Kerbal Space Program 2 (not dying and getting a new owner) Hype Train.

[Mr. Kerbin]

On 5/3/2024 at 1:00 AM, Uuky said:

If the game fails, I'll made my own KSP. It'll be called Uuki Space Venture.

Uukis are a cat-like humanoid race. They build rockets to explore space and see how laser spots on the ground are fun on various celestial bodies. 

Moar meow, moar boosters

 

@Uuky KSA developer confirmed??? (Joke)

New page.

On 1/14/2025 at 7:32 PM, AtomicTech said:

Even if this is repetitive, watch the @ShadowZone to cut through all of the noise/bad reporting. 

Personally, I think there's no hype. We just have new owners that're gonna keep trying to sell KSP 1/KSP 2.

If the conductor says there’s no hype, then let’s just change to KSP2 Memorial Train. 

[PDCWolf]

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

Besides siding you on this specific case, the sad true is that exposing the developers to end users almost every time ends up in tears.

From that lectures about Project Management I had when younger (or less older), every single time some kind of communication were mentioned, the instructor emphasized: "shield your developers from the end users, or you will lose control of the project, or you will lose your developers, or both").

It's not the developer's task to handle end users' expectation (and requirements), and I think we can get some text book examples from this very Forum. Unavoidably they will be prone to listen to the more vocal (in voice tone, or pocket deepness) ones in detriment of the project's real goals, and sometimes even of the detriment of the product itself.

Of course there're exceptions to this rule - but the only sucessful ones I'm aware are small scale projects (one to five devs, essentially where XP works) where all of them are well oiled working together and have good social skills. Any less skilled one must be shielded even on these exceptions, by the way.

There was a local restaurant that used to have a BIG window to their kitchen, you could see the pizza masters kneading, spinning and stretching the dough, adding the sauce, cheese and whatever criminal toppings people add to pizza, and send it to the oven. At some point something happened, and the view was blocked.

Like yes, I know what you mean and you're completely right but, when I go to that restaurant, I can still hear the chefs making the calls for ingredients, I can hear the sounds of the dough hitting the table, I can hear the door to the oven opening and closing, and that's closer to what SteamDB was doing. We never knew who was developing what, but we knew "something" had happened because the depots had changed. We never got a window through SteamDB, what these cowards took away is all of the rest.

Just remember Ubisoft's plea to Steam to remove the player count from the API. If it was for these absolute cowards that don't want a single ounce of accountability in their moneymaking process, we'd have to buy games at $100, only from 3 to 5 marketing bullshots, with no refund window. Heck, they'd probably just send an install package every couple months for a new game or an update and autocharge your credit card if they could. That's it. No reviews, no forums, no support, kinda like the Epic store now that I think about it, guess that's why they shill it so hard.

Edited January 16 by PDCWolf

[cocoscacao]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

whatever criminal toppings people add to pizza

Out of curiosity, which toppings added on the pizza are considered criminal by you? 

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

There was a local restaurant that used to have a BIG window to their kitchen, you could see the pizza masters kneading, spinning and stretching the dough, adding the sauce, cheese and whatever criminal toppings people add to pizza, and send it to the oven. At some point something happened, and the view was blocked.

Like yes, I know what you mean and you're completely right but, when I go to that restaurant, I can still hear the chefs making the calls for ingredients, I can hear the sounds of the dough hitting the table, I can hear the door to the oven opening and closing, and that's closer to what SteamDB was doing. We never knew who was developing what, but we knew "something" had happened because the depots had changed. We never got a window through SteamDB, what these cowards took away is all of the rest.

Yep. Shielding your developers is not the same as shielding the product.

One very nice (and bold) thingy that used to happen on KSP¹ was the issue tracker. A public issue tracker is a marvelous P/R stunt, as long you handle them issues. Things started to get sore around here when the issue tracker was kinda abandoned.

It's a mutual exclusive dilemma: it's best for the product overall if you have a public issue tracking working, but it's hard to shield your developers if they are engaging on a public issue tracking. Hiring QAS folk to handle the public issue tracking can be a solution, but this would make the solution costlier, defeating one of the purposes of such thing: saving some bucks on QAS in order to divert the money into development. A good QAS team costs some serious money...

 

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

criminal toppings people add to pizza

Do what you do, don't come to Brazil.

Spoiler

 

 

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

Just remember Ubisoft's plea to Steam to remove the player count from the API. If it was for these absolute cowards that don't want a single ounce of accountability in their moneymaking process, we'd have to buy games at $100, only from 3 to 5 marketing bullshots, with no refund window. Heck, they'd probably just send an install package every couple months for a new game or an update and autocharge your credit card if they could. That's it. No reviews, no forums, no support, kinda like the Epic store now that I think about it, guess that's why they shill it so hard.

Yep, it is what I said before - shielding your devs is one thing, shielding the product is another one - being the later a very, very low blow on the customers. And since a good part of the game industry's customers are kids and teenagers, not exactly consumer wise audience, things get pretty sore pretty fast.

 

2 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

Out of curiosity, which toppings added on the pizza are considered criminal by you? 

Shhh!!! Brazilians in the room!!! This will degenerate into a Holy War pretty fast!!!

[cocoscacao]

6 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Shhh!!! Brazilians in the room!!! This will degenerate into a Holy War pretty fast!!!

We add beef salad sometimes. Though I doubt the rest of the world would call that mixture a salad. Bom apetite I guess xD

[Grenartia]

On 1/15/2025 at 12:55 AM, Lisias said:

His criticizing about the half baked news articles is valid, but he didn't took a deep dive on the buyer's past acquisitions neither.

Between many acquisitions, the ones that matters for our subject are:

* 2022, a minority stake at Behaviour Interactive, Canadian Game Studio with a vast portfolio on Consoles (GBA PS2, PSP, and obiously PC, Xbox and PS5).

* 2023, a minority stake at Candivore, Israeli mobile game studio.

* 2024, they bought Jagex (runscape).

* 2024, they bough the whole Private Division, and yanked all the staff of Annapurna Interactive to run it.

Additionally, Haveli itself was funded in 2020 IIRC by Apollo Global Inc, these ones a huge asset management firm (650B USD in assets under their management). They tried to buy Paramount recently, buy the way...

Initially they funded Haveli on ~500M USD, but only Jagex costed them 1.1B USD so we can be reasonably sure they are way bigger nowadays.

These investments strongly suggest some strategy to gain a foot on the market. They fully own a seasoned Game Studio, and have minority stakes on other two - they are not buying corpses for dissection.

And now they bough their own Game Publisher, closing the gaps. Not only that, they hired a whole staff of highly seasoned and reputable professionals from a publisher with a very impressive portfolio, so these guys have a hell of a network available right now.

You don't hire seasoned and reputable professionals to sell scrapping neither squeeze the last dime of dying companies.

That said, this doesn't tells anything about KSP2. They may, indeed, choose to ditch the thing to anyone willing to buy it and focus on the remaining P.D. portfolio - but since this is not how they are operating for the last few years, there's a chance they may consider further developing it.

Not enough to rest assured, but still enough to not throw the towel yet.

 

The thing you're not mentioning is that there's a relevant descriptive phrase for the new IP owner that should make everyone recoil in horror: "Private Equity Firm". 

They will get what they paid for, by hook or by crook. If you thought T2 was capable of terrible things, you ain't seen nothing yet. 

A brief primer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK8hpxR_r2Y

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Grenartia said:

The thing you're not mentioning is that there's a relevant descriptive phrase for the new IP owner that should make everyone recoil in horror: "Private Equity Firm". 

They will get what they paid for, by hook or by crook. If you thought T2 was capable of terrible things, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Without the slightest doubt, I never said they are easy going. They will have their profit.

Now, while contemplating what I said and what you said, consider this: they are keeping Forum alive.

And, by the way, the big guns that own Haveli? They bought Yahoo mentioned on your video. And I know the damage they did on the YahooGroups mailing lists, it was a devastation - decades of content were simply wiped out and since only the group owners could make a full backup, anything old enough whose admins had retired (or plain died) were simply lost and that's it.

It's about money. It's always about money. Groups were paying the costs? Nope? Good-bye.

I don't have the slightest idea about what they are planning, and it's not impossible that I would not like it (Pachinkos in Las Vegas!!!) - but they have something in mind for now, and keeping Forum alive is part of this plan as we are not dead yet (as it happened to YahooGroups).

It's far from the best of the Worlds. But it's also far from being the worst of the Worlds.

I'm counting our blesses - we are still alive.

[Grenartia]

On 1/19/2025 at 8:51 PM, Lisias said:

Without the slightest doubt, I never said they are easy going. They will have their profit.

Now, while contemplating what I said and what you said, consider this: they are keeping Forum alive.

And, by the way, the big guns that own Haveli? They bought Yahoo mentioned on your video. And I know the damage they did on the YahooGroups mailing lists, it was a devastation - decades of content were simply wiped out and since only the group owners could make a full backup, anything old enough whose admins had retired (or plain died) were simply lost and that's it.

It's about money. It's always about money. Groups were paying the costs? Nope? Good-bye.

I don't have the slightest idea about what they are planning, and it's not impossible that I would not like it (Pachinkos in Las Vegas!!!) - but they have something in mind for now, and keeping Forum alive is part of this plan as we are not dead yet (as it happened to YahooGroups).

It's far from the best of the Worlds. But it's also far from being the worst of the Worlds.

I'm counting our blesses - we are still alive.

Yes, I'm aware the group that owns Haveli was mentioned in the video. I rewatched it before posting, after all. 

And yes, I'm aware that for now, the forum is up and running, and there are seasoned developers assigned to PD. But neither of those count for much in my eyes.

They can just as easily decide to pull the plug on the forum tomorrow. And as we saw with T2, no matter how passionate (or even skilled) a dev team is, its the bean counters that lord over us all who decide what happens. Enexcrementstification is a near certainty in current economics. Did you ever wonder why the ex-Annapurna team is the ex-Annapurna team instead of the current Annapurna team? Something obviously happened between them and upper management (and for my money, it was likely upper management's fault, blame in the corporate world should be treated like anti-gravity fecal matter: it rolls uphill). 

I have no doubt in the skills of the now-former Annapurna team. I don't even doubt that they would be entirely capable of revamping KSP2 into what it was promised from the beginning, and while respecting the spirit of the original game. What I do doubt is the bean counters at Haveli's willingness to give them the time and money to do those things, just like T2 was unwilling to do (except Haveli probably would close up shop earlier). What I fear most is Haveli forcing them to churn out microtransacted-to-hell-and-back mobile game slop for a quick buck before taking our inevitable outrage as proof that the market for the IP is 'dried up' and pulling the plug altogether. My second biggest fear is that they just sit on the IP and do nothing at all.

Edited January 21 by Grenartia
accidentally a few words.

[Lisias]

3 hours ago, Grenartia said:

What I do doubt is the bean counters at Haveli's willingness to give them the time and   to do those things, just like T2 was unwilling to do (except Haveli probably would close up shop earlier). 

Had you considered that the whole KSP2 problem was exactly all the time they were given?

Quote

"You gave me too much time, Captain" -- Scotty

Knowing what I know today, I would had pulled the plug at least two years earlier - and you are talking to a guy that loves the franchise and was defending the dev team during the Pandemonium.

As Shadowzone had said once:

CAPITALISM!!!

Dreams are good, but you still need to have your bills paid.

Being absolutely frank about the matter, had someone on PD or TTWO pulled a "Havelli" on KSP2 years ago, the IP wouldn't be damaged and by this time a new Project could be in the works.

These equity guys are ruthless, but this doesn't means they are always wrong. Sometimes it's cheaper to throw a project away and restart it than trying to fix it. Heck, it's common sense - Projects are not too different than cars, sooner or later they will be trashed. 

And, before anyone decides to throw me a stone, no, I don't like it. As I didn't liked trading my old truck when it got too old and there wasn't spare parts for it anymore - had we insisted on that truck, we would ended without any truck at all because we would had spent our budget on a car that could not be used instead of buying a new one to do the damned job.

 

3 hours ago, Grenartia said:

What I fear most is Haveli forcing them to churn out microtransacted-to-hell-and-back mobile game slop for a quick buck before taking our inevitable outrage as proof that the market for the IP is 'dried up' and pulling the plug altogether. 

It's not how they work. They don't micro-manage the acquisitions - as long they have their interest, they are good and if they don't, they sell or ditch the company and that's it.

If KSP would ever have micro-transactions, it will be entirely over the new Company shoulders.

What, see you, it's a real possibility. This last game published by Annapurna Interactive, Sky: Children of the Light, does have micro-transactions - you need to grind in order to gather "candles" (a way of making "friends") or you can buy them. Literally, you need to buy your way into making friends... And to think that this game was made by the very same studio that made Journey...

And, guess what, Haveli don't own this game's studio neither had hired the Annapurna guys when the game was launched.

These Haveli guys, they aren't saints. They are on this game for the money (pun not intended), and nothing more. But they aren't responsible for every bad and stupid decision ever made on gaming - neither are going to be. When these guys do something stupid, it's way above our paygrade.

 

3 hours ago, Grenartia said:

My second biggest fear is that they just sit on the IP and do nothing at all.

Had TTWO just sit on the franchise instead of burning all the bridges they burnt with the fan base, the Franchise would be in better shape today with more chances to being properly developed again. See Metal Gear Solid, after Konami did that marvelous screw-up on using the IP on a Zombies (terrible) game and even Pachinkos, they just let the IP to rest for years and in 2024 they finally published a new game on PS5.

I had said before, and I will say again: count your blessings.

Whatever happen, happen. (Spike Spiegel). It's too late for anything else, anyway. We are gonna carry this weight.

Edited Tuesday at 04:44 PM by Lisias
God, I hate typing on touchscreens

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Had you considered that the whole KSP2 problem was exactly all the time they were given?

While I don't disagree that the devs continued to ask for more time, and they were in fact given as much as they asked for (prior to the studio closure, that is), I don't think that being given all that time was the whole problem here.  Yes, they absolutely should have done more with the time they were given.  And there is no doubt that it is part of the problem.  But not the whole problem.  Remember that they were limited in who they could talk to about KSP1 and the issues therein, as well as being constantly hit with scope creep and indecisiveness on the part of what the entire vision of the project was.

Then again, I could very well be wrong here as I wasn't part of the internal discussions on what was going on.

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Knowing what I know today, I would had pulled the plug at least two years earlier

I think it's pretty safe to assume that we all would have done something differently.  That is the beauty of hindsight, after all.  For myself, I think I would have had Nate and team scale back the vision several years earlier, probably be removing the promise of multiplayer until core systems were online and functioning.  And I don't think any of us would have released this into EA when they did.

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Being absolutely frank about the matter, had someone on PD or TTWO pulled a "Havelli" on KSP2 years ago, the IP wouldn't be damaged and by this time a new Project could be in the works.

I believe one of the major issues TTI had with this whole debacle is that they were focused entirely too much on GTA.  Don't get me wrong - GTA is the cash cow of all cash cows for TTI, and it deserves the primary focus.  But I think they went a little too far with it, giving it all the attention and nurturing it needed at the expense of KSP (and several other titles/studios).  You have to grow your golden goose, but you shouldn't do it blindly at the expense of everything else you have.

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

Sometimes it's cheaper to throw a project away and restart it than trying to fix it.

I liken this to television series.  Sometimes you have a great idea, put a pilot together, get green-lit for a season, and viewership is so terrible you have to cancel it.  And then recycle the idea into a different TV show (or include elements of it in something already running).

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

If KSP would ever have micro-transactions, it will be entirely over the new Company shoulders.

If KSP ever uses micro-transactions, that would be the final death knell of the franchise.  There were conversations a couple years ago about potentially including them - from the forum members, not the developers - and the overwhelming sentinment in that thread was that people here simply would not play the game if it included micro- or crypto-based transactions in the game.  I can't speak for anyone else, but if the franchise at any point ever comes out with micro-transactions, I'll put the entire franchise on the shelf.  It's already bad enough that I've got KSP1 just sitting there not doing anything because I'm taking a break from it, and I refuse to fire up KSP2 due to how horrible it is.  But I'll gladly dump both of them (and by dump I mean uninstall KSP1 and remove all traces of both from my PC AND the mod I created for KSP2 from Spacedock and Git) if micro-transactions ever appear in the franchise.  That's me; I am not saying anyone else has to do that.  You do you.

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

Had TTWO just sit on the franchise instead of burning all the brigdes they burnt with the fan base, the Franchise would be in better shape today with more.chances to being properly developed again.

Well, part of the bridge burning was them sitting on the franchise for several months with no communication prior to the studio shutdown, followed by several more months of sitting on it prior to the "leak" about the sale of the studio.  Sitting on it is what partially caused a lot of the bad blood between the community and TTI.  I'm not saying it wouldn't be better than it is, but rather that part of the reason it's so bad is because they sat on it and didn't let anyone know what was happening.  If anything was happening at all.

[Lisias]

7 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

If KSP ever uses micro-transactions, that would be the final death knell of the franchise.  There were conversations a couple years ago about potentially including them - from the forum members, not the developers - and the overwhelming sentinment in that thread was that people here simply would not play the game if it included micro- or crypto-based transactions in the game.  I can't speak for anyone else, but if the franchise at any point ever comes out with micro-transactions, I'll put the entire franchise on the shelf.  It's already bad enough that I've got KSP1 just sitting there not doing anything because I'm taking a break from it, and I refuse to fire up KSP2 due to how horrible it is.  But I'll gladly dump both of them (and by dump I mean uninstall KSP1 and remove all traces of both from my PC AND the mod I created for KSP2 from Spacedock and Git) if micro-transactions ever appear in the franchise.  That's me; I am not saying anyone else has to do that.  You do you.

Hate to be the one telling you the news, but... KSP¹ already has something so or even nastier as micro-transactions. Paid closed source mods.

The difference is that the money is not going to the IP owners.

Now, bear with me: what would you do if you see a lot of people making money on a property from yours that you just bought and are still scratching your head for ways to get some return from it? While you get your cheeks bashed because this property is dirty and messy?

Be honest.

Now ask yourself: why the current KSP owners would do less than you?

What's coming is not pretty. We're gonna carry that weight.

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Hate to be the one telling you the news, but... KSP¹ already has something so or even nastier as micro-transactions. Paid closed source mods.

The difference is that the money is not going to the IP owners.

Now, bear with me: what would you do if you see a lot of people making money on a property from yours that you just bought and are still scratching your head for ways to get some return from it?

Maybe not burning even more bridges.

Yes, what that mod is doing (and another one too!) is really disgusting, but I doubt their first actions are going to include tripping off the modding scene.

[Lisias]

35 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Maybe not burning even more bridges.

Yes, what that mod is doing (and another one too!) is really disgusting, but I doubt their first actions are going to include tripping off the modding scene.

Are you absolutely sure they are the ones burning bridges now? TTWO is not around anymore.

Who is in violation of the EULA and licenses? Haveli? The Annapurna gang?

Spoiler

Annapurna Gang... By some reason, this pharse made me remind of this...

Oh, Jesus... Too much caffeine I think...

 

35 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Maybe not burning even more bridges.

Yes, what that mod is doing (and another one too!) is really disgusting, but I doubt their first actions are going to include tripping off the modding scene.

It's not about the modders in question. It's about the doors being opened.

Every single major legal tragedy started with someone breaking long standing rules for a bigger good - just to realize some time later why that rules existed at first place.

There's not a single case of success I'm aware - every single time this happened in the last 30 years, it ended in tears.

The only success cases I know were due the IP owner opening the source - this leveraged the field and prevented chaos from getting out of control (chaos is unavoidable, but it can be contained).

--- POST EDIT ---

Talking about a case of success, did you know there's a remake of Total Chaos? Cool!!!

Edited Wednesday at 01:20 AM by Lisias
Better phrasing. And adding some bits

[PDCWolf]

17 hours ago, Lisias said:

Are you absolutely sure they are the ones burning bridges now? TTWO is not around anymore.

Who is in violation of the EULA and licenses? Haveli? The Annapurna gang?

  Reveal hidden contents

Annapurna Gang... By some reason, this pharse made me remind of this...

Oh, Jesus... Too much caffeine I think...

 

It's not about the modders in question. It's about the doors being opened.

Every single major legal tragedy started with someone breaking long standing rules for a bigger good - just to realize some time later why that rules existed at first place.

There's not a single case of success I'm aware - every single time this happened in the last 30 years, it ended in tears.

The only success cases I know were due the IP owner opening the source - this leveraged the field and prevented chaos from getting out of control (chaos is unavoidable, but it can be contained).

--- POST EDIT ---

Talking about a case of success, did you know there's a remake of Total Chaos? Cool!!!

I'm not saying they would be wrong legally or whatever.

What I'm saying is the last thing they want, if they have any sort of plan for the future of this franchise, is to take more things away, specially if it includes upsetting the modders, and indirectly the users they may rouse for support. They need goodwill right now, not stomping down.

Obviously, I'm not Haveli's advisor and it might be yet another tonedeaf, egocentric little man thinking he's a "leader", but I definitely challenge that man to try it and see what happens.

[Lisias]

1 minute ago, PDCWolf said:

I'm not saying they would be wrong legally or whatever.

Neither do I saying they would be morally wrong neither, depending on how they do things.

 

2 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

What I'm saying is the last thing they want, if they have any sort of plan for the future of this franchise, is to take more things away, specially if it includes upsetting the modders, and indirectly the users they may rouse for support. They need goodwill right now, not stomping down.

Not every modder is their friend. They need to sort out the ones that are their friends, and the ones that aren't - otherwise sooner or later they will have their hand forced on treating all of us as unfriendly.

High Level Business is a war, no matter what they tell you on the evaluation meetings. If things start to go to hell, they will cut some throats, or their ones will be the ones being severed.

[Skorj]

I would imagine ex-Annapurna has their hands full and "the KSP1 Mod Scene" is pretty far down their list to care about.  Frankly, the corporate vulture will want a feast and ex-AP will be looking for deals that make quick money.  For KSP that means licensing deals, and as ShadowZone mentioned if there was a Kerbals game for kids in the works, finishing that up might have prospects. 

The upside is: if they're hungry, licensing out the rights to the Kerbal IP to a game studio might be within reach of someone like Rocketwerkz. 

[Lisias]

11 minutes ago, Skorj said:

The upside is: if they're hungry, licensing out the rights to the Kerbal IP to a game studio might be within reach of someone like Rocketwerkz. 

There're way more options available now, some of them even more seasoned and field proven then RW is now.

No to mention the risks: RW has an estimated (gross) revenue of 8.1M USD/year. They are smaller than TikTok Games, just for starters. This is no way reflects on their competence, but surely reflects in their muscle flexing - Jagex, that it's already fully owned by Haveli, has about 171.4 M / year revenue.

For scales, Private Division had about 24.2M USD / year.

At this scale, is more probable that RW would be hired as a subcontractor for whoever takes the full contract.

And, now, you made a light-bulb sparks in my mind: RW's KSA may be not exactly the goal, but a tool to achieve a goal - they grabbed all the KSP seasoned developers they could, and are developing their own game engine... This may score some points on a probable competition for a contract in the future.

Developing a full fledged new game engine is a hell of an upfront investment, so it would be somewhat daring to develop it only for a single game that aims to heir users from a (allegedly) dying scene.

They manage to pull this one, they will have a nice bargain coin on their hands, and this would make that upfront investment sensibly more profitable than just another Kittens into Space game.

[Grenartia]

On 1/21/2025 at 7:37 AM, Lisias said:

Had you considered that the whole KSP2 problem was exactly all the time they were given?

Not until just now, and now that I have considered it, I reject your hypothesis. One cannot "24hr gamejam" into existence something like what KSP2 was promised as. "Crunch time" does not solve more problems than it causes, and the few problems it does solve are generally vastly outweighed by the problems. Everyone who keeps track of the industry (consumers, journalists, influencers, and insiders) all know this so well that whenever "crunch" comes up in context of an upcoming release, EVERYONE recognizes that as the harbinger of doom that it is. 

 

On 1/21/2025 at 7:37 AM, Lisias said:

"You gave me too much time, Captain" -- Scotty

To my recollection (which is pretty good, most of my friends would describe me as a walking Star Trek Wiki) Scotty has never said this in any iteration of Trek. Even if I'm being generous and interpreting that false quote to his appearance in TNG's Relics (the only time Scotty admitted to padding his time estimates on screen), he was explicitly talking to Geordi, and in context, was extolling the benefits of what Lower Decks later termed Buffer Time, in order to counteract the demands of Crunch Time coming from a captain. 
 

On 1/21/2025 at 7:37 AM, Lisias said:

As Shadowzone had said once:

CAPITALISM!!!

As I recall, the context for that particular utterance was as a morally-neutral admission of the state of affairs under the current economic system the world is run by. Not an endorsement, and more likely a criticism intended to be tempered by other benefits of the system. 

I shall reserve my personal thoughts on that system because they are not the topic of this thread, except to say, I'm highly skeptical of it, and I shall reserve any further thoughts on that for a different venue. 
 

On 1/21/2025 at 7:37 AM, Lisias said:

Dreams are good, but you still need to have your bills paid.

Being absolutely frank about the matter, had someone on PD or TTWO pulled a "Havelli" on KSP2 years ago, the IP wouldn't be damaged and by this time a new Project could be in the works.

These equity guys are ruthless, but this doesn't means they are always wrong. Sometimes it's cheaper to throw a project away and restart it than trying to fix it. Heck, it's common sense - Projects are not too different than cars, sooner or later they will be trashed. 

I mean, I don't even disagree that the Sunk Cost Fallacy exists. My point is simply that nobody sells good things to private equity, and private equity rarely, if ever, improves what is sold to it, and both employees and consumers that are left to the mercy of a PE acquisition experience no mercy as a general rule (just look at the excess death rates of PE-owned nursing homes compared to non-PE nursing homes). PE does not operate on the assumption that some things are more important than money. Nothing in capitalism does, but especially not PE. Other common forms of ownership at least pay lip service to being willing to accommodate dreams. PE thrives on killing them. As fans of a game franchise that literally exploded in popularity because of dreams (literally: "Build, Fly, Dream"), we should be very concerned by this change in ownership. This is not a time for optimism for us as a fanbase. 
 

On 1/21/2025 at 7:37 AM, Lisias said:

It's not how they work. They don't micro-manage the acquisitions - as long they have their interest, they are good and if they don't, they sell or ditch the company and that's it.

Incorrect. Micromanagement (and even nanomanagement) is how you extract every last cent out of an acquisition in the short term, and that is literally all PE cares about. Not long term, sustainable success. Just flash in the pan conversion to pure liquid assets. 
 

On 1/21/2025 at 7:37 AM, Lisias said:

If KSP would ever have micro-transactions, it will be entirely over the new Company shoulders.

What, see you, it's a real possibility. This last game published by Annapurna Interactive, Sky: Children of the Light, does have micro-transactions - you need to grind in order to gather "candles" (a way of making "friends") or you can buy them. Literally, you need to buy your way into making friends... And to think that this game was made by the very same studio that made Journey...

And, guess what, Haveli don't own this game's studio neither had hired the Annapurna guys when the game was launched.

I'm not sure what you're saying here, its phrased in a way that's hard to parse. I get it, English isn't your first language, I'm not condemning you for that, just making an observation that I saw this, but don't know how to respond to it. Other than this, I guess. 
 

On 1/21/2025 at 7:37 AM, Lisias said:

These Haveli guys, they aren't saints.

I'd actually consider PE firms to be soul-sucking demons, as a general rule, tbh. 

 

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Grenartia said:

Not until just now, and now that I have considered it, I reject your hypothesis.

Good thing you are not a project manager so.

 

1 hour ago, Grenartia said:

One cannot "24hr gamejam" into existence something like what KSP2 was promised as. "Crunch time" does not solve more problems than it causes, and the few problems it does solve are generally vastly outweighed by the problems. Everyone who keeps track of the industry (consumers, journalists, influencers, and insiders) all know this so well that whenever "crunch" comes up in context of an upcoming release, EVERYONE recognizes that as the harbinger of doom that it is. \

Crunch time is when you desperately tries to do on the remaining time you still get everything you should had done, but didn't, with the time you had before.

Every single project in which I was hired in the final stages ended up in "death marches" (you see, no one hires a Senior when everything is going well...) had a past of pretty long delivery times that were mismanaged. Absolutely no exceptions.

Give too much time to people that don't know how to manage it, and you will take too much time to realize when they messed up - and then the choice will be a crunch time in the hope to salvage the project, or just ditch it and fire everybody.

 

1 hour ago, Grenartia said:

Incorrect. Micromanagement (and even nanomanagement) is how you extract every last cent out of an acquisition in the short term, and that is literally all PE cares about. Not long term, sustainable success. Just flash in the pan conversion to pure liquid assets.

The very video you provided says exactly the opposite. I'm afraid we are talking about different companies now.

In both Yahoo and Marsh, they hired CEOs to manage the business, they didn't put their own.

Now, if we would were talking about Liquidators - yeah, you would be right. And P.D. as it appears could had contemplated liquidation.

 

1 hour ago, Grenartia said:

I'd actually consider PE firms to be soul-sucking demons, as a general rule, tbh.

It's not a unfair consideration, to tell you the true. But you are forgetting something very, very important: these soul-sucking demons don't walk in the streets hunting for souls. The souls must go to them and ask to be... hummm... haunted.

Spoiler

couldn't use the original word - the resulting phrase ended up... forum unfriendly...

You need to utterly fail before being sold to these guys. And, usually, the company would be liquidated without them.

It sucks being controlled by them? Probably. But being dead sucks more, so...

Edited Saturday at 09:57 AM by Lisias
Entertaining grammars made slightely less entertaining...

[Fizzlebop Smith]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Good thing you are not a project manager so.

  Hide contents

couldn't use the original word - the resulting phrase ended up... forum unfriendly...

You need to utterly fail before being sold to these guys. And, usually, the company would be liquidated without them.

It sucks being controlled by them? Probably. But being dead sucks more, so...

Firstly, I want to point out

The  project managers I work with rarely understand what actually happen after it's fully in the hands of the engineers & productions crews.

I know it's different industries, but PM not parsing is kinfa par for the course for me.

 

Your second point is one few people stop to consider.

An IP raking in the money would likely have a less than favorable price point per potential ROI, and never be sold. 

While heralding the company as our saviors is unrealistic,  I am very grateful they have seen fit to keep on the lights.

There does appear to be some long term goal related to development. Alot of acquisitions in short order .... but hope is dangerous so I'll just wait and see.

[Lisias]

9 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Firstly, I want to point out

The  project managers I work with rarely understand what actually happen after it's fully in the hands of the engineers & productions crews.

I had the opportunity to work under two different managers under the same project, one good in management but clueless on the business, and other a seasoned professional on the field but AFAIK without much experience in management. 

Both made mistakes with me.

One didn't trusted me, relied on counseling from 3rd parties that probably would like to get rid of me so they could score another head for their Consulting (I was a Contractor from a rival Consulting). He almost killed the project and was probably the reason the project was in that sad situation. Important to say that he was praised on a previous job where he undertood very well the business. 

The other, knowing very well the business, realized that I was insane but not stupid, and agreed that being insane was the less crazy thing we could do at that point. He trusted me so much that cut me loose a bit too much, and I made a silly, stupid but almost fatal mistake that costed the whole team 1 week to diagnose and 15 seconds for me to fix   I could had killed the project if we had a non pure technical approach were hiding mistakes would be the norm. He learnt to trust me just a tad little less after that, asking me if I was sure when some implementations appeared to be too good to be true, preventing at least one more major screw up of mine!

TL;DR: Good managers are useless if they can't trust their team. The dude MUST know the business very well to dodge bullets, or he must blindly trust someone to do that for him.

On every death march I knew about, someone broke the chain of trust by a reason or another - not necessary by ill intentions, sometimes we just screw up.

But we still have deadlines to meet, and money burns into ashes every single time we lose one.

On the bottom line, both of them ended up with me in a death march - but only one of them marched there with me. And this makes all the difference in the World.

 

9 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

While heralding the company as our saviors is unrealistic,  I am very grateful they have seen fit to keep on the lights.

It's the reason I pesky suggest people to count their blessing all the time. We are already cursed, it's a done deal. But we still have some blesses to count!

Edited Saturday at 09:46 PM by Lisias
Better phrasing. Sometimes I use the wrong word in EN-US because it is pretty near what I use in PT-BR.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

The fact that they sorted out the DNS errors at all would suggest there is a decent chance of forum extension.
I have no exposure to development but have seen low priority problems get ignored indefinitely because a project was already over budget or at a state where the Cost / Gain analysis is in a state of constant flux. 

My hope for KSP2 specifically, is very much stamped out. However, I have hope that the franchise may endure. 
Is this sound logic for the industry... or is it more likely someone was simply given a job to integrate acquisitions, and they were performing this task until completion?

 

[Lisias]

4 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

The fact that they sorted out the DNS errors at all would suggest there is a decent chance of forum extension.
I have no exposure to development but have seen low priority problems get ignored indefinitely because a project was already over budget or at a state where the Cost / Gain analysis is in a state of constant flux.

Not to mention that they are building a whole new company from the ground - the poor stand-up guy that made that silly mistake must have a backlog with hundreds of tasks, and was almost surely sleep deprived.

Been there, done that. Last time I made a major borkage, about 40 truck drivers spent the whole morning (from 6AM to 12) waiting for legal documentation so they could hit the road and, so, all of them burnt the midnight oil (literally in this case) because of that. I'm probably still in one piece because I work remotely, otherwise I would had to be escorted out of the facilities by a riot squad!

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Not to mention that they are building a whole new company from the ground

That's not really an indicator of future success though, is it?  I mean, that's what Take Two did with Intercept Games, and look how that turned out.

[Bej Kerman]

On 1/21/2025 at 1:37 PM, Lisias said:

Had you considered that the whole KSP2 problem was exactly all the time they were given?

What a silly and reductive hypothesis.