Shadowzone's findings on KSP2 history

[Lisias]

3 minutes ago, Westinghouse said:

The fact that he's stayed radio silent since then is unfortunately likely a testament to his true character.

No. It's only the testament that he likes his ass and don't want to get it ripped apart on a lawsuit due the NDA he signed.

(this is the only part of your post that I disagree)

[Grenartia]

1 minute ago, Westinghouse said:

1. Since ShadowZone's video has come out, various people have come forward on places like the mod Discord to say that some Squad employees were actually in contact with the KSP2 developers in 2018, even being in meetings with Nate Simpson. 2. We also know from their earliest dev blog videos that they had outside consultants such as 'Dr. Joel Green' acting as talking heads to give them scientific credibility. Therefore the idea that there was a complete veil of corporate secrecy doesn't ring quite true. If they were able to reach out to astrophysicists for advice, why not reach out to the ex-Squad developers of the original game?
3. It's possible Nate just didn't want anyone with prior history of the KSP world getting in the way of 'his vision' and clouding his authority. He clearly wanted to be in control of developing the sequel.

We still don't know where the quote "this stays away from Scott" comes from. It likely comes from some leaked internal message, ShadowZone is not revealing from where in order to protect his source. 4. But would a higher up Take Two executive even know who Scott Manley was? It's more likely this was someone directly involved with developing the game. Obviously it's conjecture, but it would be in Nate Simpson's interest not to have outside experts giving advice that would contradict his own vision of what KSP2 was going to be.

5. This was likely the higher ups at Uber, not T2. It seems they took this decision in order to have any chance of making the mandated 2020 release date.
6. But even if he didn't make that call, Nate was still misleading us for a long while stating the game framework was rebuilt from the ground up, something many of us were skeptical about after seeing so many technical flaws from the first game appear in KSP2.
 

7. Ultimately, it was Nate who put himself front and center as the 'face' of Kerbal Space Program. If the sequel had been a roaring success, Nate would have been quick to lap up the praise and accolades. Instead the game failed, and therefore Nate needs to take much of the blame as a result. 8. The fact that he's stayed radio silent since then is unfortunately likely a testament to his true character.

I still haven't mastered the art of quote splitting on this forum's software, so I'll just insert numbers for each point.

1. I have not seen this information.

2. The existence of an outside consultant does not preclude secrecy on other fronts, including towards Squad (and ex-Squad), as well as prominent community (and arguably even media) figures, such as Scott Manley. 

3. Possible? Yes. Equally possible? Nate was gagged by the T2 suits except for pre-approved persons, such as consultants, in order to preserve secrecy and not harm sales of the current game. 

4. By that logic, would a higher up T2 exec even know what KSP is? Its pretty hard to learn enough about KSP to consider purchasing it to transform it into "the next Minecraft" without also becoming familiar with who Scott Manley is along the way. H*ck, for all we know, the exec who thought it was a good idea to bring up acquiring the IP probably heard about the game in the first place from Scott. 

5. Yes, though it still falls on T2 for falling for the sunk cost fallacy, and not authorizing rebuilding the game, especially after it became clear that the 2020 release would not be possible, and after every single person in this community stressed to the devs that we want a delayed but playable game more than we want a new game ASAP that is a hot mess on release. 

6.  Yeah, and while that's true, its also equally true he was told by PD/T2 that he had to do that. 

7. If he did "put himself" front and center, it was with T2's tacit approval. If they didn't want him "front and center", they would not have allowed him to be.

8. Alternatively, its likely that he's being gagged by some legal mumbo-jumbo and/or the threat of being blacklisted if he speaks out against T2. Both of which could present much worse consequences (significant legal and financial liability on one hand, being unable to work in the industry again for an indefinite period on the other) than being 'cancelled' by the KSP fandom. 

[Westinghouse]

13 minutes ago, Grenartia said:

I still haven't mastered the art of quote splitting on this forum's software, so I'll just insert numbers for each point.

1. I have not seen this information.

2. The existence of an outside consultant does not preclude secrecy on other fronts, including towards Squad (and ex-Squad), as well as prominent community (and arguably even media) figures, such as Scott Manley. 

3. Possible? Yes. Equally possible? Nate was gagged by the T2 suits except for pre-approved persons, such as consultants, in order to preserve secrecy and not harm sales of the current game. 

4. By that logic, would a higher up T2 exec even know what KSP is? Its pretty hard to learn enough about KSP to consider purchasing it to transform it into "the next Minecraft" without also becoming familiar with who Scott Manley is along the way. H*ck, for all we know, the exec who thought it was a good idea to bring up acquiring the IP probably heard about the game in the first place from Scott. 

5. Yes, though it still falls on T2 for falling for the sunk cost fallacy, and not authorizing rebuilding the game, especially after it became clear that the 2020 release would not be possible, and after every single person in this community stressed to the devs that we want a delayed but playable game more than we want a new game ASAP that is a hot mess on release. 

6.  Yeah, and while that's true, its also equally true he was told by PD/T2 that he had to do that. 

7. If he did "put himself" front and center, it was with T2's tacit approval. If they didn't want him "front and center", they would not have allowed him to be.

8. Alternatively, its likely that he's being gagged by some legal mumbo-jumbo and/or the threat of being blacklisted if he speaks out against T2. Both of which could present much worse consequences (significant legal and financial liability on one hand, being unable to work in the industry again for an indefinite period on the other) than being 'cancelled' by the KSP fandom. 

To do multi quotes, you use the '+ Quote' button at the bottom of the post. For yours I pasted it three times.

1. I have not seen this information.

It's on the KSP 2 Modding Society Discord. There were also posts on reddit by people who appear or claim to be former Star Theory devs; u/ElectricRune and  u/Rocketman_KSP. One of Squad developers who was claimed to have had meetings with Nate Simpson was @Maxsimal

2. The existence of an outside consultant does not preclude secrecy on other fronts, including towards Squad (and ex-Squad), as well as prominent community (and arguably even media) figures, such as Scott Manley. 

No, but it shows they were allowed to communicate with certain people. There wasn't any global top down order not to let the news of KSP2's development leave their offices.

3. Possible? Yes. Equally possible? Nate was gagged by the T2 suits except for pre-approved persons, such as consultants, in order to preserve secrecy and not harm sales of the current game. 

Maybe, but why pre-approve a random astrophysicist with no history with KSP or game development, yet not pre-approve one of the original devs like HarvesteR? Also, people in the game dev world have shown they're capable of staying tight lipped and preserving secrecy. 

4. By that logic, would a higher up T2 exec even know what KSP is? Its pretty hard to learn enough about KSP to consider purchasing it to transform it into "the next Minecraft" without also becoming familiar with who Scott Manley is along the way. H*ck, for all we know, the exec who thought it was a good idea to bring up acquiring the IP probably heard about the game in the first place from Scott. 

Yes this is true. But I'm also basing my assumption on my own observations on how corporate higher ups work. It seems unlikely to me that a T2 exec would be so hands on about communication, especially if the game had already been announced. @ShadowZone is the real one who can answer where the quote originated from, but it's likely he needs to protect his source.

5. Yes, though it still falls on T2 for falling for the sunk cost fallacy, and not authorizing rebuilding the game, especially after it became clear that the 2020 release would not be possible, and after every single person in this community stressed to the devs that we want a delayed but playable game more than we want a new game ASAP that is a hot mess on release. 

Again, from my knowledge of how higher ups and publishers work, it seems unlikely to me that a publisher would enforce this top down technical decision about how to make the game. They would leave this call to the experts. The T2 execs aren't game developers, most of them come from marketing or corporate management backgrounds. They would leave the game engine decision making to the team at Uber Entertainment.

6.  Yeah, and while that's true, its also equally true he was told by PD/T2 that he had to do that. 

Maybe he was ordered to say that, but by doing so he was putting his reputation on the line to mislead and possibly even lie for the benefit of his corporate bosses. In the long term, it isn't worth sacrificing your own reputation and good word for the sake of a paycheck.

7. If he did "put himself" front and center, it was with T2's tacit approval. If they didn't want him "front and center", they would not have allowed him to be.

It was likely in both parties' interests to put Nate front and center; in Take Two's case they needed someone passionate about KSP to go out and market the sequel, in Nate's case he was clearly happy to walk around on camera taking the plaudits. There's an early dev video published long before release, Nate is shown visiting the University of Washington campus. You can tell from his body language that he's as pleased as peach to be congratulated for the original game (he doesn't care to clarify that he had nothing whatsoever to do with the first game).

8. Alternatively, its likely that he's being gagged by some legal mumbo-jumbo and/or the threat of being blacklisted if he speaks out against T2. Both of which could present much worse consequences (significant legal and financial liability on one hand, being unable to work in the industry again for an indefinite period on the other) than being 'cancelled' by the KSP fandom. 

Plenty of other people involved with Intercept Games have made made brief statements on the end of development, even if to say token things like saying it was a pleasure to work on the game and they're sad to see it end. Paul Furio, Dakota Callahan, Tom Vinita, Ghassen Lahmar (Blackrack) have all mentioned something on social media. As of right now, Nate has said nothing.

[WatchClarkBand]

1 hour ago, Westinghouse said:

Plenty of other people involved with Intercept Games have made made brief statements on the end of development, even if to say token things like saying it was a pleasure to work on the game and they're sad to see it end. Paul Furio, Dakota Callahan, Tom Vinita, Ghassen Lahmar (Blackrack) have all mentioned something on social media. As of right now, Nate has said nothing.

I am sad to see it end.

As for Nate... look, cut the guy some slack. He's probably out of work, has a family to support, is wondering what's next, and while he has a thick skin, I certainly wouldn't want to read the vitriol that comes out daily if I were him. The one Reddit thread from a year and two months ago blaming me for the state of the game upon my departure was depressing enough for me, I can't imagine his perspective. If I were him, I'd take a long vacation, go someplace sunny and warm, and just unwind.

Maybe it's my zen attitude these days. I've lost count of the number of video games I funded at kickstarters that never saw the light of day, or they launched but I never got my unlock key so I had to buy it all over again... (I'm looking at you, Homeworld 3.)

Creative people are going to try to make creative things, and sometimes it's great, sometimes it's really bad, sometimes it's just okay but it's easier to call it a disaster because it's fun for people to pile on. There are only four games I play or pay attention to these days, and the community for all four games excrements on them constantly. So... I don't know, it's a trend?

70 people are out of work in the toughest time in decades for folks to find jobs in the games industry. They tried, it didn't work out, largely through no fault of the vast majority of those individuals.

The @ShadowZone video was interesting. I'm sure more will come out later on. I hope the brilliant engineers I worked with get to move on to new projects where their talents won't go to waste, because they really are some top notch people.

But yeah. Sad, and parts were a real pleasure. 

[Vanamonde]

I go to my therapist's appointment and when I get back it's all Nazis and war crimes in here?

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS. 

Some comments removed. Let's stick to the topic, please. 

[Bej Kerman]

3 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

I go to my therapist's appointment and when I get back it's all pedants and war crimes in here?

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS.

[Skorj]

2 hours ago, WatchClarkBand said:

Maybe it's my zen attitude these days. I've lost count of the number of video games I funded at kickstarters that never saw the light of day, or they launched but I never got my unlock key so I had to buy it all over again... (I'm looking at you, Homeworld 3.)

This.  Games fail.  It sucks, but it's silly to blame individuals much when we don't know the details.   Hopefully you don't read the Steam forums, but for a while there was a bunch of back-and-forth similar to "These are bad people who stole my money and failed, it's the worst injustice ever!"  "First time?  You must be new to EA games."  Yeah, it sucks how it turned out, but if I'm going to rant it's going to be about the rather-larger amount I crowdfunded Camelot Unchained for.  Even the best efforts sometimes fail, and that's without adverse publisher meddling.  This one was actively sabotaged by T2 if ShadowZone is to be believed. 

Nate signed up to be the face of the project, so of course he'll catch the most rotten fruit thrown by disappointed fans, but personally I'm willing to cut even Nate some slack considering those revelations. That stuff was nuts.

[Scarecrow71]

4 hours ago, Skorj said:

Nate signed up to be the face of the project, so of course he'll catch the most rotten fruit thrown by disappointed fans, but personally I'm willing to cut even Nate some slack considering those revelations. That stuff was nuts.

It doesn't help his position that he was the face of multiple other games that also failed.  And that he told us repeatedly that KSP2 was fully funded and will be completed.  And in his last post right before the WARN notice, he was talking about a patch coming, and that there would be a second patch after that before Colonies.  Which were also on the way.

Look, he is a smart guy.  But there is no way he didn't know something was coming.  And if he truly didn't, then he isn't as smart as we believe he is.

Either way, as the face of the franchise, he is going to get flak.  Especially after all the stuff he told us.

[Siska]

All debates are less and less relevant

[Skorj]

4 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

It doesn't help his position that he was the face of multiple other games that also failed.  And that he told us repeatedly that KSP2 was fully funded and will be completed.  And in his last post right before the WARN notice, he was talking about a patch coming, and that there would be a second patch after that before Colonies.  Which were also on the way.

Look, he is a smart guy.  But there is no way he didn't know something was coming.  And if he truly didn't, then he isn't as smart as we believe he is.

Either way, as the face of the franchise, he is going to get flak.  Especially after all the stuff he told us.

Sorry, but I have to ask: what evidence can anyone find in the events of this game (or their previous games) that Nate "is a smart guy"?  I don't understand why anyone would think that.  He's a persuasive non-technical manager with a lot of passion.  Anyhow, I've been involved in one way or another in many layoffs, and anyone senior was either deliberately kept in the dark to ensure nothing leaks, or was given strict instructions to act as if everything were normal until a public announcement,  They never had any choice in the matter. 

Someone in T2 management surely knew the layoffs were coming and allowed false hope to be communicated, but that decision is both completely standard in business (gotta squeeze out every penny) and made well above Nate's level.  Personally, I think someone at IG knew a few weeks ahead, because IG went unusually quiet after the March update, but they wouldn't have been able to tell anyone.

What baffles me is the lack of clean-up of the Steam store page.  Assuming the game has gone into maintenance mode, the roadmap has gone from wishful thinking to knowingly false, and that sort of thing tends to bother corporate legal.

[Temporal Wolf]

4 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

And that he told us repeatedly that KSP2 was fully funded and will be completed.  And in his last post right before the WARN notice, he was talking about a patch coming, and that there would be a second patch after that before Colonies.  Which were also on the way.

Look, he is a smart guy.  But there is no way he didn't know something was coming.  And if he truly didn't, then he isn't as smart as we believe he is.

This just makes me think you haven't worked at a publicly traded company before. It was fully funded and was on the books to be completed... until it wasn't.

Being blindsided by the board is pretty much the norm. Don't forget, they are there to drive shareholder profits, and nothing else.

[Grenartia]

10 hours ago, Temporal Wolf said:

This just makes me think you haven't worked at a publicly traded company before. It was fully funded and was on the books to be completed... until it wasn't.

Being blindsided by the board is pretty much the norm. Don't forget, they are there to drive shareholder profits, and nothing else.

That last sentence is exactly something I pointed out in one of the posts that got split off. 

All T2 will ever truly care about is maximizing short term stock price gains. Literally any other consideration we like to pretend businesses have is only in service to that goal. And threatening that goal is the only real leverage customers have. 

[Temporal Wolf]

3 hours ago, Grenartia said:

All T2 will ever truly care about is maximizing short term stock price gains. Literally any other consideration we like to pretend businesses have is only in service to that goal. And threatening that goal is the only real leverage customers have. 

I mean the way you've phrased this is as if T2 is uniquely evil, but this is just how publicly traded companies work. The board has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, not to the customers. They can be held legally liable for not putting shareholders first.

[WatchClarkBand]

5 hours ago, Grenartia said:

All T2 will ever truly care about is maximizing short term stock price gains. Literally any other consideration we like to pretend businesses have is only in service to that goal. And threatening that goal is the only real leverage customers have. 

As I said to a senior coworker who had also been in the games industry for a long time, "Game publishers are really just very niche hedge funds."

He tilted his head and replied "You're not wrong, but when you put it that way..."

[Grenartia]

1 hour ago, Temporal Wolf said:

I mean the way you've phrased this is as if T2 is uniquely evil, but this is just how publicly traded companies work. The board has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, not to the customers. They can be held legally liable for not putting shareholders first.

I actually didn't intend to imply that being unique to T2. But yeah, the legal liability is also another aspect I mentioned in the other post. 

 

[PDCWolf]

16 hours ago, Temporal Wolf said:

It was fully funded and was on the books to be completed...

Provided it hit some milestone which it obviously didn't, plus not like they didn't fund it for 7 years.

43 minutes ago, WatchClarkBand said:

As I said to a senior coworker who had also been in the games industry for a long time, "Game publishers are really just very niche hedge funds."

He tilted his head and replied "You're not wrong, but when you put it that way..."

The problem is much worse. To not get into controversial details... You can say that, apart from a very few huge name publishers, most of the gaming industry is nothing but the a temporary scapegoat for holding firms on their way to make more money. So not only do we have publicly traded publishers trying to maximize their profits inside the industry by doing cutthroat stuff like this, but we also have non game publisher stock holding companies buying up game studios, loading them with known enexcrementstification processes and then throwing the lifeless corpses away to release overtly mediocre (or even below mediocre) games afterwards.

Despite the successes of 10 or so titles, 2023 and 2024 have been disastrous for the hundreds of other games that released, and we're at about 20.000 layoffs between past year and this one, and the later 10.000 of that number are just this year since january.

 

[Yaivenov]

5 hours ago, WatchClarkBand said:

As I said to a senior coworker who had also been in the games industry for a long time, "Game publishers are really just very niche hedge funds."

He tilted his head and replied "You're not wrong, but when you put it that way..."

This is exactly why I refer to T2I as the investment bankers.  They just specialize in a particular form of entertainment media for their investments.  This is also why it was such a bad sign for the IP to be bought by them.  Investment bankers simply have different motives and priorities which are typically in opposition to the motives and priorities required for the creation of quality art; the creation of quality art requires that profit be subordinate to other priorities, and that is simply not the case at a hedge fund.

Edited May 31 by Yaivenov

[BrobDingnag]

15 hours ago, Temporal Wolf said:

…this is just how publicly traded companies work. The board has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, not to the customers. They can be held legally liable for not putting shareholders first.

Thanks, Dodge.

[mcdjfp]

And how, exactly, does angering customers so that they buy fewer (or none) of your products in the future help shareholders?

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, mcdjfp said:

And how, exactly, does angering customers so that they buy fewer (or none) of your products in the future help shareholders?

This is not a problem when the customers has no choice. On the Microsoft Way.

Problem: even by not having a choice about a specific game the user likes, the user has the choice to play something else at the same time the competition can publish a new game with the same mechanics/similar lore - and this is something the C-Suits that are controlling the Bug Big Studios and Publishers are learning now.

No matter how interesting and/or addictive is a game, they can't be locked down on it as MS managed to do with Windows (for some time, they are being gradually cracked down over the years).

The future for Publishers and Studios currently in the hands of these guys are less than bright - on the long run, the share holders will understand that these shares are not sustainable in the long run, will demote the shares as speculative investment and then things will start to really look bleak around here.

But since the demand will not vanish with the share holder's profit, new Studios will born from the ashes of the older ones (and the end of the Non Compete clauses will help a lot on this) and, with them, new Publishers (or old ones that managed to be not incorporated, or to buy back their shares).

It will be pretty harsh times ahead, the Winter finally had come.

But the good news about the Winter is that it's always followed by the Spring. Eventually...

[Skorj]

19 hours ago, Temporal Wolf said:

I mean the way you've phrased this is as if T2 is uniquely evil, but this is just how publicly traded companies work. The board has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, not to the customers. They can be held legally liable for not putting shareholders first.

 

2 hours ago, mcdjfp said:

And how, exactly, does angering customers so that they buy fewer (or none) of your products in the future help shareholders?

I think there's a widespread misunderstanding about this stuff by people who don't manage investments for a living (i.e., most people).  The board and the executives are different groups and sometimes at odds with each other.  The executives make the day-to-day operating decisions about the company, the board is rarely involved in any active way unless the executives really mess up and get fired.  Leaving aside the misunderstandings about the board, let's talk about the executive leadership of a large company.

It is commonly the case that executives and even middle managers of large companies care about 3 goals (with the notable exception of founder-led companies, which sometimes have a long-term vision):

1. Their compensation;
2. The metrics by which their future compensation is determined; and
3. Their personal success metrics, usually the size or revenue of the group that they manage.

Not the quality of the product, not the customers, not the shareholders, not the employees, none of those things except as to game any related metric for goal 2.  So, you'll often see decisions that from the outside seem utterly baffling and self-destructive, but that's only if you think in terms of irrelevancies like reputation or long-term profits.  Executives at large companies are generally really good at optimizing for their goals, it's just that those goals are mis-aligned with anything useful to anyone else.

Also, this isn't specific to companies - it's the problem with any large, old organization of any kind.  IMO, fixing this would be the most important advancement for the future progress of humanity.  In the mean time, the best shot at good games are founder-led studios where the founder is still chasing a vision of great games and the publisher isn't ruining everything.

[GigFiz]

9 hours ago, Skorj said:

Also, this isn't specific to companies - it's the problem with any large, old organization of any kind.  IMO, fixing this would be the most important advancement for the future progress of humanity.  In the mean time, the best shot at good games are founder-led studios where the founder is still chasing a vision of great games and the publisher isn't ruining everything.

If this gets moved/edited for being too far off topic, well...fair enough.

Anyway,

I might regret opening this can of worms, but I think eliminating public ownership of companies (and probably capping executive compensation some way or another, as well) altogether would be a good step in that direction. Because, without even touching the screwiness of the fantasy world that is the stock market, the legal fiduciary responsibility to shareholders (as I understand it), at least in the US, means that if a company did "the right thing" and it hurt profits, they would be legally liable to their shareholders.

Now, lots of big companies don't give a damn about customers or employees, and wouldn't regardless, but this setup means that they can't/couldn't even if they wanted to. Look at at any company ever that went from having a reputation for ethical responsibility and subsequently went to s***, and I pretty much guarantee that the turning point was the IPO.

And I agree, I think the dream would be founder led, employee owned studios (maybe with some of them forming loose collectives together to help fund/staff bigger projects. That part is just an offhand thought, though)

[Skorj]

1 hour ago, GigFiz said:

 the legal fiduciary responsibility to shareholders (as I understand it), at least in the US, means that if a company did "the right thing" and it hurt profits, they would be legally liable to their shareholders.

Now, lots of big companies don't give a damn about customers or employees, and wouldn't regardless, but this setup means that they can't/couldn't even if they wanted to. Look at at any company ever that went from having a reputation for ethical responsibility and subsequently went to s***, and I pretty much guarantee that the turning point was the IPO.

The board has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, the executives typically don't (and, again, it's the executives who make all the daily decisions about operating the company).  And all that fiduciary duty  really means in practice is the board can't legally do deals that favor the board members personally over the shareholders, it's not otherwise particularly restrictive.  They can certainly favor reputation or employees as simply "best for the long term", since it usually is; they just make other choices instead.   The Devil isn't where you think he is here, and the system as a whole can't be understood through oversimplification.

Anyhow, like I've said, IMO the answer in gaming is to look for smallish indie teams led by someone with a passion for the subject of the game, attached to non-AAA publishers.  Regardless of the reason, huge publishers will ruin everything except their true passion: very profitable cash shops.

Edited June 1 by Skorj

[Temporal Wolf]

33 minutes ago, Skorj said:

The board has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, the executives typically don't (and, again, it's the executives who make all the daily decisions about operating the company).  And all that fiduciary duty  really means in practice is the board can't legally do deals that favor the board members personally over the shareholders, it's not otherwise particularly restrictive.  They can certainly favor reputation or employees as simply "best for the long term", since it usually is; they just make other choices instead.   The Devil isn't where you think he is here, and the system as a whole can't be understood through oversimplification.

Anyhow, like I've said, IMO the answer in gaming is to look for smallish indie teams led by someone with a passion for the subject of the game, attached to non-AAA publishers.  Regardless of the reason, huge publishers will ruin everything except their true passion: very profitable cash shops.

Fiduciary duties in most states are held by corporate directors (the board) and corporate officers (executives appointed by the board to manage the day to day operations), so, for example, the CEO/CFO absolutely have fiduciary duties to shareholders.

Unsurprisingly perhaps,  because their compensation tends to be based upon quarterly/FY targets, they tend to maximize short term profits to the exclusion of other concerns, because that maximizes their compensation while still fulfilling their duties to shareholders despite potentially hurting the company in the long term.

You need look no further than KSP2's own forced release in the last month of FY23. Even if KSP2 development had been going well, forcing a release prior to finishing generally has a net negative impact on it's value, despite driving short term profits.

[kerbiloid]

The very suspicious aspect of the KSP-2 development from the very  beginning was they weren't keeping hands above blanket, like the community wasn't aware of what's happening there since the KSP-1 times.