IGN reports: T2 wants to get rid of the IP, they want to offload PD completely.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

13 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Angels operate in a completely different price range. It's hard to say precisely how much T2 would be looking for, but it's pretty safe to say that it'd be in tens of millions. I have seen companies raise that as a seed, but that takes some extraordinary circumstances, and even then, you still need an operational budget.

It's not absolutely impossible for an independent studio to obtain the KSP IP and make a game, but they will need backing from a publisher who will be expecting to turn a profit on this, so the only way it could happen is if some very well established names are behind it. And I don't really see this as likely.

The actual most likely option, outside of the IP just getting iced at T2 indefinitely, is a studio buying it in expectation to crank out a bunch of cheap games exploiting the marketability of Kerbals. It's not the worst outcome, because if they do a good job with that, they will give a proper KSP sequel a go some ways down the line, but it won't be soon.

All in all, this news has robbed me of what little optimism I still held on to. KSP2 is dead, and Kerbal IP is either going on ice or will only result in non-rocket-building games for a while.

Optimistic? I could buy pushing a penchant for cynism.. or even realism.

Spotting any optimism in your posts is like trying to spot the Lunar Lander with an old Nikkon at noon.

 

Oh.. and perhaps I should have included and "S" on angel. But I meant

"any entity or group of entities that arise to salvage the  IP"

I have some popcorn if you want to continue prove how smart you are by further expounding on the literal definitions of my specific language.

Edited June 1 by Fizzlebop Smith

[Mitokandria]

2 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

I know this is mostly a joke, but I've gotta ask: And then what? Who from "the community" gets the rights? how does "the community" approve or disapprove licensing? Who even is the "community"? Just the people that fund the purchase or anyone with a forum account?

I'd actually like to join in on this thought experiment here. If it were succesfully crowdfunded by "the community" wouldn't it then be possible to make it open source under some sort of GNU-like license? If too much of the codebase is proprietary to a third party strip it out or just start from a clean slate.

As far as ownership is concerned create an LLC that is member-owned. Membership into the LLC requires a certain amount of contribution to the codebase. Finances going toward taxes and fees for the LLC and left over is split based on percentage of contribution.

Obviously there's more to running an LLC than just whats above and I'm not saying it'd be easy or even successful, but there is a non-zero chance for that to work.

 

Edited June 1 by Mitokandria
Fixing double post glitch

[TLTay]

Who's going to pay big bucks for what's now an old game with a trickle of sales, and a liability with a black eye you need to spend tens of millions more  on just to get to 1.0. By what magic would KSP2s steam rating recover at this point, I have no idea.

[Superfluous J]

3 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

I know this is mostly a joke, but I've gotta ask: And then what? Who from "the community" gets the rights? how does "the community" approve or disapprove licensing? Who even is the "community"? Just the people that fund the purchase or anyone with a forum account?

I'm by no means for the idea but making it open source would work for me.

[HebaruSan]

5 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

I'm by no means for the idea but making it open source would work for me.

That doesn't really answer any of the important questions.

For example, it would be nice if the new entity could continue updating both games on Steam, so new people would get the latest updates. (This becomes increasingly important as older versions of Unity gradually fade out of compatibility.) Someone would have to be in charge of managing those updates on behalf of this community entity.

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

A small crew remains to support the remaining announced games

So, the KSP-2 production chain stays active.

Spoiler

One end of the chain is attached to the slave coder's collar, another end - to the collar of the slave phone-girl; the loop is loopped around the pillar in the middle of their dungeon room, and twice per year they get a fresh pack of straw for the beds.

Edited June 1 by kerbiloid

[Brofessional]

3 hours ago, TLTay said:

Who's going to pay big bucks for what's now an old game with a trickle of sales, and a liability with a black eye you need to spend tens of millions more  on just to get to 1.0. By what magic would KSP2s steam rating recover at this point, I have no idea.

You'd have to really believe in the IP to spend the kind of money they're presumably asking.  It would be a long term investment, but my guess is that they would discontinue KSP2 and salvage what they could into a KSP1 remaster. After that they would be in a good position to start fresh on a new successor, be it KSP3 or whatever. Hopefully utilizing some of the experience learned from doing the remaster.

It sucks for everyone who paid for KSP2, but early access is a gamble like that. Sometimes you lose.

[Mitokandria]

3 hours ago, Brofessional said:

You'd have to really believe in the IP to spend the kind of money they're presumably asking.  It would be a long term investment, but my guess is that they would discontinue KSP2 and salvage what they could into a KSP1 remaster. After that they would be in a good position to start fresh on a new successor, be it KSP3 or whatever. Hopefully utilizing some of the experience learned from doing the remaster.

It sucks for everyone who paid for KSP2, but early access is a gamble like that. Sometimes you lose.

To me that is the best outcome. A new entity buys the IP, scraps KSP2 for a remaster of KSP1. Then start fresh with a KSP3 (or KSP2-20xx) after a few years of experience with the IP and community wants/needs.

[Scarecrow71]

Wasn't there a forum user who claimed to be in talks to acquire the IP and code right before the last earnings call?  @Meecrob, I believe?

[Tony Tony Chopper]

8 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Wasn't there a forum user who claimed to be in talks to acquire the IP and code right before the last earnings call?  @Meecrob, I believe?

Yep, that's the right one. But I would take it as a very bad joke.

[Scarecrow71]

39 minutes ago, Tony Tony Chopper said:

Yep, that's the right one. But I would take it as a very bad joke.

You mean like the rest of this thread?

[Tony Tony Chopper]

36 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

You mean like the rest of this thread?

There wasn't enough money left to buy good jokes.

[Kerbart]

15 hours ago, Heretic391 said:

Wow, fingers crossed it gets sold to someone competent. However, how greedy do you guys think TT is? They would certainly want to recoup their losses and ask for a price way higher than what the ksp IP is currently worth. It may explain why the Paradox deal fell through (i'm speculating!)

Not necessarily covering their losses. That amount might be so high that it never sells, and getting, say, $5M for it is better than asking for $30M and getting nothing, The remaining losses can always be used as a tax write-off.

You'd have to view it in the future value of KSP IP for T2 which at this point seems close to zero, so I suspect they're willing to pawn it off for a low price.

[Meecrob]

2 hours ago, Tony Tony Chopper said:

Yep, that's the right one. But I would take it as a very bad joke.

Take it as a joke, but what I said is coming true. The day of the layoff announcement, I said Take Two feels like they stepped in dog poo with regards to KSP and want to get rid of it. Lo and behold a month later, its in IGN.

As much as we can sit here and go over all the ways Take Two makes mistakes, they are smart enough to know that the KSP IP has a non-zero value.

[Stevie_D]

The problem with being too optimistic with this news is one simple fact - Take2's history when it comes to shuttering studios and / or selling them.

Largely, they buy things but never manage to sell ANYthing, they just close them. One of the rumours from IGN was that they just tried to sell Private Division to Paradox but their demands were simply too high, which fits with that MO of not being able to sell.
I can easily find a list of Take 2 acquisitions over the years, but its insanely hard to find a reference to anything they've ever sold. That is why they have a tried and trusted practice of just closing studios without ever publicly admitting they ever did so (Take 2 Marin, to name but one.) So those hoping for a public announcement from Take 2 over KSP2 are living in cuckoo land now.
And, considering the gaming industry is a chaotic and toxic landscape right now, with profits struggling across the board, along with high expenditure, expecting a tight-fisted and stubborn Take 2 to make a sale out of Private Division isn't something we should get too hopeful about.

Edited June 1 by Stevie_D
typo

[TLTay]

6 hours ago, Brofessional said:

You'd have to really believe in the IP to spend the kind of money they're presumably asking.  It would be a long term investment, but my guess is that they would discontinue KSP2 and salvage what they could into a KSP1 remaster. After that they would be in a good position to start fresh on a new successor, be it KSP3 or whatever. Hopefully utilizing some of the experience learned from doing the remaster.

It sucks for everyone who paid for KSP2, but early access is a gamble like that. Sometimes you lose.

Still stuck with the tarnish of KSP2, and that will forever be attached to the little green men. Easier to just not pay the millions at this point and do your own IP.

[herbal space program]

26 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Not necessarily covering their losses. That amount might be so high that it never sells, and getting, say, $5M for it is better than asking for $30M and getting nothing, The remaining losses can always be used as a tax write-off.

You'd have to view it in the future value of KSP IP for T2 which at this point seems close to zero, so I suspect they're willing to pawn it off for a low price.

That seems like a reasonable assessment to me if they really don't mean to  do anything else with it.  Recovering some of their sunk costs  has to be better than just eating the whole loss, and TT can't reasonably expect whoever might buy it from them to pay so much money  that the buyer ends up in exactly the same position they are trying to bail out of. But of course where exactly to draw that line is going to be a very complex negotiation, so it doesn't surprise me that they haven't reached a deal with anyone yet. As time wears on and future earnings reports loom, it wouldn't surprise me if their price came down significantly, to the point where somebody will finally bite. Could be quite a while before that happens though, and if it does there's no guarantee we'll end up with a better product. Still, it's a ray of hope that  a new and better version of KSP is not a completely forlorn prospect.

[Lisias]

12 hours ago, Mitokandria said:

I'd actually like to join in on this thought experiment here. If it were succesfully crowdfunded by "the community" wouldn't it then be possible to make it open source under some sort of GNU-like license? If too much of the codebase is proprietary to a third party strip it out or just start from a clean slate.

These are secondary questions.

The most important one is: who will be in charge? A problem with Foundations (a possible solution for the problem at hands) is that they are a lot like Incorporated companies - see that huge drama on Mozilla Foundation some years ago (preceding their downfall into almost obscurity nowadays).

In Brazil, we use to say "Cachorro que tem muito dono, morre de fome" (something like "A dog with many owners starves to death"), and this is exactly what happened to KSP2.

 

30 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

As much as we can sit here and go over all the ways Take Two makes mistakes, they are smart enough to know that the KSP IP has a non-zero value.

For while. Things keep going down through the tubes, they are risking to get into a position in which they will need to pay someone to onload it from them (like Siemens did with Mobile).

Since TTI had cleaned the house, it's safe to assume there's no one left in a position of power to put their own egos above sane commercial decisions (one of the very few advantages of responding directly to share holders that can sue your cheeks out by not doing it). So I expect TTI's CEO to do the most profitable (or less loss-making) decisions still on the current fiscal year.

They had a hell of a hot potato in their hands right now.

Now... What would be this decision related to KSP2? What are their real and concrete options?

There's no free lunch; no matter the decision, it will cost something. Even going Open Source incurs on costs, someone need to audit the code and rip off any 3rd party commercial code - not to mention that someone capable must be around to review any eventual Pull Request into the main code base (otherwise, why open the Source?).

I doubt any decision maker on TTI is paying attention to a bunch of disgruntled Kerbonauts brainstorming about how to save the franchise but... Let's pretend they are doing it.

 

12 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

Recovering some of their sunk costs  has to be better than just eating the whole loss

Not necessarily. Sometimes it's cheaper to just write the entire thing off as losses on the taxes.

Edited June 1 by Lisias
Entertaining grammars made slightely less entertaining...

[PDCWolf]

33 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

Take it as a joke, but what I said is coming true. The day of the layoff announcement, I said Take Two feels like they stepped in dog poo with regards to KSP and want to get rid of it. Lo and behold a month later, its in IGN.

As much as we can sit here and go over all the ways Take Two makes mistakes, they are smart enough to know that the KSP IP has a non-zero value.

I know there's people out there whom this series of events has hit as a train with no lights in the fog. However... for most this was highly predictable. Not to rain on your parade but it wasn't exactly discovering America.

[Scarecrow71]

So let's take this thread seriously for a few moments.  We know that Take Two, per IGN, is looking to offload the IP and shelve the studio.  So what would it actually take for someone - or, more likely, some group - to take control of the IP?

For starters, a boatload of money.  If we semi-use the figures we were given from Shadowzone's video, we're looking at no less than $17.5 million every year for, we'll say, 4 years of development alone.  To recoup that cost alone, Take Two would need to get $70 million.  That's just to recoup development costs for KSP2.  And then they have to take into account future sales of KSP1...which, admittedly, probably aren't going to be all that much.  Most people who want it already have it, and it goes on sale enough on Steam that getting additional cash there isn't going to be much.  But Take Two, being a company, will want some compensation for that.  Once we get beyond the cost of recouping development, Take Two isn't going to part with what is a decently popular game - albeit in a niche genre - for nothing.  They are going to want to be enticed to get rid of the IP, so the group will need to come up with probably - and this is a major spitball here - another $10-30 million dollars.  Someone here in this thread already mentioned $100 million to purchase the IP, so we can easily go with that number and feel like we'd at least be in the ballpark to start negotiations.

Now let's say we've got the cash and the negotiations went well, and some entity ends up with being able to purchase the IP.  Now come some of the sticky parts of the contract just to purchase it.  This cannot be a "community" purchase; the contract will need to specify at a minimum the name of the entity purchasing the IP, along with the senior investors (those people who put up the most cash individually).  And that's just the contract to purchase; the entity has to be set up legally, with all investors, its own board, president, ceo, etc., named explicitly in its own legal documents.  This alone means that it can't simply be a community project with anyone able to do anything with it.  You'll need to know who exactly the employees/members of the new entity are, and only they will have the access to the code and such.  And then they get to decide what happens with the IP once they own it.

So let's say we get beyond setting up the entity, naming the investors (of course, in this scenario, I'm one of the higher-ups because, well, I'm writing this little diatribe), generating the capital needed, and the purchase goes through.  What now?  Well, we need to do all the things associated with creating a development studio, which involves:

• Finding and either purchasing or leasing a suitable building.  Even in this era of remote-work possibilities, a central building for employees to work at and collaborate is the best way to go
• Finding suitable employees
  • And paying them appropriately
• Acquiring the right equipment
  • Notice I said the right equipment.  Anyone can walk into Best Buy or Fry's or wherever-else and buy a computer.  But to develop an actual game you need state-of-the-current-art development machines, as well as lower-end testing rigs.  You also need desks, printers, network equipment, modems, internet...all the things that people I think take for granted that they have in their houses but aren't aware are needed on a much larger scale for a business.  Cables, cords, lights, building expenses to include maintenance.  This all costs money.

I am quite sure there is more to it than that; I'm not a business-setter-upper kind of guy, so I'm guessing at the bare minimum here.  And as I said, this all costs money.  Take Two gave Intercept Games a budget of $10 million per year, and that number was way low.  We're looking at twice that at minimum, and then throw in a contingency fund just to make sure, and we are at $25 million per year for development.  Given a 4 year time frame, that's another $100 million.  We're almost a quarter-billion into this, and not one line of code has been written.  Which brings me to...

...scope of the project.  So many different ways this can go, but project meetings have to happen to nail down a definitive scope for what the next iteration of KSP will look like.  Considering I've installed myself as one of the higher-ups in this project (again, I'm writing this fantasy, so I'll live in it however I want), the scope would end up something like:

1. Reskin KSP1.  Update graphics, fix known bugs, and include the most popular mods as part of stock.  There are 3 kinds of mods available:
   1. Mechanical.  MechJeb and KER, to name a couple.
   2. Parts.  Near Future, Tantares, Restock+.  The Community Tech Tree might fit in here.  KIS/KAS.  Maybe Un Kerballed Start.
   3. Graphical.  Parallax, EVE.  Things that make things look nice.
2. Once KSP1 is reskinned it gets pushed out as KSP2.5.  KSP2 is removed from Steam and Epic, and KSP2.5 is added.  Anyone who purchased KSP2 and didn't refund - that is, they still have it in their library on either Steam or Epic - gets KSP2.5 at a serious discount.  Anyone who doesn't have it, can purchase it at full price (don't ask me what that is; I'm not sure what the appropriate amount would be, and that would be up to accounting to determine).
3. A second development team is already hard at work on what I'd call Kerbal Space Program:  Beyond.  This includes everything in KSP2.5, but adds:
   1. New resources.  ISRU and resource management is part of KSP2.5, but now we need new types of fuels and other resources.
   2. Colonies.  Creating both ground and orbital, as well as being able to have extra-Kerbinular VAB's and launchpads.
   3. Interstellar.  With more than just a singular extra-Kerbolar system out there.  This would have to take advantage of both Near Future parts AND additional parts to help with the long journeys between star systems.
   4. An updated "science" collection mode.  I'm on record as stating we should toss science points almost entirely out the window, focusing instead on achievements and milestones (such as first launch, getting to orbit, etc.).  More of an Achievement Tree than a Science Points tree.  How this functions, again, I don't know.  People far smarter than me I'm sure could figure this out.
   5. Better missions.  And more of them.  And a random mission generation system that draws on what we learned with the contracts thing from KSP1, but in a better way.
   6. As mentioned under #3, more parts.  Better parts.  And more of them being procedural.  I'm looking directly at fuel tanks here, but I'm sure there are other parts that could be procedural that I am not thinking of.
   7. Joystick/HOTAS support.  Come on, man; how can you not have this already?  I prefer the keyboard/mouse combo, but I'm one guy.  And I fully appreciate that some people can't use that combo for whatever reason, so let's make the controls easier for people.

Notice I didn't say anything about multiplayer or consoles up there.  Multiplayer is scrapped entirely, and will never see the light of day.  There are just too many issues with multiplayer in this kind of game.  Time Warp alone causes issues, and because a small portion of the community wants this (and by small, I mean as compared to the totality of the community), it's not worth the effort.  I know there are people that want this, and I'd love to give it to you.  But for now, there are just too many problems with it.  Consoles, on the other hand, are a special kind of hell that needs more support than can be given currently.  The game will eventually come to consoles, but I'm not sure when.  Better to just say "We know you want it on consoles, but for now we cannot promise that will happen.  We will work to see if it's possible, but please don't get your hopes up".  Or something like that.

We are talking about no less than 4 years of development, plus however long it takes to get negotiations done and the studio set up.  Minimum total of 5-6 years.  MINIMUM.  That's before you see your first sale on KSP:B.  Quarter billion in the hole, 6 years out.  Dang, that's a lot of money and a long time.  Are there things I'm missing?  I'm sure of it.  Do those things complicate this exercise, or potentially make it easier?  I'm sure of that too.  But I'm just one dude spitting out a fantasy without going through and writing up an actual business plan (which would really be before the first contact with Take Two takes place).

[Kerbart]

40 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

[...] To recoup that cost alone, Take Two would need to get $70 million.  That's just to recoup development costs for KSP2.  And then they have to take into account future sales of KSP1...which, admittedly, probably aren't going to be all that much.  Most people who want it already have it, and it goes on sale enough on Steam that getting additional cash there isn't going to be much.  But Take Two, being a company, will want some compensation for that.  [...]  Someone here in this thread already mentioned $100 million to purchase the IP, so we can easily go with that number and feel like we'd at least be in the ballpark to start negotiations.[...]

As I pointed out before, and let's just assume your estimates are correct:

• If they ask for $5M they'll get 95M less than they want
• If they ask for $100M they'll get 100M less than they want

In what scenario does TT end up with $5M more than the other scenario? This is not to say that there will be an asking price that puts an eventual sales even remotely in the range of an open source community, but it won't be an astronomical $100M either. It'll be whatever T2 thinks is as high as they can go that the buyer is willing to bear. When you're cutting your loses you take what you can get, otherwise you get stuck with it. The rest is just a write-off.

[Lisias]

2 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

.When you're cutting your loses you take what you can get, otherwise you get stuck with it. The rest is just a write-off.

Pachinkos and Kerbal Farm (on Facebook!), here we go!

I don’t know exactly how this stunt works (US Code 26, $165 I think), but MS preferred to strip down anything of value from Nokia before writing it off as losses, essentially getting that assets "for free" (as they deducted them form the taxes!).

So it's not impossible (until better information is available) that they could manage to write the whole ordeal off as losses and still be able to control the Franchise.

On this scenario, the sunk costs would be amortized (at the taxpayers' expenses, as usual).

[Stephensan]

ill put my two cents here

i expect that they don't want to lose anything on ROI, and they want at least 50-100 mil for the title of ksp franchise with intellectual property/code.

for "lost source of income of ksp 1/2" to get all the ROI back etc.

at bare, i doubt they want to come out losing on this project so it either sell or not.

[Scarecrow71]

26 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

As I pointed out before, and let's just assume your estimates are correct:

• If they ask for $5M they'll get 95M less than they want
• If they ask for $100M they'll get 100M less than they want

In what scenario does TT end up with $5M more than the other scenario? This is not to say that there will be an asking price that puts an eventual sales even remotely in the range of an open source community, but it won't be an astronomical $100M either. It'll be whatever T2 thinks is as high as they can go that the buyer is willing to bear. When you're cutting your loses you take what you can get, otherwise you get stuck with it. The rest is just a write-off.

Keep in mind that everything I typed was pure speculation.  I saw earlier in this thread that someone said roughly $100 million for the purchase of the IP, and that's where I went.  Said post:

Guess I'm curious why you didn't ask your question when Lisias put that amount out there, but decided to ask when I did?

[WelshSteW]

48 minutes ago, Lisias said:

 

Pachinkos and Kerbal Farm (on Facebook!), here we go!

 

 

I don't care one bit if they make 20 Kerbal Farm games. I'm not into it, so I won't buy them, but if other people do and that's what they use to fund another crack at KSP2 then happy days.

 

Edited June 1 by WelshSteW