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

[Stevie_D]

Poor guy, ( @blackrack ) had his dream job and it was taken away from him within months.
As a fellow modder, if you read this, I feel for you, my friend. You are always an inspiration.

Edited May 3 by Stevie_D
edited tense

[PDCWolf]

6 minutes ago, Stevie_D said:

Poor guy, ( @blackrack ) had his dream job and it was taken away from him within months.
As a fellow modder, if you read this, I feel for you, my friend. You were always an inspiration.

hey don't talk about him in the past, he'll still be a great modder and the guy that made KSP2's atmospherics look amazing in like a month.

[cocoscacao]

1 minute ago, PDCWolf said:

the guy that made KSP2's atmospherics look amazing in like a month.

Ominous choice... 

[Stevie_D]

4 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

hey don't talk about him in the past, he'll still be a great modder and the guy that made KSP2's atmospherics look amazing in like a month.

I didn't intend it to come across that way. And I never denigrated his work, I was applauding it. I was sympathizing with him losing his  job - a past tense situation.
My only mis-step was continuing on with ONE word in the past tense , using "were" an inspiration. He still is.

 

Jeez, some people will nitpick ANY positive message to ruin it.

[alexalex]

On the plus side (though it's mostly big major downsides) he now has some experience in game development, can't be blamed for any of the KSP2 issues (he was only recently hired), and has a niche skill-set that should be attractive to a fair few game dev teams. There's a lot of games where realistic clouds and weather effects would result in marked improvements. Think FPS shooters or other games where a sandstorm rolls in reducing visibility, flight sims of one kind or another, etc.

But I do hope he finds another job soon.

[PDCWolf]

Just now, Stevie_D said:

I didn't intend it to come across that way. And I never denigrated his work, I was applauding it. I was sympathizing with him losing his  job - a past tense situation.
My only mis-step was continuing on with ONE word in the past tense , using "were" an inspiration. He still is.

 

Jeez, some people will nitpick ANY positive message to ruin it.

No, I wasn't attacking your positiveness, the message just felt like a farewell and that's all I aimed at. Hopefully we'll come across him or his work again.

[MARL_Mk1]

Dakota has also announced it, in more of a "might, may, dunno" tone, but we already know what it means.

Oh well... so much for keeping my hopes up
 

 

[Kerbart]

2 minutes ago, MARL_Mk1 said:

Dakota has also announced it, in more of a "might, may, dunno" tone, but we already know what it means.

Yeah by the looks of it I'm going with the "additional fees and rates may apply" version, and not the "the contents of the luggage bin may have shifted during flight" one.

[Scarecrow71]

Those are both some hard announcements to hear.  The guy they hired to fix graphical performance is gone, and now one of the CM's is on the way out.  I might actually throw up.

[Flush Foot]

2 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Those are both some hard announcements to hear.  The guy they hired to fix graphical performance is gone, and now one of the CM's is on the way out.  I might actually throw up.

Time to use a sick day? Rest/recover? (Poor sleep for the last 2-3 nights means I might not be that far behind)

[TLTay]

If they were going to transfer development to another studio, you'd think they would have said so in order to calm the mood and avoid tarnishing a product they still intended to sell.

[DeadJohn]

43 minutes ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

The bizarre thing is, whilst option #2 comes with funding the studio, the game was generally in a bit of an upward trajectory since December. They funded it for an entire calendar year, let development reach a point where the game was there or there about for ramping up features and then what, cancel it? You've gotta see that as the most sensible option at this point. I find it hard to believe they would have funded it at all if the expected revenue was so low.

I don't have enough information to have a strong opinion on whether KSP2 should have been continued or canceled. The people who do have that info have limited liberty to discuss it (contracts, NDAs, future job prospects).

Maybe KSP2 had a lot of technical debt piled up due to past decisions, and getting the code to the end of the roadmap in a bug-free supportable state became too much effort? Late software projects tend to become more late. Some projects become unrescuable without starting over.

On the other hand, maybe KSP2 code was in good shape but their Private Division parent had to cut things due to finances or internal politics. Maybe it was a smart business choice, maybe it wasn't.

[Uuky]

55 minutes ago, Stevie_D said:

Poor guy, ( @blackrack ) had his dream job and it was taken away from him within months.
As a fellow modder, if you read this, I feel for you, my friend. You are always an inspiration.

This guy is a genius. A real one. A deserve a statue. 

We are in the darkest timeline.

[Flush Foot]

11 minutes ago, Uuky said:

This guy is a genius. A real one. A deserve a statue. 

We are in the darkest timeline.

I was a fairly long ways into playing KSP 1 before I ever bothered with mods, and 'fearing performance hits' I probably steered even further from the 'make it pretty' mods, but with a much more modern, beefy rig now, I've dabbled with EVE/Scatterer 'installs', and now with this latest news, I've gone and subscribed to @blackrack's Patreon to 'do what I can'.

[PDCWolf]

41 minutes ago, TLTay said:

If they were going to transfer development to another studio, you'd think they would have said so in order to calm the mood and avoid tarnishing a product they still intended to sell.

Finally someone said it like it really is. If this thing was gonna continue, they'd have said that almost instantly.

What they said instead is that they plan to continue support which I'm pretty sure it means not delisting the game (as that'd enable steam to grant automatic refunds to all customers), but rather push maybe 0.2.2 or whatever of that was ready, and calling it a day. That way, you don't get refunds, they get maybe a couple residual sales... and the thing ends up "existing" as a thing that happened and not a huge refund scandal.

If anything, the complete lack of progress made the media uninterested in this story/game and they're absolutely riding that by not outright saying the game is cancelled. If anything², the community should be rioting for the game to be cancelled & delisted and the funds to be returned.

 

 

Edited May 3 by PDCWolf

[Fizzlebop Smith]

There is an option to take it out of early access without the official 1.0 stamp.

I don't recall the specific verbiage used but seem to recall that being one of the options when "you can no longer support development"

[Scarecrow71]

6 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

the community should be rioting for the game to be cancelled & delisted and the funds to be returned.

Like the majority of the community, I am sickened by what is happening.  I feel like we got bamboozled, even worse now than when TT put the game on sale 3 months after selling it at a premium price.  I was pretty vocal then that it smelled fishy, and that it reeked of greed that the company would sell it at $50 to those of us who wanted it right away, but then decreased the price as a "sale" to get more buyers.  It sounded like they were fishing for more revenue to justify keeping the lights on, and some of us were pretty loud about that.

Couple that with the complete lack of communication we had to go through.  EA, at its core, is supposed to be a way for developers and consumers to interact while a product is being developed, right?  They push out an incomplete game, we buy it, we give feedback, they communicate that they've received feedback and are implementing x fixes, we get the updates, we give more feedback, they talk to us, round and round we go.  Right?  Not here.  Not with KSP2.  We begged for the company to talk to us.  Tell it to us straight; we aren't going to be upset if you have to delay or come back and say that things aren't going the way you wanted them to.  Just talk to us.  That's all we asked.  And they refused.  They got our money and then left us in silence.  Sure, we got a dev blog about this lighting issue, or eclipses.  We had, at one point, the KERB to tell us what they were working on...but then they took issues off that list before stopping it altogether.

All told, we were taken for a ride.  And we paid for that privilege.  The company said "Hey, we've got this thing that isn't done yet, but give us cash and we'll call it EA and you'll eventually be rewarded".  And like horses to water, we lined up and shelled out our hard-earned money.  Which they took, and then gave very little - if anything - in return.  We paid for the right to be ignored and shut out of development news.  We paid to have the community fractured, friends yelling at each other, and the company laughing at us the whole way.  We paid to go through this.

This exercise is exactly why I didn't get into EA releases with other games that are in my library.  I only 1 time before entered EA or a beta-playing phase of a game before, and that was for Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun.  Which went off without a hitch, by the way.  But even with that good experience, I had read too many times where things just fell apart and didn't work.  Heck, I was close to going in on Cyberpunk, and I'm glad I didn't.  But KSP?  I couldn't resist.  My better senses were telling me to wait, but my heart over-rode them.  And Take Two broke it.

All told, and to finally respond to what you wrote (I took long enough to get there, didn't I?), I doubt anyone gets a refund.  Doesn't matter if you went Epic or Steam, the refund "rules" are pretty clear:  less than 2 hours played, less than 2 weeks after purchase.  And TT will hide behind that as a way to make sure they don't have to fork the cash back over to Steam or Epic.  It would be a nice gesture if they did...but it won't happen.  That money is already pocketed and spent (so to speak).

So what can we do?  Nothing.  Not a damned thing.  Sure, we can post and protest.  Sign one of the petitions going around right now.  Take up coding and try to create your own game if you must (even I downloaded the Unreal Engine last night and am going to give it a whirl).  But nothing we do is going to amount to anything.  We aren't going to change their minds, we aren't going to get our money back, we aren't going to be able to save the franchise or the studio or the employees who are out of jobs.  Nothing we do in the end will matter.

Where does that leave us?  Hopefully being cool to one another.  Perhaps talking about KSP1.  Maybe finding other games to enjoy.  But KSP2?  Gone before your time, and we barely knew ye.

[AtomicTech]

20 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

If anything², the community should be rioting for the game to be cancelled & delisted and the funds to be returned.

Uh no, we must not go to extremes. There's a slim chance that we do get KSP 2 and we cannot forsake it in any way. 

2 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Where does that leave us?  Hopefully being cool to one another.  Perhaps talking about KSP1.  Maybe finding other games to enjoy.  But KSP2?  Gone before your time, and we barely knew ye.

Yep

[Flush Foot]

2 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

And like horses to water, we lined up

Or perhaps more appropriate here, , "like lambs to the slaughter"...

[Icegrx]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Those are both some hard announcements to hear.  The guy they hired to fix graphical performance is gone, and now one of the CM's is on the way out.  I might actually throw up.

While it is indeed sad news, I think we will all live without pretty clouds and a weekly challenge. 

not really critical roles when it comes down to it..

[Flush Foot]

Or "like moths to a flame"

[PDCWolf]

Just now, AtomicTech said:

Uh no, we must not go to extremes. There's a slim chance that we do get KSP 2 and we cannot forsake it in any way.

There's no chance, sorry but it's something you've gotta accept. If KSP2 had been handed over you'd know by now. As it is, T2 fired 70 people without plans to hire anyone else, and that includes people doing some good work in the game like blackrack and wes.

Even if you did get KSP2, it's not gonna be worth it, I'd much rather have the money back and buy some fun game with that.

Just now, Icegrx said:

While it is indeed sad news, I think we will all live without pretty clouds and a weekly challenge. 

not really critical roles when it comes down to it..

Ah yes, the guy that fixed atmospheric performance whilst also making it look better only did "pretty clouds". Isn't  Wes being an online systems engineer a critical role either?

The copium.

[Scarecrow71]

3 minutes ago, Icegrx said:

While it is indeed sad news, I think we will all live without pretty clouds and a weekly challenge. 

not really critical roles when it comes down to it..

Perhaps not critical to you.  But certainly life-altering to the guys who lost their jobs.

[RileyHef]

5 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Where does that leave us?  Hopefully being cool to one another.  Perhaps talking about KSP1.  Maybe finding other games to enjoy.  But KSP2?  Gone before your time, and we barely knew ye.

I have said this quite often on other platforms, but looking back knowing what we know now - it would have been better for the KSP community and IP if KSP2 never even existed.

I just hope that we can still rekindle the passion for KSP1 and breathe some new life into that old game. I truly miss those days.

[AtomicTech]

4 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Perhaps not critical to you.  But certainly life-altering to the guys who lost their jobs.

Yep