics will evolve along with the update cycle. Mid to long term is worth more in assessing the viability, and one hopes the bean counters share that view. There's no denying that the pressure must be on, and increasing that pressure through angry emotional outbursts hasn't got a great track record in success. Winning teams are focused on goals, clear analysis and clear direction. Let's hope for all three and support them by also being focused on those things.

[TheArturro]

I bought KSP 2 in the first minute of its release and already submitted a couple of bug reports/feedback reports both here on the forum, discord and via the launcher. I'll continue to play the game occasionaly (maybe even do 1 or 2 YT vids) but I'll mostly stick to KSP 1 until an update comes.

I belive that the main reason for such low amounts of sold copies is the fact that in terms of actual gameplay (as of today, 28.02.2023) KSP 2 doesn't yet bring anything gamechanging (for most players) other than "workplaces" (which people have trouble getting used to) and under-warp acceleration (which is great, but only usefull to people flying very low TWR interplanetary ships - consider that most of KSP 1 players never left Kerbin-Mun-Minmus "system"). 

Truth to be told, unless you are a hardcore KSP fan, who wants to be a part of the game creation process there is barely any reason to buy KSP 2, when KSP 1 (with DLCs and free mods) can be bought much cheaper. The performance issues as well as lack of some basic features present in og KSP (TWR, burntime readouts, science mode, robotics etc.) simply doesn't make the game a viable purchase yet.   EDIT: Also the price tag of $50 for a Too*-Early-Access certainly doesn't help with sales. I know, it was obviously the publisher's call to make, but I think we can all agree that a $30-$40 price tag would be much more acceptable for most potentiall customers.

KSP 1 players will stick to KSP 1 for now, because there is simply more to do there, and (IMO) at least a bit less gamebraking bugs.

I honestly think that the launch would've gone smoother if they included science mode or colonies even with all the bugs present - because it would bring in players curious about new features. People would still be angry because of the bugs and system requirements - but there would be something new and fascinating. Though it is understandable that devs want to tackle bugs first. Let's just hope they continue to repair and upgrade the game and finally make it into what we're all waiting for - next-gen KSP.

On the side note: One of the biggest and obvious fails that I've seen is the easter-egg objects randomly spawning next to your craft. That takes away all the excitement from trying to discover them yourself. Good luck trying to ignore spoilers when the game does it for you .

Edited February 28, 2023 by TheArturro
Added my take on pricing.

[Jimbodiah]

You used to have alpha/beta testing with a select player group, then when the game was about to be released you would get early access with some overpriced game-pass type of deals. People have since been brainwashed to believe a pre-alpha piece of software is now "early access" with the over-the-top pricetag warranted. People have too much money to burn and allow studios to get away with this behavior, hell, they even reward it. 

I'll test software at work and get paid for it, instead of handing them money and free time to do it for them.

[VlonaldKerman]

10 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

People have since been brainwashed to believe a pre-alpha piece of software is now "early access" with the over-the-top pricetag warranted.

I wouldn't say people have been "brainwashed" but I would agree that the current game is essentially an alpha (early alpha?)-level release, which would normally be some sort of limited-access deal. Relative to that, KSP 2 has sold a lot of copies.

[Mantarochen]

2 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

I wouldn't say people have been "brainwashed" but I would agree that the current game is essentially an alpha (early alpha?)-level release, which would normally be some sort of limited-access deal. Relative to that, KSP 2 has sold a lot of copies.

Regarding the "release build", you're probably not too far off, considering the naming scheme of the updates that are pushed to steam. 

Some people on reddit hinted on a new patch coming, after"releasetest" "development" and "candidate" where pushed to steam in the last few hours

The naming scheme of the pushes already tells you what version they were forced to push to live. With the "playtest" only being 2 days before the actual release.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Mantarochen

[blazemonger]

On 2/27/2023 at 9:18 AM, RayneCloud said:

This makes me incredibly worried. This project's long term viability is in incredible danger.

As a former CM for KSP1 and self proclaimed industry professional, you are clearly and directly drawing conclusions based on at best incomplete data. Game sells on Steam, Epic and direct, you only account for Steam sales. KSP is and always will be a super niche game which will not ever have broad mainstream appeal and the studio as well as Take 2 will know this. I would not be surprised a lot of people bought direct.

I'd say the steam numbers alone shows a niche game shortly after EA doing pretty good for what it is, despite the noise which will always happen. My personal take on this is that it is not unlikely at least a part of the noise is due to factors these people are not telling us, for instance them running the game on a Linux platform or older hardware. KSP2 is clearly designed for the future and doe snot cater to 5+ year old hardware all that much , which IMO is perfectly fine when the studio/publisher is in it for the long haul.

If anyone makes the argument the game really is not ready for the main stage, even when labelled as "early access" I would not disagree but here we are. In general though, it would seem that the foundation of the game is solid, which is very important and I'm not all that concerned about the current state. How quickly these issue get addressed and patches released with consistent progress in quality and performance is what will tell us how well the team is doing more than anything else.

If the scenario now is that the devs go silent for a week or two while they work on fixes and then release a big patch, I'm good with  that. It is what eventually turned around NMS, which had a far more disastrous launch and is doing just fine, if not really well, now.

[RocketRockington]

1 hour ago, blazemonger said:

I'd say the steam numbers alone shows a niche game shortly after EA doing pretty good for what it is, despite the noise which will always happen. My personal take on this is that it is not unlikely at least a part of the noise is due to factors these people are not telling us, for instance them running the game on a Linux platform or older hardware. KSP2 is clearly designed for the future and doe snot cater to 5+ year old hardware all that much , which IMO is perfectly fine when the studio/publisher is in it for the long haul.

So you point out one person with far more knowledge and internal exposure is speculating, and then you write all these even more speculative statements yourself? 

Word to the wise, for almost every PC only title, it's the lions share.   If you have 25k sales on steam, you have less than 50k sales total.  

And the issue with saying it's a niche game so it's ok that it's doing niche #s is that it  is longer has a niche game budget.  It now has a mid-to-high AA budget, based on the # of devs working for Intercept, the long development timeline, the location of the studio in one of the most expensive cities in the US, and the marketing oomph behind even just the EA release.  

And because of that budget, sales figures that would have kept early access KSP1's ongoing development prospects extremely rosy,  look pretty dubious instead, something @RayneCloudis justified in pointing out.  KSP2's yearly burn rate is ballpark 15million based on # of devs and location - I could be off by a factor of 2 here either way - I don't know their exact headcount or # of artists or devs, but I don't think I'm off even by that much. 

  It's more than just dev salaries btw, those typically account for 1/3rd of burn rate with full in-office work, somewhat higher with remote.  Even writing off all development costs, that means T2 needs to expect >500k full US-cost basis, non-sale price yearly sales to keep funding development just to break even. (T2 doesn't keep all the money from a sale, there's Steam's cut, Uniy's cut, VAT in some countries, etc)  And companies don't like 'just breaking even'.  They expect to make profits, and to recoup development costs.

If Take2 could expect 25k sales per week, then that would be an ok-ish situation to be in - not great, not what it would hope for based on prior investment, but enough to keep interest in development &support.   However, it's rarely the case that a game will maintain sales rate when buzz dies down, until a some new buzz can be kicked off. 

And worst of all  from an expense basis- once a game goes live, it's more expensive to keep the same development cadence, because all changes need to be evaluated against a live release cadence and not breaking continuity for live players, and there are live service costs that don't come into play until launch - though in this case at least, KSP2 has been paying some of those by maintaining the community management as a holdover from KSP1.

Edited March 1, 2023 by RocketRockington

[MarcAbaddon]

We don't have the Steam sales numbers though, we know that it had 25k concurrent players at launch day. By definition, that number is smaller than the number of purchases. Again, personally I could easily see it having sold 100k copies, I don't believe in the 500k Steam Spy estimate (which is notoriously unreliable shortly after release). 

We can discuss about KSP being a niche game all day (but 5 million copies is pretty good for 'niche'), but in the end Take Two can calculate how much the dev team costs and how much they expect to get in sales.  And then they'll make decisions on that. I am sure no one expects KSP 2 to sell 10+ million copies, but if it falls too far behind projections that'll have an impact. 

[Mutex]

41 minutes ago, MarcAbaddon said:

We don't have the Steam sales numbers though, we know that it had 25k concurrent players at launch day.

It's astonishing that people are actually still acting like the 25k number is anywhere close to reality. Considering people would be buying at different times of day, in different timezones, not necessarily playing it at all on the first day (people have jobs), maybe not playing it for long given the buggyness and lack of content, maybe playing the game by running the executable directly (therefore not being included in the stats)... the number of concurrent users is going to be nowhere near the number of sales on Steam alone.

[RocketRockington]

Oh I don't think the 25k number is the number.  200k maybe, across all purchase platforms.   Even as an EA, so much hype was built for it amongst the large and fairly loyal KSP consumer base that 25k would be devastating.  But between the poor reviews and refunds, I don't think T2 will be crowing about KSP2 at their next quarterly report.

[Twipsy]

I am worried that t2 will reduce investment

Edited March 1, 2023 by Twipsy

[11JRidding]

On 2/28/2023 at 8:48 AM, Ferio said:

It's been 5 years in development. I think it's very reasonable  to expect a better experience. Not like KSP1 but at least much better than the current state.

Correction: 3 years (Apparently Intercept Games had to start over from scratch after Star Theory's... whatever the hell they were doing with the contract), 1.5 of which was during a global pandemic.

[tstein]

4 hours ago, blazemonger said:

As a former CM for KSP1 and self proclaimed industry professional, you are clearly and directly drawing conclusions based on at best incomplete data. Game sells on Steam, Epic and direct, you only account for Steam sales. KSP is and always will be a super niche game which will not ever have broad mainstream appeal and the studio as well as Take 2 will know this. I would not be surprised a lot of people bought direct.

I

That is normal in data analysis. When you have  a data source that is so predominant over others can  reliably use only that source and apply a correction coefficient upon it.  i.e You can compare Steam numbers of game A with steam numbers of game B and you will have a pretty good comparative analysis.

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

Oh I don't think the 25k number is the number.  200k maybe, across all purchase platforms.   Even as an EA, so much hype was built for it amongst the large and fairly loyal KSP consumer base that 25k would be devastating.  But between the poor reviews and refunds, I don't think T2 will be crowing about KSP2 at their next quarterly report.

EA usually sells way less than true releases.

[Mutex]

I don't think it's helpful to discuss the length of time in development at all, really. It frankly doesn't matter. We don't know the exact circumstances the dev team had to deal with, so what can we infer from it? The quality of the dev team? We simply don't have enough info to make any judgements on that. None of us have ever designed and built a game like KSP2 - no one has, not even the KSP1 devs.

What matters is the state the game was released in, and the price they're charging. Judge the game on that.

Personally I think it would have been a better call to delay by another 6 months, and get a large group of beta testers to really kick the tires before release. I get there were reasons not to do that, but it would have resulted in a much better experience for the playerbase, despite the disappointment of another delay.

[Moons]

1 hour ago, Mutex said:

I don't think it's helpful to discuss the length of time in development at all, really. It frankly doesn't matter. We don't know the exact circumstances the dev team had to deal with, so what can we infer from it? The quality of the dev team? We simply don't have enough info to make any judgements on that. None of us have ever designed and built a game like KSP2 - no one has, not even the KSP1 devs.

What matters is the state the game was released in, and the price they're charging. Judge the game on that.

Personally I think it would have been a better call to delay by another 6 months, and get a large group of beta testers to really kick the tires before release. I get there were reasons not to do that, but it would have resulted in a much better experience for the playerbase, despite the disappointment of another delay.

Probably not - but it can be really important since it decides the future of a game.  From what ive read this game has had a complete change of the developing studio which probably did waste a lot of ressources and slowed down development and at some point it probably will be a problem in regards to keeping it profitable.

 

Also in regards to the topic - it obviously sold way more than 25k of copies since peak players were almost 26k and at no point will everyone be online at the same time. Still the numbers in regards to how fast daily players drop dont look good especially compared to KSP1. They really have to do something soon to turn this arround.

[Mutex]

17 minutes ago, Moons said:

Probably not - but it can be really important since it decides the future of a game.  From what ive read this game has had a complete change of the developing studio which probably did waste a lot of ressources and slowed down development and at some point it probably will be a problem in regards to keeping it profitable.

So the length of time the game has been in development (which we don't actually even know, exactly) is being used to infer the speed at which the dev team is working, which is being used to infer the length of time it'll take the dev team to fix the bugs and complete the outstanding features, which in turn is being used to speculate on the chances of the publisher deciding to cancel the project entirely. This is building conjecture on top of conjecture. People are jumping to very, very unsupported conclusions and spreading a narrative that isn't helpful at all.

[Moons]

5 minutes ago, Mutex said:

So the length of time the game has been in development (which we don't actually even know, exactly) is being used to infer the speed at which the dev team is working, which is being used to infer the length of time it'll take the dev team to fix the bugs and complete the outstanding features, which in turn is being used to speculate on the chances of the publisher deciding to cancel the project entirely. This is building conjecture on top of conjecture. People are jumping to very, very unsupported conclusions and spreading a narrative that isn't helpful at all.

 

Well thats what people have to do if there isnt enough information and its about buying or not buying and about their hobby in general.

 

To be honest - the way this was released - the ammount of content and price isnt a good sign - in my opinion - but obviously its just a presumption. But i do wonder - why did they decide to release it right now and at that price? Looking at the game it probably would have had a way better launch in a few months and maybe even at a really reduced price.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Moons

[Alexoff]

If you now go to Steam and see how many people play in KSP1, and how many in KSP2, it will become clear that something is decidedly wrong with the game. And on metacritic there is no evaluation of the game at all. Apparently KSP2 passed by a wide audience.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

57 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

If you now go to Steam and see how many people play in KSP1, and how many in KSP2, it will become clear that something is decidedly wrong with the game. And on metacritic there is no evaluation of the game at all. Apparently KSP2 passed by a wide audience.

Not an apt comparison.  

[Alexoff]

5 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Not an apt comparison.  

Yes, I forgot - KSP2 cannot be compared with anything

[Moons]

On 2/28/2023 at 12:12 PM, RayneCloud said:

I would like you all to remember that we can't see Epic, or PD Store based sales. We can see number of players on GMG, roughly 470 or so. (Hence why we tend to ignore GMG as any sort of analytical tool, way to low user adoption rates.) So, I'd just advise caution on using steam as the only metric even though it's  the only platform we have concrete data on. I know that sounds, off, but just keep in mind that while we can see steam, that epic sales and store/website based sales might be even higher.

Its pretty obvious that Steam is the biggest store for games - epic is mostly used if there is no other choice or if its cheaper so steam probably is a very good indicator.

 

It is beyond me why anyone would buy games on the EPIC store if there is any other choice - because EPIC - in my opinion - is probably the most anti-consumer store i can think of with lots of missing features to silence consumers. There is a reason why there isnt a forum or real reviews.

 

Just now saw that there is some weird "user score" that isnt explained at all with a pretty high rating for KSP2 - take that as you will ...

I will never support that store - i can still remember how they pay off companies for a thing we never had on PC - timed exclusivity - they even did that so short before release that games suddenly werent purchaseable on steam anymore - for example Metro Exodus ...

Not to mention their lawsuits because of ethically questionable practices:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/business/ftc-epic-games-settlement.html

Edited March 1, 2023 by Moons

[RayneCloud]

2 minutes ago, Moons said:

Its pretty obvious that Steam is the biggest store for games - epic is mostly used if there is no other choice or if its cheaper so steam probably is a very good indicator.

That is factually untrue. Epic has over 62+ million users  and steam has 120 million with up around 60 million daily active users. While that's only /half/ of steams user base, it's still... that.. HALF. That's a HUGE store front and a huge point of sale location. Also, Epic takes 8% and steam takes 30%+ , and if I were launching a game, I'd launch on Epic to get more revenue and not have to counter that revenue loss to steams cut by increasing sales numbers. 

[Moons]

8 minutes ago, RayneCloud said:

That is factually untrue. Epic has over 62+ million users  and steam has 120 million with up around 60 million daily active users. While that's only /half/ of steams user base, it's still... that.. HALF. That's a HUGE store front and a huge point of sale location. Also, Epic takes 8% and steam takes 30%+ , and if I were launching a game, I'd launch on Epic to get more revenue and not have to counter that revenue loss to steams cut by increasing sales numbers. 

 

Ermh EPIC since it started was giving away even AAA games for free. They have lots of users but i doubt lots of people actually buy things in their store if they have another choice - i also have an EPIC account with lots of free games but havent bought anything ...

Its not hard to have "users" if you gift hundreds of games for free. At one point they even gifted GTA5 to their users for free.

Also if i remember correctly they argued that the consumers would get a part of that cut - guess what never happened ...

 

Just think about it - they have given away games for free since 2019? and even doing that they never catched up with steam.

 

Free game List:

https://gamerant.com/epic-games-store-free-games-list/

 

And to support my claims:

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/452389/epic-games-store-customers-spent-on-average-just-4-in-2021/

If that includes their ingame Stores in Fortnite etc. than thats probably even worse.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Moons