KSP2 refund

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

11 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Development is funded. Nate confirmed this in AMA 1, also one of the upnates.

 

Let’s not forget the same person initially said to expect roadmap updates in weeks not months. 

10 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Well this thread is gonna be fun.

If this is the only way I can have fun with this game, so be it.

 

4 hours ago, TLTay said:

They're still making videos about them discussing fixing things, and what routes they're considering taking with those fixes. It's laughable fraud and scamming.

 

It feels like they honestly expected the modders to leap to the rescue and finish the game for them for free.

If only they would have released modding tools to support mods.

Bad news is Moders are at first players, and if there’s not much of a game there to begin with, Moders ain’t gonna rush to waste time building mods for a handful of people, even with mod support.

Edited October 9, 2023 by GGG-GoodGuyGreg

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

21 hours ago, Siska said:

...

While I feel you, and many others can admit, whether its Steam rules or deceiving marketing or other rules that they are breaking, it's pretty clear this is going to be a very long wait, even if we were to ever get a game worth $50.

While I have a one digit game play time in Steam, I can't refund because it's been way more than 2 weeks for me to realize they are stalling.

I do think Steam EA rules need more leeway in the case of EA, because I don't think it's easy to be sure you've been had for, after just 2 weeks.

 

Oh well, I hope this waste of money will help me dodge the next EA bullet and hopefully I won't waste money anymore until I'm sure reviews are good for the EA I'm buying into.

[cocoscacao]

8 hours ago, Alexoff said:

There are plenty of games on Steam that violate these rules under any interpretation.

22 hours ago, Siska said:

Rule 2. Do not make specific promises about future events.

Let's take this "rule" as an example. Reading its description, it says:

Quote

 that the game will be finished, or that planned future additions will definitely happen. Do not ask your customers to bet on the future of your game. Customers should be buying your game based on its current state, not on promises of a future that may or may not be realized.

This is up to a customer to decide if he/she/it wants to buy something or not. So if dev team says: "We're planning to deliver X in the future", it ain't ok. But just switch planning to hoping in that statement, and suddenly, you comply. Should rules really be about nitpicking words?

Rule 6: Don't launch in Early Access without a playable game. If you have a tech demo, but not much gameplay yet.

Exactly who decides what is a tech-demo vs playable game? What if FIFA games had all mechanics but just two teams? Or have all teams populated by a single generic player, because they haven't entered data for them? Or all of the above, except that score increment isn't working yet? What's the difference? Anyone can interpret this rule however it suits them.

[Periple]

1 hour ago, cocoscacao said:

Rule 6: Don't launch in Early Access without a playable game. If you have a tech demo, but not much gameplay yet.

KSP2 had loads of gameplay on day 1 of EA. You could do a multi-launch mission with multi-stage vessels from planes to atomic tugs to high-power landers that would take you to all of Jool's moons. 

That it was extremely buggy and performance was at times really bad is irrelevant to the question of the game meeting the "playable game" threshold. There was gameplay, you could play it: that's more than enough to clear the bar.

[Alpha_star]

10 hours ago, TLTay said:

Don't tell me about videos and supposed progress. They need to deliver it to paying customers, otherwise it's lies.

Well, from the showing of the models in the videos we can say with somewhat confidence that they have already made the models and has already made some of the features. Otherwise, if they haven't even modeled the parts, how can they show them in a video/screenshot?

I do partially agree with you that some of the shows might be lies without further proofs. However, not in the game by default is not exactly equal to zero progress and lying, as data miners have found some code for future feature updates and models for some of the parts that is not avalible in the game by default. All just in the game files. This is a proof that what we can see is less than what has been made.

If we apply your logic to all gameplay videos, then all of them before KSP2's public release are just fake ones and lies, since the game was not avalible to the buyers back then. If we push it further, that means an update does not exist until the moment it's released, and all the progress shown before are just lies, which means that everything is done at the moment of release. Not in the current game does not mean it won't come with future updates. 

To push this post back to where it is, if someone doesn't trust the developers and publishers, they have the right not to support them, so I am not against the move of refunding. But for me? I probably won't refund the game just because some people think it will not be finished.

(Please finish reading before you want to attack me for my opinion. If you still decide to do so, they feel free to do it.)

Edited October 9, 2023 by Alpha_star

[cocoscacao]

1 hour ago, Periple said:

There was gameplay, you could play it: that's more than enough to clear the bar.

But what is gameplay? Where it begins? You could argue the same thing if KSP 2 was released only with Kerbin and Mun available. There's gameplay there already. Some can say, yeah but it should have Minmus at least... Or Kerbolar system... or science... or multiplayer... or robotic parts...

How do you judge if the rule is broken or not, when everyone can interpret it differently?

[Periple]

20 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

But what is gameplay? Where it begins? You could argue the same thing if KSP 2 was released only with Kerbin and Mun available. There's gameplay there already. Some can say, yeah but it should have Minmus at least... Or Kerbolar system... or science... or multiplayer... or robotic parts...

How do you judge if the rule is broken or not, when everyone can interpret it differently?

What your standard is doesn't really matter, Steam's the judge here, and their standard is basically "if it starts up and you can get past the main menu and do something, pretty much anything, it qualifies."

I.e. if KSP2 had been released with nothing but the KSP1 campaign starter parts, a featureless sphere for Kerbin and no other celestial objects, but you were able to click the parts together to make a spaceship, launch it, and control its pitch, yaw, and roll, it would have qualified. 

[Alexoff]

4 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Let's take this "rule" as an example. Reading its description, it says:

This is up to a customer to decide if he/she/it wants to buy something or not. So if dev team says: "We're planning to deliver X in the future", it ain't ok. But just switch planning to hoping in that statement, and suddenly, you comply. Should rules really be about nitpicking words?

Rule 6: Don't launch in Early Access without a playable game. If you have a tech demo, but not much gameplay yet.

Exactly who decides what is a tech-demo vs playable game? What if FIFA games had all mechanics but just two teams? Or have all teams populated by a single generic player, because they haven't entered data for them? Or all of the above, except that score increment isn't working yet? What's the difference? Anyone can interpret this rule however it suits them.

I think this is interpreted due to noise in the media. The console version of KSP1 was absolutely terrible, much worse than cyberpunk. At the same time, it was possible to complete cyberpunk, but in KSP1, when the limit of several hundred parts was reached, it was impossible to load a save. But the media hype made cyberpunk a rule breaker, and no one cared about KSP1. Perhaps if KSP2 were popular as cyberpunk, this rule would work.

[Pthigrivi]

7 hours ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

While I feel you, and many others can admit, whether its Steam rules or deceiving marketing or other rules that they are breaking, it's pretty clear this is going to be a very long wait, even if we were to ever get a game worth $50.

I think this is just a personal sense of expectations and patience for most people, which comes with any EA. I do think its going to be a very long wait before interstellar and multiplayer are released but I thought those things were years out even before the release. I've also had major issues just being able to play, not least because Im playing on Parallels. Still, it sounds like they're making progress on the big items and Im psyched for science and heat. I don't mind the wait if the quality is there in the end. A few years ago I bought Frostpunk hoping it would work on Parallels. It didn't, but they said there would be a Mac port coming 'soon'. Soon turned into 2+ years, but, when it finally did come out it became one of my favorite games. We've been waiting on a Factorio expansion for 4 or 5 years now I think? Starfield was delayed like 18 months. I know its not how everyone sees it but for me all that matters is where we get to in the end. 

[Scarecrow71]

On 10/8/2023 at 2:01 AM, Siska said:

Rule 2. Do not make specific promises about future events.

The big issue with trying to state the roadmap is a promise is that there are no hard dates on it.  All the roadmap says is that they are planning on having these things eventually, and hopefully in the order presented.  But nowhere on the roadmap does it say they are guaranteed, nor does it give any idea of when to expect them.  Do I agree that it's a promise that the organization needs to be held accountable to?  Yes.  But with no dates listed, and nowhere have they said "We promise that we will get these out here", it would be darned near impossible to make Steam hold them accountable on Rule 2.

On 10/8/2023 at 2:01 AM, Siska said:

Rule 4. Don't overcharge Steam customers.

But what is overcharging?  What is the price point that everyone can agree upon is fair for an EA title, regardless of the content or depth of the game?  I personally feel that $50 was a bit of a stretch, but that doesn't mean it's overcharging when you consider that you will never have to pay for a price increase should you keep the game.  I know - there have been a couple sales where people paid less than that.  But the price IS going to go up after 1.0 (assuming we get that far).  How much it will go up remains to be seen, but that price will determine if we overpaid in EA or not.  If the price goes up to like $60 or $70, then yeah, maybe we overpaid a bit.  If it goes up to like $100+?  We got a deal.  We just have to get there first.

On 10/8/2023 at 2:01 AM, Siska said:

Rule 5. Make sure you set expectations properly everywhere you talk about your game.

I will have to disagree with @Periple on the discussion of this one here.  Expectations were not set properly prior to the release of the game, and that is backed up with all of the videos and statements and press releases that were all then shot down by multiple delays and staff changes and such.  We went from "It's a full game that will be released in late 2022" to "It's a half-game that will go into Early Access in early 2023" in the span of 6 months.  And we were then promised fast, hard-hitting updates on a timely cadence and re-entry heat within weeks, yet here we are nearly 8 months after launch and we have received 4 patches, 2 hotfixes, 3 new engines...and we still don't have re-entry effects, heat, or any idea of when the first major content drop will be other than it will be sometime after 0.1.5.  Expectations have not been set properly for this game at any point over the course of even the last 18 months, let alone the 4+ years since announcement.

On 10/8/2023 at 2:01 AM, Siska said:

Rule 6. Don't launch in Early Access without a playable game.

This one boils down to semantics and what one feels is playable or not.  Myself, I didn't believe the game was fully playable with the SOI/trajectory issue.  Others don't believe it's playable until they fix the orbital decay issue once and for all.  Still others won't think it's playable until new content is added.  The truth of the matter is that you CAN build rockets, you CAN fly them, and you CAN get to other planetary bodies.  I myself have landed on every other body in KSP2 other than the moons of Jool (which I still haven't done in KSP1, which makes me now realize I forgot all about my crewed Moon lander in KSRSS, which means I have to go fire that up at some point...but I'm digressing).  The game IS playable.  The amount of playability is subjective, but the game does not truly break this rule.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Scarecrow71

[Siska]

Cyberpunk 2077 was canceled and refunded on ps4. And Sony doesen't really do refunds as such. You could play it. It was playable as much as ksp2 is.

The only thing is that if everybody would want refunds, maybe publishers would take more caution in the future what they release for 50$.

But if everybody just accepts it, it will happen again in the future.

20 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

But what is overcharging? 

Putting the game on sale after a month.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Siska

[PDCWolf]

10 hours ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

Let’s not forget the same person initially said to expect roadmap updates in weeks not months.

I will support my belief with the fact that they're a subsidiary of the biggest publisher in gaming period. Money is the one thing I don't ever expect to be a problem.

10 hours ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

While I have a one digit game play time in Steam, I can't refund because it's been way more than 2 weeks for me to realize they are stalling.

What I tell everyone: Check local laws and consult with a local consumer defense body (should be always free to do so). Steam's refund guidelines are that, guidelines, and they only approve you for the automatic refund. Humans on Steam support can grant unrestricted refunds, you just have to convince them.

8 hours ago, Periple said:

KSP2 had loads of gameplay on day 1 of EA. You could do a multi-launch mission with multi-stage vessels from planes to atomic tugs to high-power landers that would take you to all of Jool's moons. 

That it was extremely buggy and performance was at times really bad is irrelevant to the question of the game meeting the "playable game" threshold. There was gameplay, you could play it: that's more than enough to clear the bar.

Funnily enough, this was big part of what got me my refund. The game being unplayable.

[Periple]

1 hour ago, Siska said:

Cyberpunk 2077 was canceled and refunded on ps4. And Sony doesen't really do refunds as such. You could play it. It was playable as much as ksp2 is.

Consoles have much higher requirements than Steam. The mystery is that Sony certified it for PS4 in the first place!

1 hour ago, Siska said:

Putting the game on sale after a month.

The first time it went on sale was in the summer. A lot more than a month!

[VlonaldKerman]

I think it’s pretty clear that the language of the rules are intentionally vague so as to allow for discretion of Steam on a case-by-case basis.

[Alexoff]

It is also worth noting that these rules were written by Steam for developers, not for players. If Steam doesn’t feel violated, then why should it sue and fight? Steam earned money on KSP2 by spending 0 bucks on KSP2. There are separate agreements for players. But it seems that according to EULA T2 does not owe the player anything. On the contrary, players owe T2 a lot.
Journalists could have made some noise, and Steam would have noticed them. But they didn’t even notice the release of KSP2; there is no rating for the game on metacritic.

[The Aziz]

53 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

there is no rating for the game on metacritic.

If you took a minute of your time you'd know that metacritic doesn't rate early access titles.

[Alexoff]

6 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

If you took a minute of your time you'd know that metacritic doesn't rate early access titles.

Really. It’s strange, it seemed to me that before the redesign it was written that there were not enough reviews for a rating and one review from stone-scissors or something was attached.

[eberkain]

On 10/8/2023 at 4:01 AM, Siska said:

Well, 

this game violates  Steam rules of early acces, rule number 2, 4, 5 and 6.

I requested a refund and i think most of the people should. We are not here to fund development, and it clearly says game has to be playable.

Rule 2. Do not make specific promises about future events.

As i see, multiplayer was promised, i think we are not getting it. Also we didn't get bug fixes we should to be able to play the game.

Rule 4. Don't overcharge Steam customers.

If 50$ is not overcharging, i do not know what it is.

Rule 5. Make sure you set expectations properly everywhere you talk about your game.

I don't have to spend words on this

Rule 6. Don't launch in Early Access without a playable game.

This neither needs explanation.

Sadly steam does not agree and would not give me a refund based on this line of reasoning. 

[Lisias]

On 10/8/2023 at 3:48 PM, PDCWolf said:

Development is funded. Nate confirmed this in AMA 1, also one of the upnates.

Nate is confirming things that don't happen for some time now.

It may be his fault, or it may be not - I don't have a clue about the reason he did such affirmations - but in a way or another, the net result is that… Something being confirmed by Nate is not exactly something to be blindly thrusted.

 

On 10/8/2023 at 1:45 PM, TLTay said:

Sales for this game should be suspended or it should be cancelled. It's the only good faith way of handling a game that they've apparently got a skeleton crew working on part time.

I agree that the marketing and sales should had been suspended since day 1, when the launching fiasco was blatantly clear.

But having a "skeleton" crew working on the game now is not a symptom of degraded development. A game is way more than code, really, really way more than coding. Missions, meshes, textures, drawings, design guidelines, scene design and editing (or, in their case, celestial bodies - as everything is just the Flight Scene), you name it - all of that demands lots, lots of workmanship. Expensive workmanship.

So, from the project management's point of view, once you realize that the coding is going to demand more time, it's make perfectly sense to focus all the development efforts on everything else to avoid unnecessary costs - what leads to the development team coding only what's strictly necessary to keep their pipelines full and screw the playability - this can be added later, with all the other artefacts already delivered.

Now… Selling the prototype used to keep the creative's workflow pumping as an Early Access, that was scummy, I agree.

[PDCWolf]

3 hours ago, Lisias said:

Nate is confirming things that don't happen for some time now.

It may be his fault, or it may be not - I don't have a clue about the reason he did such affirmations - but in a way or another, the net result is that… Something being confirmed by Nate is not exactly something to be blindly thrusted.

Again, my source for trust on that statement is TakeTwo, not that Nate said it.

Just by telling T2 that KSP1 was made by a team no bigger than 5 people along 10 years with a budget that barely scrapped 6 digits and sold 5 million copies, it's no wonder T2 gave them 3 extra years and every other special treatment.

 

Edited October 10, 2023 by PDCWolf

[PDCWolf]

14 hours ago, eberkain said:

Sadly steam does not agree and would not give me a refund based on this line of reasoning. 

What counts for Steam is "What's in the box". They don't show future promises on the Steam store page, and even if they did, Steam's guidelines for EA are not hard rules, they're guidelines. Further on, you can't report the project for breaking those "rules" outside their Steam store page.

Change your approach and keep insisting.

[Pthigrivi]

Wow a whole lot of wild speculation and interpretation goin on here. I understand folks have a different sense of time and patience but I don't understand actively lobbying to get a game cancelled because it didn't meet your expectations. 

On 10/9/2023 at 2:12 AM, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

Let’s not forget the same person initially said to expect roadmap updates in weeks not months. 

It seemed pretty clear at the time to me they were talking about patches and bug-fixing updates, not milestones. I'd say the average fan-guess around launch was that big content updates would come every 3-4 months. I thought that was a bit too optimistic and it was likely 6-8 months. Obviously none of us knew how raw the game was and that we'd be spending the first 8 months just getting things to where they really aught to have been at release, but I'd say with orbital decay mostly dealt with we're about there now. Wobbly rockets is the last big nut to crack, but Im hoping we can get an interim solution at least before science. IMO all of this could have been solved by delaying a year, but we are where we are. Despite the fact that I've only really been able to play for a few months I think things really are on the right track, if perhaps moving more slowly than many folks hoped. If they can get rocket wobble under control and Science is great I'll be more than happy. But thats me. Im a patient dude.

Edited October 10, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Lisias]

19 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Wow a whole lot of wild speculation and interpretation goin on here. I understand folks have a different sense of time and patience but I don't understand actively lobbying to get a game cancelled because it didn't meet your expectations. 

The lobby is for the sales being halted or the game cancelled - it's a pretty different thing of lobbying for the game being cancelled, period.

Additionally, the claim for the game being refunded is not unfunded (pun not intended) and, frankly, would be a income of fresh air on an increasingly smelling industry that are consistently flirting with law breaking practices. It's more than due time that people start to being withhold to their responsibilities.

Granted, the Game Industry is not the only IT related industry needing such call out.

 

47 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Again, my source for trust on that statement is TakeTwo, not that Nate said it.

And exactly what's the difference?

[Pthigrivi]

4 minutes ago, Lisias said:

The lobby is for the sales being halted or the game cancelled - it's a pretty different thing of lobbying for the game being cancelled, period.

Additionally, the claim for the game being refunded is not unfunded (pun not intended) and, frankly, would be a income of fresh air on an increasingly smelling industry that are consistently flirting with law breaking practices. It's more than due time that people start to being withhold to their responsibilities.

Granted, the Game Industry is not the only IT related industry needing such call out.

I don't know given all the progress we've seen in the last 6 months that sounds pretty over the top to me. I think the game really wasn't ready for EA release this spring and I've said before that decision was hugely short sighted. Thats on T2. They really owe it to Intercept and to us to put in the time and money to get things polished so they can march into steady content updates. Cancelling things now would be the absolute worst thing they could do. And this is still an EA release. Different players are going to have a different sense of what's enjoyable and if some folks get in and find they cant get it to perform on their machine or just aren't happy they can refund and wait to see if things improve later. Other players are happy to roll with it. Thats all completely reasonable. I guess unless you're for some reason hoping the game gets cancelled I don't quite understand the utility of mounting a theatrical crusade against the people actually working on the game. That seems weirdly counterproductive. 

[PDCWolf]

17 minutes ago, Lisias said:

And exactly what's the difference?

T2 is the biggest publisher in gaming, and have clearly noticed that if the concept works, it can bring in big money.

Again, SQUAD managed to sell 5 million copies of the previous game with a budget that didn't even reach 6 digits.  I'm positive that level of investment vs returns is exactly why T2 would allow them to delay the game 3 individual times, and to re-fund an entire year of hiring and shuffling employees around (that stuff is expensive, plus it wasted an extra year). Do you really think they'd do that for any other game? They themselves have kicked people out for failing to produce games, and put a lock on those projects. In that aspect alone, KSP2 is pretty much the one single exception in the whole gaming industry, and anyone other concept would've probably gotten the boot.

I don't need Nate to tell me they're funded, it is really obvious they are funded because they potentially have a golden egg goose in their hands. Now, I'm sure there's a limit to the patience and funds T2 is willing to give PD (which is probably why they kept branching to publishing other projects and KSP2 is no longer their main thing).

50 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Wow a whole lot of wild speculation and interpretation goin on here.

I'm sure we'd all love to talk about concrete stuff, but we haven't been given concrete stuff in a while.

7 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I don't know given all the progress we've seen in the last 6 months that sounds pretty over the top to me.

If you dare check outside the forums, nobody shares this view. The most popular opinion about the game literally anywhere but here and the discord is that the game is dead, or on a skeleton crew, or that the devs smashed and grabbed and are doing something else.