I will be refusing to support Take Two Interactive further unless KSP2 is revived.

[boolybooly]

OK point of information. Some people have got the wrong end of the stick about the $140m figure and seem to think it applies to KSP2 alone, which it doesn't. 

The $140m figure is the estimated total value of all the projects cancelled by TTWO involving an estimated 600 layoffs and the source for this was this video from Spunie Bard discussing WARNs and Intercept layoffs, see timecode 0:16s. So lets nip this broken telephone thing in the bud.

 

[RayneCloud]

Then don't buy GTA 6. Actually stand by your principles.

Don't buy anything from,
2K
Rockstar
Ghost Story
Zynga

All of these are owned by Take Two.

[Meecrob]

15 hours ago, RayneCloud said:

Then don't buy GTA 6. Actually stand by your principles.

GTA 6 is going to suck. Mark my words. The city might be good, but all the writers are gone. The deal with the devil has already been done and all the rats left the sinking ship. If GTA 6 is not instantly better than GTA 5 in every way, it will be considered a failure. I see GTA 6 Online making money, but I also see single player GTA feeling like a GTA clone.

[Lisias]

15 hours ago, RayneCloud said:

Then don't buy GTA 6. Actually stand by your principles.

Don't buy anything from,
2K
Rockstar
Ghost Story
Zynga

All of these are owned by Take Two.

I beg to suggest an alternative: only buy solid products with good reputation, disregarding the owner.

You get what you pay for - choosing products based purely on the owner will induce Companies to create cheat cheap, disposable front-men front-companies to sell crappy products and nothing will change.

Reward the good deeds, punish the bad ones - no matter who did the deed. This is what can help to bring back the market to sane levels.

That said, I agree that it's harder and harder to find a solid product with good reputation with the Take Two label on it - so I'm not saying you are inherently wrong, I'm just proposing an alternative M.O. to do the same thing.

[MarcAbaddon]

This feels a bit silly. I am not going to pass on Civ 7 if it looks good, just because 2K is a subsidiary of Take Two. 

It's obviously your choice to do so, but I'd recommend at least asking yourself if you apply the same level of scrutiny to your other hobbies and purchases. Because probably 90% of the stuff you buy, ultimately is linked to companies that did much shadier stuff than what happened with Take Two and KSP 2, where at least it seems like a sound business decision to cancel. You could e.g., start with Nestle. 

Edited June 11 by MarcAbaddon

[Meecrob]

9 minutes ago, MarcAbaddon said:

This feels a bit silly. I am not going to pass on Civ 7 if it looks good, just because 2K is a subsidiary of Take Two. 

"Hi, I'm in this thread for instructions on how to get away from this thread"

 

12 minutes ago, MarcAbaddon said:

You could e.g., start with Nestle. 

Some of us already do. This end-game capitalism is hitting like a freight train. Right to repair laws, forced arbitration, cloud/servers being shut down, etc. You gotta watch out nowadays. Every company sees the contents of your wallet as theirs.

[theJesuit]

On 6/12/2024 at 3:16 AM, Meecrob said:

Right to repair laws

I'm not sure this makes your point.  Is this not a win for consumers?

I wwomder if right to repair laws could be used to open source software that goes into early access but gets shuttered.

 

[Superfluous J]

51 minutes ago, theJesuit said:

I'm not sure this makes your point.  Is this not a win for consumers?

I wwomder if right to repair laws could be used to open source software that goes into early access but gets shuttered.

I don't think they meant the laws themselves, but the need for them.

I don't necessarily agree with that, a ton of "obvious" rights are codified specifically so no one can take them away, why not the right to tinker with something you bought?

[Scarecrow71]

7 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I don't necessarily agree with that, a ton of "obvious" rights are codified specifically so no one can take them away, why not the right to tinker with something you bought?

Isn't that what modding APIs are, though?

While I agree that we should have the right to tinker with/modify anything we have legally purchased, providing the source code to do so opens up all kinds of chaos.  From simple messing with the code and screwing it up, to outright copying of functions and creating your own game, this just cannot be allowed to happen.

[Superfluous J]

3 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Isn't that what modding APIs are, though?

While I agree that we should have the right to tinker with/modify anything we have legally purchased, providing the source code to do so opens up all kinds of chaos.  From simple messing with the code and screwing it up, to outright copying of functions and creating your own game, this just cannot be allowed to happen.

I agree, but that's covered by copyright. The right to repair is about letting us mod (though generally it's talking about physical items), not copy.

[Lisias]

9 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

I agree, but that's covered by copyright. The right to repair is about letting us mod (though generally it's talking about physical items), not copy.

The worst parts of Copyright:

• There're agreements (as Berne Convention and WIPO) in which a Country agrees on enforcing the rights of the other Country's citizens on its territory. So a specific Copyright Right for a USA citizen would be enforced on Europe, even by Europe not recognizing such rights for their citizens;
• There're legal lawsuits right now claiming copyright infringement for changing code in your computer's memory, playing havoc to a significant part of the current KSP¹ modding scene (and the whole KSP2 one).

So, yeah. There's a serious risk (the lawsuit stuck, it needs to be reversed now or we will be screwed) of fixing bugs on a USA program in your own computer be considered a Copyright Infringement soon.

Edited June 14 by Lisias
Tyops are cosnpiring agaisnt me!!!

[K33N]

I don't think that the publisher is to blame in this case.

[LittleBitMore]

Addressing a few things since I unfortunately feel the need to

On 6/10/2024 at 5:22 PM, RayneCloud said:

Then don't buy GTA 6. Actually stand by your principles.

Don't buy anything from,
2K
Rockstar
Ghost Story
Zynga

All of these are owned by Take Two.

This was my plan. I knew these companies are subsidiaries. I'm committing to it. I never was going to buy GTA6 for dozens of other reasons, and in the OP I've linked to a page which lists games and companies owned by T2.

On 6/11/2024 at 8:56 AM, Lisias said:

I beg to suggest an alternative: only buy solid products with good reputation, disregarding the owner.

You get what you pay for - choosing products based purely on the owner will induce Companies to create cheat cheap, disposable front-men front-companies to sell crappy products and nothing will change.

Reward the good deeds, punish the bad ones - no matter who did the deed. This is what can help to bring back the market to sane levels.

That said, I agree that it's harder and harder to find a solid product with good reputation with the Take Two label on it - so I'm not saying you are inherently wrong, I'm just proposing an alternative M.O. to do the same thing.

I'm doing this out of principle, and not entirely because I think Take Two only makes bad products. I just cannot trust their management any further.

5 hours ago, K33N said:

I don't think that the publisher is to blame in this case.

and yet, somehow, judging by the fact that my post has a thesis that is directly against your belief, my post seems to have already made the assumption that it is the publisher's fault. this is something I'm going to stay firm on here, and I'm not fully sure why this post was the one you chose to express this view as opposed to a more contextually relevant one from someone more like-minded who you can relate to and agree with

On 6/11/2024 at 8:58 AM, MarcAbaddon said:

This feels a bit silly. I am not going to pass on Civ 7 if it looks good, just because 2K is a subsidiary of Take Two. 

It's obviously your choice to do so, but I'd recommend at least asking yourself if you apply the same level of scrutiny to your other hobbies and purchases. Because probably 90% of the stuff you buy, ultimately is linked to companies that did much shadier stuff than what happened with Take Two and KSP 2, where at least it seems like a sound business decision to cancel. You could e.g., start with Nestle. 

I do when I can, I avoid Nestle when I can accurately track down which companies and products it owns (which is unnecessarily difficult-- thanks, Nestle), I avoid Apple under as many circumstances as I can, and I don't like to excessively fund companies who can't prove they care about not killing our ecosystems. That being said, there are often situations where it's unavoidable-- such as when I can't figure out which companies Nestle owns, or when Apple holds a monopoly on a technology or software that I need for school or work, or when all my options are equally terrible from a pollution perspective. Video games are a noteworthy exception: you will only ever buy a video game when you do not need it. Thus, I can always not buy it.

[Lisias]

4 minutes ago, LittleBitMore said:

I'm doing this out of principle, and not entirely because I think Take Two only makes bad products. I just cannot trust their management any further.

That's the problem I see: you just can't trust any management. They are not committed to you, they are committed to their financial results.

Help to deny financial results to bad products, and the management will be forced to do something near the Right Thing™ - not because they will be trustable, but because they will get their throats cut if they don't deliver results.

In a Dog's World, the best outcome is to learn to bark.

 

[Sampa]

If I may put my two cents in on the topic, I would recommend the better method to save ksp2 and the franchise as a whole, is to raise awareness and encourage others to buy it and spread awareness.  In that way, take two can see that it might be worth keeping as an active project because it can make money.

[boolybooly]

6 hours ago, Sampa said:

If I may put my two cents in on the topic, I would recommend the better method to save ksp2 and the franchise as a whole, is to raise awareness and encourage others to buy it and spread awareness.  In that way, take two can see that it might be worth keeping as an active project because it can make money.

For the sake of conversation, an unintended consequence of supporting KSP2 under TTWO would be to raise the asking price for the IP sale and thus obstruct the movement of the IP to a more suitable owner. Everyone who deserves to be involved knows what KSP could be and rewarding bad behaviour could be counterproductive.

By the sound of it TTWO were asking for silly money from Paradox, because their managers are running around like a headless chicken trying to impress everyone but their customers these days and Paradox rightly demurred. I am not unhappy about that as I remember the Sword of the Stars 2 fiasco and Paradox's lack of commitment to the title when things got rough, which sounded like it got quite personal and unprofessional and left player owners completely in the lurch. So I don't regard them as an ideal IP owner, nor StarDock as I find both publishers' 4X titles lacking a mechanical awareness and focussed on space fantasy which is not compatible with KSP design (unless it involves krakens ofc).

Simulation of mechanism and physics is core for KSP2 and needs someone who likes physics. I have enjoyed the down to earth mechanics of some Slytherine titles but they are a bit focussed on historic warfare and I am not sure they have that kind of money to throw around. I am racking my brains but cannot think of a publisher who would really fit the bill. Maybe Valve (Garry's Mod) or Microsoft (umpteen flight simulators) could handle it, alternatively Coffee Stain / Plaion (Goat Simulator). Just thinking out loud. Probably Microsoft would be my favourite.

Edited June 20 by boolybooly

[Superfluous J]

13 hours ago, boolybooly said:

For the sake of conversation, an unintended consequence of supporting KSP2 under TTWO would be to raise the asking price for the IP sale and thus obstruct the movement of the IP to a more suitable owner. Everyone who deserves to be involved knows what KSP could be and rewarding bad behaviour could be counterproductive.

So people should incessantly bad mouth every aspect of it.

If only we could find people willing to do that.

[Lisias]

On 6/20/2024 at 8:41 AM, boolybooly said:

For the sake of conversation, an unintended consequence of supporting KSP2 under TTWO would be to raise the asking price for the IP sale and thus obstruct the movement of the IP to a more suitable owner. Everyone who deserves to be involved knows what KSP could be and rewarding bad behaviour could be counterproductive.

As a Corollary, it's perfectly plausible that anyone thinking on buying the franchise would have in their best interest the devaluation of the IP, and perhaps effectively working on doing it by indirect means.

What would explain some weird things that happens around here.

I don't have the slightest "loving" sentiments for TTI, but I don't hate them neither - but I surely despise back stabbers, even when they allegedly do it by "good reasons". Some people think that the ends justify the means, and it's not impossible that they could be right sometimes.

But even by having the means justified, the ends don't clear the guilt.

Edited June 22 by Lisias
This time was the autocomplete, I swear!!

[KerikBalm]

On 6/20/2024 at 8:22 AM, Sampa said:

If I may put my two cents in on the topic, I would recommend the better method to save ksp2 and the franchise as a whole, is to raise awareness and encourage others to buy it and spread awareness.  In that way, take two can see that it might be worth keeping as an active project because it can make money.

This sounds like a terrible idea.

Every sale now is a sale that won't happen after further development. 

Any developer (TT or a buyer) is going to do complex financial calculations that basically come down to: "If I invest X in  further development, I expect Y in returns,  I want to maximize Y-X".

You may see more sales now as sending a message that the market is out there and you may hope that it makes a developer estimate a larger value for Y.

I think they are going to look at the market for the developed product, estimate the total sales, and then subtract the amount of sales that have already occurred, to reach the number of expected additional sales.

Buying more may make them estimate a higher total sales number, but my guess is that for every 10 additional sales now, they are going to estimate a total sales number that is between 0-9 higher, and thus total sales - current sales will decrease.

Aside from rewarding failure, it may make people estimate that sales for KSP2 are saturated, and actually lower the financial incentive for further development.

 

Best case scenario is that the IP is undervalued, and sold off to someone who will do right by it and make a nice profit for theirselves in the process.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

There is no guarantee that KSP2 will continue in any form. Signs seem to ever more likely, each day, that the current iteration of KSP is over.

Suggesting people purchase the game now, IMHO, is similiar to the tactics employed against us all along. Preying upon the hope of a potential fan.

Any money given now would support the company that orchestrated the entire thing.

Those at the highest levels in Take Two began to plan the roll out of the cost cutting initiative well before it was public knowledge.

The people that PUSHED for KSP2 to be released in an alphaware state.. KNEW.. they were going to be terminating the entire studio soon.

It was definitely an attempt to test market viability for the product.. but that launch state suggests to me more than anything.. the EA release was more about recovering lost development capital as a preemptive way to minimize the reported loss in subsequent earning reports.

This is beyond duplicity & passes into the Realm of fraud. If internal documents should ever surface to support this.. it might actually initiate some changes somewhere.

e do not feel giving money to Take Two is a good things. I am on the fence about the new Civ title.. will likely get it.

[froggerMK16]

i join the boycott i used to think they shut down development because nobody liked that ksp2 ran at a staggering 2 fps but hearing this has changed my opinion i feel bad for the devs tho

[Anth]

Removed a comment. Please avoid the subject of politics. It just never ends well. 

[Serenity]

On 6/11/2024 at 5:52 PM, Meecrob said:

GTA 6 is going to suck. Mark my words. The city might be good, but all the writers are gone. The deal with the devil has already been done and all the rats left the sinking ship. If GTA 6 is not instantly better than GTA 5 in every way, it will be considered a failure. I see GTA 6 Online making money, but I also see single player GTA feeling like a GTA clone.

GTA 6 story will be amazing, gta 6 online could be like roblox, allowing creation of different ''experiences''

On 9/6/2024 at 3:56 AM, Anth said:

Removed a comment. Please avoid the subject of politics. It just never ends well. 

oh you are a mod now, yikes and congrats

[Anth]

20 minutes ago, Serenity said:

oh you are a mod now, yikes and congrats

I recently fixed a few issues with the KSP bug reporting sub forum, and then said I no longer need higher level access.

Shortly afterwards @Vanamonde (and a few others) asked me to stay on as a moderator so here I am.

 

[Meecrob]

11 hours ago, Serenity said:

GTA 6 story will be amazing, gta 6 online could be like roblox, allowing creation of different ''experiences''

If GTA6 I'd like Roblox, it's doomed. GTA is supposed to lead not follow. Also, who is gonna write the story? All the story people jumped ship years ago when they saw what GTA online became.

 

Boycott Rockstar and Take Two until they prove themselves worthy of your money.