Take Two Interactive (Rockstar, 2K, Private Division) canceling games, ending projects and laying off 5% of its workforce

[moeggz]

This seems legit. I hope this is proven wrong/incorrect but this will be so sad. I hope all who are affected will be able to find work and provide for their families…

For us fans, even critical ones like me, this isn’t how we wanted it to go and why we were so vocal we were trying to save this project that means so much to us.

[moeggz]

If it’s a Private Division studio under Take Two, I don’t see how it’s not IG. They are the only studio on Private Divisions website in Seattle.

Edited May 1 by moeggz
Ate to are. Slightly changes the meaning of the sentence…

[RileyHef]

If PD/IG really is closing down and KSP2 development is stopped (which, at this point, I'm using these breadcrumbs to assume so) then I find it hard to see the Kerbal franchise ever recovering.

 

What we have, if true, is:

- A sequel to a niche game that was bought out by a major publisher and canned after 5 years of not-so-successful work. Trapped in early access.

- An also niche gaming community now split between 2 games, one of which being about 15 years old and the other unfinished.

- A split modding community. Modders from KSP1 that were employed for the failed sequel, leaving very little recent progress on their past work. And KSP2 modders working with a game still riddled with bugs and incomplete features.

 

Yeah, this is a grim future we are facing. I guess the game could be bought out? But even then, who would want it given it's history?  I don't see that happening. This is a potential blow not only to our community but to the larger space community, and I am prepared to grieve if the news is confirmed in the coming days.

Edited May 1 by RileyHef

[Superfluous J]

Like everything else on this entire forum, I'll wait for official word before I decide anything.

[Great Liao]

Will KSP1 be closed? 

Quote

If PD/IG really is closing down and KSP2 development is stopped (which, at this point, I'm using these breadcrumbs to assume so) then I find it hard to see the Kerbal franchise ever recovering.

 

What we have, if true, is:

- A sequel to a niche game that was bought out by a major publisher and canned after 5 years of not-so-successful work. Trapped in early access.

- An also niche gaming community now split between 2 games, one of which being about 15 years old and the other unfinished.

- A split modding community. Modders from KSP1 that were employed for the failed sequel, leaving very little recent progress on their past work. And KSP2 modders working with a game still riddled with bugs and incomplete features.

 

Yeah, this is a grim future we are facing. I guess the game could be bought out? But even then, who would want it given it's history?  I don't see that happening. This is a potential blow not only to our community but to the larger space community, and I am prepared to grieve if the news is confirmed in

 Despite the difficulty, maybe we as a community should pool money to buy the KSP IP.

I'm willing to contribute my skills as a python hobbyist.

Edited May 1 by Great Liao

[Yakuzi]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I did a search, and I found a studio called Cat Daddy games.  They are affiliated with 2K, and are focused on mobile sports games.

While I doubt Cat Daddy is the target here, it is a possibility.

Seems unlikely. Kirkland (the Seattle suburb where Cat Daddy Games is based) is listed as a separate location on the aforementioned Washington State website.

Edited May 1 by Yakuzi

[Skorj]

My sympathies to the dev team (whichever one it turns out to be).  I hope fortune favors them in their next jobs.

EDIT: I seriously hope this thread isn't how the dev team is finding out about the layoffs.  That's been all too common with the gaming layoffs these past 6 months.

Hopefully we'll get some sort of official communication tomorrow.

Edited May 1 by Skorj

[Fizzlebop Smith]

This is probably the most horrible news I've had in a long long time.

I will gladly contribute funds to a crowdsourcing project to license this title.. should it come to that.

If something like that is the case.. (anyone have amy legal insight on) how long would it be before they were required to stop sales?

[Yakuzi]

Dakota is listed as open to work on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dakotacx/

 

Edited May 1 by Yakuzi

[moeggz]

And the open jobs on intercepts website are now broken links.  This is it. Best wishes to everyone at IG in their job hunts, i wish you all had the time to see this game through.

[turnerjack698]

Rest in peace KSP2. Poor Nate Simpson, but what tf were they doing the last five years? What a sad day, hopefully one day KSP gets picked back up for another shot, or that one of the competitors see success. Wow. 

 

Never lose your grin!

[Cytauri]

Time to turn back to Star Citizen. Recent news and updates over there make Star Citizen look like Red Dead Redemption 2 in comparison to recent KSP 2 news.

the only thing left to do is to make KSP live on in KSP 1.

[Jaypeg]

Letting everyone know. In the EA trailer, they said that all milestones til 1.0 would be developed.

You can sue if it gets cancelled.

[ChrisShourai]

1 hour ago, turnerjack698 said:

Poor Nate Simpson

Nah, Nate takes all the blame. I can’t even tag him anymore on these forums. [edited for clarity, I was mistaken you can still tag him] He lied in all the promo leading up to EA launch that this game wasn’t the barely-outa-alpha it was and mostly still is and barely acknowledged any real true concerns a majority of this community had. He was at the helm, and though I certainly blame those above him I guarantee Nate tried selling it both ways - selling it upwards that he and his team could accomplish the launch of the game even though almost nothing significant to propel the game to full release was happening, and simultaneously was selling it downwards to all of us who got conned into buying into EA based on game trailers and a huge marketing push making the game seem like it was already well beyond what it turned out to be. It’s a tune many, many in middle management rolls sing to the ultimate demise of a project. No true info gets up, nor down. Execs concerns don’t reach the public, public concerns don’t reach execs, so the fulcrum collapses and everything falls apart.
 

Nate never truly saw reality, in my very unqualified opinion. The writing is truly on the wall with the closure filing. 
 

My hope is there is a huge surge in mod support for KSP1 and blackrack and others can continue where they were heading all along. Let’s make KSP1 a continued community success and once the announcement is legitimized, let’s keep our heads up and stay together. That’s my hope, anyways. 

Edited May 1 by ChrisShourai

[MechBFP]

Given all the little details I have seen… *sigh*. Not holding my breath for good news. 

[Jaypeg]

Just now, ChrisShourai said:

Nah, Nate takes all the blame. I can’t even tag him anymore on these forums. He lied in all the promo leading up to EA launch that this game wasn’t the barely-outa-alpha it was and mostly still is and barely acknowledged any real true concerns a majority of this community had. He was at the helm, and though I certainly blame those above him I guarantee Nate tried selling it both ways - selling it upwards that he and his team could accomplish the launch of the game even though almost nothing significant to propel the game to full release was happening, and simultaneously was selling it downwards to all of us who got conned into buying into EA based on game trailers and a huge marketing push making the game seem like it was already well beyond what it turned out to be. It’s a tune many, many in middle management rolls sing to the ultimate demise of a project. No true info gets up, nor down. Execs concerns don’t reach the public, public concerns don’t reach execs, so the fulcrum collapses and everything falls apart.
 

Nate never truly saw reality, in my very unqualified opinion. The writing is truly on the wall with the closure filing. 
 

My hope is there is a huge surge in mod support for KSP1 and blackrack and others can continue where they were heading all along. Let’s make KSP1 a continued community success and once the announcement is legitimized, let’s keep our heads up and stay together. That’s my hope, anyways. 

dont call failiure before its confirmed, and nate is a creative director. What you describe is a pretty normal way of doing your job.
Also creative directors are just the arts people. Not the marketing or management.

[Icegrx]

1 hour ago, Superfluous J said:

Like everything else on this entire forum, I'll wait for official word before I decide anything.

Yeah, a lot of speculation atm 

[ChrisShourai]

Just now, Jaypeg said:

dont call failiure before its confirmed, and nate is a creative director. What you describe is a pretty normal way of doing your job.
Also creative directors are just the arts people. Not the marketing or management.

It’s been an ongoing failure already… though that’s an opinion.

Also I think you are considering their rolls too literally. The creative director is absolutely all hands in on marketing and managing the team working on the game. The publishers marketing team wouldn’t have a clue what the heck KSP even is without Nate explaining it all, or those on his team. Not trying to argue with you, but I do appreciate you saying to wait for an announcement one way or another. You’re right, though I’m firmly on the side of believing the studio is done. I definitely pray that I’m wrong. 

[Skorj]

3 minutes ago, Jaypeg said:

Also creative directors are just the arts people. Not the marketing or management.

I don't think people really understand this.  People directed their ire at Nate because he's the face of the band, so to speak, and that is part of the job, but he's just not responsible for any of the technical problems or bugs.  The art, we can blame him for the art, but I had no objective complaints there.

[ChrisShourai]

4 minutes ago, Skorj said:

I don't think people really understand this.  People directed their ire at Nate because he's the face of the band, so to speak, and that is part of the job, but he's just not responsible for any of the technical problems or bugs.  The art, we can blame him for the art, but I had no objective complaints there.

 Guys. Please. This is straight from Wikipedia video game sub-cat for the job title Creative Director. Let’s not slice and dice too much, Nate chose this role and ultimately he’s the most responsible person whatever happens, if the game launches or not.

”With the increased team sizes and more specialized disciplines in the games industry, certain game designers are titled as "creative director", "executive designer", or "game director".^{[citation needed]} A creative director in a video game company is usually responsible for product development across a number of titles and is generally regarded as the prime design authority across the company's product range. Some examples are Peter Molyneux, Sam Lake, Hidetaka Miyazaki, or Shigeru Miyamoto whose influence extends across more than one project.^[3]”

Also if you think design authority is just art…

”A design authority is a body put in place to manage, track, and fulfill project progress more holistically. The design authority evaluates all elements of a project—cost, skill and resource requirements, potential security concerns, feasibility, and more—from every angle.”

[Skorj]

To put it as simply as possible:

• The Creative Director is responsible for the creative direction of the game.
• The engineering leadership is responsible for code quality, game performance, and speed of the coding teams.

You can certainly blame a creative director if a game isn't fun, or didn't focus on the elements of gameplay you like, or the art or sound were bad (like the horrid dot matrix UI font).  But KSP2s real problems were IMO 90% on the engineering side.  Major bugs that should never have existed even in shared internal builds, let alone release.  Continuing inability to fix long-standing bugs.  Very slow pace of feature development given the size of the team.  The performance of the game at release.  These are signs of bad engineering leadership. 

There's not much that senior leadership can do to fix bad engineering leadership, other than fire them (and that seems to have happened).  But firing people who don't perform only helps if you can find good replacements, and AFAIK the engineering director position was never filled after the last guy left.

There's an unhealthy cult of personality around creative directors in gaming. 

[ChrisShourai]

12 minutes ago, Skorj said:

To put it as simply as possible:

• The Creative Director is responsible for the creative direction of the game.
• The engineering leadership is responsible for code quality, game performance, and speed of the coding teams.

You can certainly blame a creative director if a game isn't fun, or didn't focus on the elements of gameplay you like, or the art or sound were bad (like the horrid dot matrix UI font).  But KSP2s real problems were IMO 90% on the engineering side.  Major bugs that should never have existed even in shared internal builds, let alone release.  Continuing inability to fix long-standing bugs.  Very slow pace of feature development given the size of the team.  The performance of the game at release.  These are signs of bad engineering leadership. 

There's not much that senior leadership can do to fix bad engineering leadership, other than fire them (and that seems to have happened).  But firing people who don't perform only helps if you can find good replacements, and AFAIK the engineering director position was never filled after the last guy left.

There's an unhealthy cult of personality around creative directors in gaming. 

Nate is ultimately responsible for the entire team. If a company goes bankrupt the CEO is ultimately responsible. Unless Nate is wearing earmuffs and a blindfold for the past 5 years and pretending everything is okay and everyone top to bottom let him get away with that, it’s on him. If a creative director can’t control the development of the game, tech side, art side, and everything in between, that person shouldn’t be in that position. 

Regardless of the battle to define the position of creative director, I’ll certainly eat my words if KSP2 is unaffected by the closure-led-layoffs and the game is chugging along. I’ll have humility. I’ll apologize. 

Edited May 1 by ChrisShourai

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, Great Liao said:

 Despite the difficulty, maybe we as a community should pool money to buy the KSP IP.

As a matter of fact, it's what I think it will happen - but not by the Community, but by some competitor.

As a matter of fact, I think the take over is already happening.

[MechBFP]

1 minute ago, Lisias said:

As a matter of fact, it's what I think it will happen - but not by the Community, but by some competitor.

As a matter of fact, I think the take over is already happening.

That seems like an unusual amount of optimism. I’m intrigued. 

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, MechBFP said:

That seems like an unusual amount of optimism. I’m intrigued. 

I hardly would call "optimism" seeing the IP being sold in a closed door sale as scrap, and then seeing the assets and lore being used on pachinkos or something like that.

disclaimer: this post is entirely a work of fiction. Hopefully.