A week in... 10% still playing

[The Aziz]

"ouch"

https://steamdb.info/app/1657630/

Spoiler

Hint: % of players does not reflect the state of the game.

 

[RocketRockington]

 

25 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

"ouch"

https://steamdb.info/app/1657630/

  Reveal hidden contents

Hint: % of players does not reflect the state of the game.

 

Yeah totally fair to compare KSP2 to a game that takes 10 hours to complete, or 25 hours if you go full completionist.

https://howlongtobeat.com/game/94769

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

10 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

2% of the peak player base right at launch.  That's not the same thing as purchases.  Based on # of reviews, the game has likely sold somewhere in the 300k range (big error bars here of course, factor of 2x either way).  So peak daily players are more like  0.2% of purchases.

On the one hand - that's good.  If your number is correct, they've made $15 mil on the game; likely a small profit or around break even.  (I arbitrarily chose 40 people x $100,000 x 3 years.)  OTOH 0.2% is ouch.

Peak daily players is a weird number to be going off of, but it's what we've got.  That first few days after Release it was in the 25k range and given that it's counting concurrent players?  Yeah, the number of sales is likely higher - but what number higher we can only guess.  I'd speculate 4x higher is a decent floor, given time zones, work and sleep cycles and human nature (people like to play with new toys).  

The thing that can't be ignored is that whatever the number... the shine wore off the new real quick.

EDIT - I say this as someone who keeps hoping they'll polish it up nicely in the next few months and it becomes something fun to play.

[TLTay]

Only real question at this point is who are the 600 or so peak daily players still punishing themselves by playing daily when the original is by any real measure far better?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

13 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

That's not the same thing as purchases.

Having thought about this a moment - it's also not the same thing as 'completed purchases' - or whatever you call purchases that were not refunded.  All my number speculation above is moot, given I did not even consider that people might have bought it, tooled around for a few hours then returned the game.

I have no idea how we can even know how many people bought it and shelved it or refunded it.  Kind of a rough place for them to be.

...

On another note - I went back and re-read the DevBlog about updating the planet system to HDRP and CBT.  One of the Reddit responses was from a guy who worked on CBT and has doubts about the efficacy of CBT with planetary sized structures.  However - the HDRP aspect is one big thing that will help out those of us with better machines.  That said - the porting over of current assets to HDRP is likely an ENORMOUS project in itself... but apparently only a very small portion of the overall code for the game.  They plan on doing it in stages to keep from breaking too much all at once.

[Scarecrow71]

3 minutes ago, TLTay said:

Only real question at this point is who are the 600 or so peak daily players still punishing themselves by playing daily when the original is by any real measure far better?

You gotta remember that this 600 peak per day only counts those people who are launching through the Steam launcher.  That doesn't include people who are bypassing the launcher, using Epic, or have direct download from PD.  And I am one of those people (Epic).  I don't play daily, but I do play.  Primarily because I'm hoping the Kraken doesn't show up every time I try to do something (restarts seem to help with that).

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

4 minutes ago, TLTay said:

Only real question at this point is who are the 600 or so peak daily players still punishing themselves by playing daily when the original is by any real measure far better?

There are a whole lot of people who apparently really enjoy building crazy crafts 

[Alexoff]

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

If your number is correct, they've made $15 mil on the game; likely a small profit or around break even.  (I arbitrarily chose 40 people x $100,000 x 3 years.)  OTOH 0.2% is ouch.

In fact, the game has been developed since 2017, the franchise also cost money. And I think T2 implies profit. Yes, and in the reviews, many people wrote about the refand, so I would guess 100-200 thousand copies.

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

using Epic, or have direct download from PD

Comparison of epic and steam statistics is very different, I think if 600 people play in steam, then in epic it’s more like 60, and in PD it’s like 6. By the way, in KSP1, a lot of people play directly without steam, right through the shortcut.

[Scarecrow71]

28 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

In fact, the game has been developed since 2017, the franchise also cost money. And I think T2 implies profit. Yes, and in the reviews, many people wrote about the refand, so I would guess 100-200 thousand copies.

Comparison of epic and steam statistics is very different, I think if 600 people play in steam, then in epic it’s more like 60, and in PD it’s like 6. By the way, in KSP1, a lot of people play directly without steam, right through the shortcut.

My point was that the numbers being quoted aren't entirely accurate because of people using Epic or direct download.

[Alexoff]

29 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

My point was that the numbers being quoted aren't entirely accurate because of people using Epic or direct download.

For my part, I wanted to say that the numbers for other games are about as not accurate. But the drop in the online peak from 25 thousand to 500 shows that it is more likely that 50 times fewer people began to play KSP2, and not that the majority began to launch the game without a launcher. Anyway, more people play the old buggy survival mars, which at the start received a lot of negative reviews, like all its DLCs.

[DunaManiac]

2 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

You gotta remember that this 600 peak per day only counts those people who are launching through the Steam launcher.  That doesn't include people who are bypassing the launcher, using Epic, or have direct download from PD.  And I am one of those people (Epic).  I don't play daily, but I do play.  Primarily because I'm hoping the Kraken doesn't show up every time I try to do something (restarts seem to help with that).

While the steam numbers aren't accurate numbers to total players (I myself run KSP1 through the .exe), we can see broad trends. So what do we see in the numbers? Continuous decline, with weekend numbers roughly equal to that of weekly peeks last month. KSP on the other hand, even on Steam, has a daily peak of 3000 players: based solely on steam! If we do a broad sweep based on that figure, KSP2 has approximately 20% of the amount of daily players that KSP1 has.

Edited April 26, 2023 by DunaManiac

[Socraticat]

2 hours ago, TLTay said:

Only real question at this point is who are the 600 or so peak daily players still punishing themselves by playing daily when the original is by any real measure far better?

It's just, like, your opinion... so I get it...

But I really don't feel like I'm being punished. I feel like I'm getting an exclusive sneak peek of something awesome!

I tried going back to the original. I really did. KSP2 just has great styling. That being said, I have a nice setup and patience- if I lacked either do to funds or lack of time to play, I might share your opinion. 

As it is, I still don't really have either of those things, but when I say I have patience, I mean it most hypocritically- I have been waiting for years, and now I can't wait until I put my kids and SO to sleep.

I've been collecting my computer for years in anticipation. I don't have other games competing for my time. I enjoy troubleshooting both bugs and builds. I love reverts and restarts.

I bypass the launcher because it's faster and I have a desktop folder dedicated to .txt files.

I am that masochist, as you might say, but I prefer to think of it as...

Sustained belief in the team that brought it this far over some awful years, and gratefulness that I can learn the new mechanics while they finish the game.

Change is inevitable. I'm gonna roll with it like a leaf in the wind.

[Alexoff]

1 hour ago, Socraticat said:

 

It turns out that it is not so easy to understand whether this is KSP1 or KSP2. If not for the appearance of kerbals with specific animations, it would be difficult to recognize.

1 hour ago, DunaManiac said:

KSP2 has approximately 20% of the amount of daily players that KSP1 has.

Just look at this forum. The game was released 2 months ago, there are 330 posts in mission reports, craft exchange - 310 posts. And you can also see how many videos from KSP2 are released on YouTube and how many views they have.

[Socraticat]

2 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

It turns out that it is not so easy to understand whether this is KSP1 or KSP2. If not for the appearance of kerbals with specific animations, it would be difficult to recognize.

It turns out it's actually pretty easy, because my point isn't the video or graphics- the point is that I am having fun. I'm also telling you specifically that it is KSP2 that I am having fun with, and the video is an example of the kind of fun I have.

Ironically, if you can't tell the difference, then I don't really see the point in fussing over which one is better. 

[cocoscacao]

1 hour ago, Socraticat said:

I tried going back to the original. I really did.

Me too. I think I'm in the purgatory at the moment. On one side, there's a functioning game that I once considered awesome, on the other side, there is a Kraken with a mermaid's voice.

C'mon patch 3... c'mon!!!

Edited April 26, 2023 by cocoscacao

[Socraticat]

2 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

...a Kraken with a mermaid's voice.

C'mon patch 3... c'mon!!!

Captures my feelings fairly accurately. Good thing I like Krakens!

[Alexoff]

26 minutes ago, Socraticat said:

It turns out it's actually pretty easy, because my point isn't the video or graphics- the point is that I am having fun. I'm also telling you specifically that it is KSP2 that I am having fun with, and the video is an example of the kind of fun I have.

Ironically, if you can't tell the difference, then I don't really see the point in fussing over which one is better.

The one with the most fun is better. And which is cheaper. And around which vain expectations did not breed. You can get pleasure from simpler things, if you have enough imagination. Once upon a time, my friends and I played a space simulator in the crown of a willow, instead of a control panel, I had an old typewriter. Now my requests have grown noticeably, but such a fantasy is no longer there.

[Alexoff]

1 hour ago, Socraticat said:

Good thing I like Krakens!

Your tastes are a little unusual...

[RocketRockington]

12 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

On the one hand - that's good.  If your number is correct, they've made $15 mil on the game; likely a small profit or around break even.  (I arbitrarily chose 40 people x $100,000 x 3 years.)  OTOH 0.2% is ouch.

 You've gotten this wrong in a few different places, unfortunately.

1. Between Steam's cut, VAT, and transaction fees, the net revenue is about 55% of gross sales.  And not every copy sells for the full $50 USA price tag.  So net they've probably made 6-7 million.  

2.  Employees aren't just thier salary.  There's benefits.  There's office space.  There's support staff, like marketters and janitors and lawyers.  The projects yearly burn rate is north of $10 million because of these factors, with their 50ish developers.

3. Then there's marketting.  KSP2 didn't do a ton, and pulled thier ads quickly.  But it was still a cost.

KSP is still very much in the red.  They likely won't recoup prior costs until they've sold 2 million copies, due to the protracted dev cycle.  For T2 it's a sunk cost - they had imagined they'd get KSP1 level of sales (5+ million units) at a higher price point for a 3 year dev cycle + ongoing support.  Currently they're way below even first 3 months sales targets, most likely, and way over budget. 

The bigger concern is if ongoing sales are not paying for ongoing development.  T2 is hoping that people will buy it once the bugs and content are sorted...but every year of EA development that's in the red is going to test thier patience.

Hopefully the earnings call will give us more data.

Edited April 27, 2023 by RocketRockington

[Rosten]

8 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

 KSP is still very much in the red.

I dunno about that.  When their tech director left, he said they only had 4 engineers in 2020 and it took them years to scale up.  And modders have pointed out that the game's more like a HD patch to KSP 1 than a sequel written from scratch.  So they might not have spent much on it so far.  Those fancy youtube development videos might have cost more than development itself.

[darthgently]

May be of interest to here:

https://youtu.be/kvytgzvqlgQ

[Alexoff]

26 minutes ago, Rosten said:

When their tech director left, he said they only had 4 engineers in 2020 and it took them years to scale up.

We saw many KSP2 developers in 2020 in videos of how they worked from home. I think they were paid a salary, they still do not work in the cheapest city in the USA.

14 minutes ago, darthgently said:

May be of interest to here:

https://youtu.be/kvytgzvqlgQ

Do I understand correctly that the developers of KSP2 told how they re-engineered what was done by Felipe over 10 years ago?

Surprisingly, they again showed atmospheric scattering, which was in pre-alpha, but disappeared in early access.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

May be of interest to here:

https://youtu.be/kvytgzvqlgQ

Thanks!

That was interesting.  3/4 of the presentation was all about how they've done what they've done up til now - using the PQS+ system they got and tweaked from KSP. 

Moving into the CBT gets mentioned, if not talked around, in the section of the video labeled "Early Access - Tool Plans".  It's the shortest segment of the video.  Given that we got Mortoc's Dev Insights # 18 on the 10th of March and the GDC presentation happened 10-15 days later... it sound like the artists and engineers on the panel are new to the whole idea.  They like it ("super pumped") - but it doesn't read like something that's been in the pipeline for a year - rather something that they only started maybe in February, if not March itself.  The actual phrase used was "Investigating a new terrain system".

A few other tidbits:

• "Science mode - which will introduce a campaign"
• "Gurdama... Introduced during the Interstellar update"
• "[they were using a built-in render pipleline right up to EA Launch and did not have access to HDRP]"  but they do now - or will have moving forward.  Given some of what the Engineers and Artists said before... there may be some additional time spent by the engineers building out tools for the artists with the new capabilities, or to match what they did using the old tools - before they can get started.  The note here, is that there are four biomes per planet and four textures per biome (currently) - and the artists are excited that HDRP and CBT might give them more freedom, both in increasing textures per biomes, but also biomes per planet/ CB.
• They're shifting to a coordinate system called S2 (developed by Google) that is supposed to be considerably faster and lighter on storage.  By comparison, the PQS system uses Cartesian with double precision.  (Not pretending I understand all of this... but someone will).
• Tides are not going to be a thing.
• Blocky shorelines are a problem - mostly an artifact of rendering and how that scales with distance; it sounds like it will continue to be a problem, but one that can... time allowing... be fixed - it's just not a high priority at the moment.  (lot of interpretation on my part)

 

 

[RocketRockington]

3 hours ago, Rosten said:

I dunno about that.  When their tech director left, he said they only had 4 engineers in 2020 and it took them years to scale up.  And modders have pointed out that the game's more like a HD patch to KSP 1 than a sequel written from scratch.  So they might not have spent much on it so far.  Those fancy youtube development videos might have cost more than development itself.

We know that when Star Theory was dumped and they poached staff, they got most of the design team and artists and not the engineers.  But they still paid those designers and artists even while they tried to hire engineers.  Moreover, they were paying star theory for several years, regardless of whether development was 'restarted' or not.  

And even on top of that, one year of their current development - just april 2022 to april 2023, is more expensive than the net revenue they e gotten so far, by my estimates, and I've been a lead on several game projects, so I have a decent idea of what it costs.

KSP2 is deeply in the red still.  And I suspect that they're spending more month to month still than they're earning by a factor of 2.

[caipi]

15 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

 1. Between Steam's cut, VAT, and transaction fees, the net revenue is about 55% of gross sales.  And not every copy sells for the full $50 USA price tag.  So net they've probably made 6-7 million.

It's available for quite some time on a popular-steam-key-selling-platform for around 36€ (~US$40).

And this chart shows that the price isn't universal on steam. In some countries, it's a lot cheaper. So 6-7 Million sounds like a generous estimate to me.