TakeTwo has sold Private Division

[PDCWolf]

6 minutes ago, Deddly said:

My NDAs have all been with Squad or Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. I would be surprised if any of the developers' NDAs are different.

You'd probably have similar clauses regarding discussion of things that happen in private channels I'd guess, but that's mostly where the similarities will end since you wouldn't be part of non-competes... If your NDA was provisioned only for your position as a mod then it wouldn't include clauses and such about developed technologies, techniques, and other things considered similarly to trade secrets at least until the game was out. Of course, this depends on your level of access, which I wouldn't know.

[Lisias]

16 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Only when customers buy games without knowing what they're buying.

Except we are not buying. We are licensing, remember?

 

9 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

There are no obligations for anything when it comes to EA (according to steam).

Ditto.

USA's Game Industry must make a choice and stick to it: you can't have the cake and eat it too!

If the Game is a product owned by the consumer, then, indeed, you get what you paid for - you are ruled the First Sale Doctrine. Interesting enough, if you own the damned thing you are entitled to do a lot of interesting things with it...

If the Game is a service, i.e., you are licensing the right to use it, then you are not covered by the First Sale Doctrine and, as the legal owner of the asset being licensed, you have perpetual obligations about its fitness to the service contracted. Ask any landlord about it.

 

5 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

There is a clear obligation to develop or cancel, and Steam does take action (at no warranted time, which is why people really get confused about this) against perpetual EA games that don't get updates, specially if refund pressure or flagging pressure gets higher.

And I will not even mention Europe, where contracts are nullified if they broke consumer expectations. There's a reason Roman Law countries demand a signed by all parties contract for services. Heck, I had to sign a contract for DataDog, an USA Company - and I'm a South American.

 

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

in fact probably no one but them can. NDAs can be independent from contract or have a period that extend past employment. Generally an NDA is set for a period of x amount of years...

As long all parties are alive or still existing. The death (or termination) of at least one of the parties will make it unenforceable (when not just null and void).

And, yet most interesting, NDA contracts are not necessarily transferable - and on some countries, only with signed consent of all parties.

On business, it's usual that you have to sign new NDAs when you are a contractor and your client gets sold to someone else, as this will keep you in the loop once the receiving party is terminated after the merge.

 

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

I'd love to believe there's a good five or six people eager to throw T2 and whoever set them up for failure and even their own coworkers (maybe not with names), under a bus.

And I can think of at least half a dozen people that would love be driving that bus.

 

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

Remember that most of the final breakup of news came from "sources" and "friend of a friend" but it ended up being all correct so there's clearly some people up for talking once it doesn't mean losing their careers.

You know... With a enormous amount of game developers being kicked out of the industry for good, I suspect that fearing losing their careers is not a deterrent for thousands and thousands of ex game developers...

 

1 hour ago, Deddly said:

My NDAs have all been with Squad or Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. I would be surprised if any of the developers' NDAs are different.

So you guys will probably be one of the first to know who is the buyer, as you will probably sign new NDAs. TTWO itself was not sold to this new buyer, after all, so you - in theory - have absolutely no obligation to them yet.

And it's probably the reason you all are being kept in the dark about what's happening lately, as these weird Forum (and some related services) shortages and hiccups...

 

Edited November 14 by Lisias
Oh, yeah... Tyops...

[Gargamel]

58 minutes ago, Lisias said:

So you guys will probably be one of the first to know who is the buyer,

Probably not.    It’ll leak through twitter or something first.   

[PDCWolf]

5 hours ago, Lisias said:

And I will not even mention Europe, where contracts are nullified if they broke consumer expectations. There's a reason Roman Law countries demand a signed by all parties contract for services. Heck, I had to sign a contract for DataDog, an USA Company - and I'm a South American.

This is not even going into how most of that "you're buying the game as is" text isn't even binding, it'd be illegal for it to be binding, and even if it's in an EULA there's still multiple angles to make a case about this and very probably succeed, not just in the EU but many countries, USA included.

5 hours ago, Lisias said:

As long all parties are alive or still existing. The death (or termination) of at least one of the parties will make it unenforceable (when not just null and void).

And, yet most interesting, NDA contracts are not necessarily transferable - and on some countries, only with signed consent of all parties.

On business, it's usual that you have to sign new NDAs when you are a contractor and your client gets sold to someone else, as this will keep you in the loop once the receiving party is terminated after the merge.

T2 doesn't seem like getting terminated any time soon, and considering PD is a subsidiary, it'd be smart to sign NDAs beholden to T2 and not to it, and what the mods say confirm this. So yeah, what will end up applying here is the limit date.

5 hours ago, Lisias said:

You know... With a enormous amount of game developers being kicked out of the industry for good, I suspect that fearing losing their careers is not a deterrent for thousands and thousands of ex game developers...

And more to come, considering some recent big failures. Hopefully we get a ton of them going back to what gaming studios actually were, guerilla places working off passion, and not publicly traded companies beholden to shareholders. Suddenly crunching for something -you- want to get out doesn't sound as bad compared to getting vored, chewed, and spit out by some giant entity that won't even keep your name on the records if your product doesn't make it or doesn't sell as much as they expect... or worse, ends up that way because they decided to inject stuff or change processes to stroke their egos or some shareholder's ideals.

 

[Lisias]

4 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

T2 doesn't seem like getting terminated any time soon, and considering PD is a subsidiary, it'd be smart to sign NDAs beholden to T2 and not to it, and what the mods say confirm this. So yeah, what will end up applying here is the limit date.

Well, I'm unsure if I understood the term "beholden". I think it would be unwise for TTWO to bring to themselves the burden of over watching NDA's for things they had sold, and AFAIK it's not worldwide enforceable to silently transfer NDAs to new parties - exactly to prevent you from being surprised by a NDA lawsuit from someone you never heard of.

When Siemens Mobile was sold to BenQ, I had already signed a NDA to my boss (were were a contractor), and my boss signed the new NDAs to BenQ - so, I never had the chance to say "nope" to see what happens. And later, when Siemens VDO was sold to Continental (karma!!!) I was, again, working as a contractor and so my boss signed the new NDA's and I was still bounded to my to him.

What I don't know what would happen is, for example, a VDO employee quitting before Continental buying them. For what I understand, that employee could not had their NDA automatically transferred to Continental without signing in accordance, and I don't have the slightest idea what would happen if the dude just plain refuse it.

And, well, there're people working for them on all the World, right? Different countries, different legislation, different rights.

 

14 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

And more to come, considering some recent big failures. Hopefully we get a ton of them going back to what gaming studios actually were, guerilla places working off passion, and not publicly traded companies beholden to shareholders. Suddenly crunching for something -you- want to get out doesn't sound as bad compared to getting vored, chewed, and spit out by some giant entity that won't even keep your name on the records if your product doesn't make it or doesn't sell as much as they expect... or worse, ends up that way because they decided to inject stuff or change processes to stroke their egos or some shareholder's ideals.

Given some pretty nasty consequences of that huge amount of unemployed developers lingering around, I think this is going to take a bit. I expect a lot of nasty new legislation being pushed ahead by exactly these "publicly traded companies beholden to shareholders" (again, what I should understand for "beholden"?) to protect their turf from them.

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, Lisias said:

Except we are not buying. We are licensing, remember?

Same diff to me. I've never had to "license" a digital game twice, unlike several "real" games I "bought" forever and then lost or scratched the CD.

[PDCWolf]

40 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Well, I'm unsure if I understood the term "beholden"

(again, what I should understand for "beholden"?) to protect their turf from them.

"that owe themselves to" "obligated to" "bound to"

41 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Given some pretty nasty consequences of that huge amount of unemployed developers lingering around, I think this is going to take a bit. I expect a lot of nasty new legislation being pushed ahead by exactly these "publicly traded companies beholden to shareholders" (again, what I should understand for "beholden"?) to protect their turf from them.

I mean yeah, getting laid off does throw a wrench into the wheels of life, but if those people really want to try the gaming industry again, I don't think they're gonna expose themselves to the big players again.

42 minutes ago, Lisias said:

I think it would be unwise for TTWO to bring to themselves the burden of over watching NDA's for things they had sold, and AFAIK it's not worldwide enforceable to silently transfer NDAs to new parties - exactly to prevent you from being surprised by a NDA lawsuit from someone you never heard of.

This has multiple layers. Of course all of this is speculated, but I do see multiple advantages of NDAs being held by TTWO vs PD or even IG itself:

1. You don't need to escalate legality up the chain: TTWO has their legal team on retainer and they can directly seek legal routes by themselves. PD and IG most probably don't have their own legal departments, except for basic business stuff, since they're all under TTWO at the end of the day.
2. In that same way, it keeps the chain of command simplified.
3. It frees TTWO to do as they please with PD and IG without instantly losing the enforceability of those NDAs by virtue of PD or IG being dismantled or sold.

And that's just off the top of my head.

[Scarecrow71]

  

On 11/13/2024 at 3:38 PM, PDCWolf said:

That does nto mean, however, I'm gonna let whoever owns the IP off, after all they're the new owners of the scam and what I firmly believe to be an obligation to ensure the continued development of KSP2 or refund me should still be upheld.

Your anger and resentment would be misplaced, PDC.  The new owner of the IP, no matter who they are, is under zero obligation to you or anyone else who purchased KSP2 (and I am included in that group) to either continue developing the game OR produce mass refunds out of their own pockets for cancelling the game.  It's the same as if you buy a car and then expect the former owner to pay for the gas.  TT no longer owns the game, so they aren't responsible, and the new owner isn't liable for what happened before they owned the IP.  But if you want to be angry at someone for something they didn't do, go right ahead.

On 11/14/2024 at 4:15 AM, PDCWolf said:

There is a clear obligation to develop or cancel, and Steam does take action (at no warranted time, which is why people really get confused about this) against perpetual EA games that don't get updates, specially if refund pressure or flagging pressure gets higher.

Honest question, because I'm not all up-to-date with Steam's policies:  Although it would make sense for the new owner to formally shut down development and announce it as such on Steam, are they actually obligated to do so?  Does Steam have the right to force them to update a product that they weren't responsible for?  I personally believe that they should, because it's simply false marketing/advertising otherwise.  But, again, the new owner, whomever they are, wasn't there for the initial releases and such, and therefore isn't technically obligated to do anything with the products they weren't involved with at the time they were "developed".

On 11/14/2024 at 4:15 AM, PDCWolf said:

Good luck getting that view across the general KSP audience. In fact, as it always ends up being the argument at this point, why don't you go anywhere where the most hard-headed fans don't hang out at, like the subreddit, steam forums, twitter, and so on... and have a check at what the general attitude towards KSP2 is?

Not saying you can't be happy at anything... just that you shouldn't expect your mindset to be echoed by all the people who lost $50 to a glorified tech demo that got soft-cancelled.

Not all of us are as salty over the whole thing as you are, though.  While I agree that there is a section of the community that will be all like "Never again; fool me once and all", I'm pretty sure there will be a decent-enough group of people who will at least give the new owner the chance to do the right thing.  As I said above, you can't hold the new owner responsible for what the previous owner did.  That's just not right.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'll never buy an EA title again.  Not even if someone gifted me the Steam code (although I prefer Epic, but that's not the point of this discussion) would I redeem it for an EA title.  Never again; fool me once and all.  But I'm certainly not going to be liquided at the new developer/owner because of Take Two's horrendous job of handling the product; that's on Take Two.  If you don't want to give them a chance, that's your call.  But I don't think it's right.

20 hours ago, Lisias said:

And, yet most interesting, NDA contracts are not necessarily transferable - and on some countries, only with signed consent of all parties.

I believe - and someone will probably waltz in here with guns blazing to correct me because I seem to be the community's whipping post - that the NDA would still cover what happened under Take Two's umbrella and wouldn't need to be re-done unless the same employees were being brought along to the new owner AND the new owner wanted to keep them from talking about what is now happening.  The sale of the publisher and the transfer of the assets/IP doesn't mean the NDA is void; the people who signed an NDA must still be hush-hush about whatever the NDA covers.

14 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

This is not even going into how most of that "you're buying the game as is" text isn't even binding, it'd be illegal for it to be binding, and even if it's in an EULA there's still multiple angles to make a case about this and very probably succeed, not just in the EU but many countries, USA included.

If this were true we would have seen at least 1 class action suit in the US alone over this.  I know that the cost of going through legal channels can be very prohibitive for the average rocketeer, but that doesn't mean there aren't any who are wealthy.  Not to mention the crowd-funding option, which, if the community was really that angry and upset at TT, would probably be a viable option to generate the funds.  There was a lot of talk in the beginning about doing this, but it seems to have fizzled out.  Why?

14 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Hopefully we get a ton of them going back to what gaming studios actually were, guerilla places working off passion, and not publicly traded companies beholden to shareholders.

Agreed.  HarvesteR got way lucky that his employer (at the time) allowed him to create KSP to begin with, and he sold them on the idea because he was so passionate about it.  Heck, we wouldn't all be here if he wouldn't have been.  But, unfortunately, that seems to be going the way of the dodo.  Game development is no longer a guy sitting in his basement or his garage with an idea, some spare time, and a case of Mountain Dew.  Game development nowadays requires careful planning, project scoping, getting the right team together, and a whole lot of money.  Marketing alone will kill most small businesses.  And the people/companies that have the capital to make that happen care about one thing:  how do they get their investment back.  If they spend x, they want to make sure they make back x + y...and probably throw in a whole lot additional z.  And if that doesn't happen...well, we all know what happened here.

[PDCWolf]

37 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

  Your anger and resentment would be misplaced, PDC.  The new owner of the IP, no matter who they are, is under zero obligation to you or anyone else who purchased KSP2 (and I am included in that group) to either continue developing the game OR produce mass refunds out of their own pockets for cancelling the game.  It's the same as if you buy a car and then expect the former owner to pay for the gas.  TT no longer owns the game, so they aren't responsible, and the new owner isn't liable for what happened before they owned the IP.  But if you want to be angry at someone for something they didn't do, go right ahead.

There's no anger and resentment, for starters, I've always been nothing but calm when writing here and when talking about this topic. Remember that someone on the Discord photoshopped my comments to try and pin racism to me, and even when Dakota himself told me about it, I was calm.

Now, the guidelines have been cited numerous times: if you post an EA game you have three options: You finish the game to 1.0 (which really doesn't require anything but changing the version number, they could simply just do that), you retire your game from Early Access, or cancel the game initiating mass refunds and a perpetual delisting from Steam. As per Steam's own guidelines, they're indeed obligated to take one of those roads.

This is not asking the original owner to pay for gas for some hypothetical car, this is much more complex. I licensed access to an early access title on a platform where EA titles can go three ways (read above), not only did the title not go any of those three ways, but the ownership of said title has now been passed to someone else. Who the money comes from for my refund is something that has to be talked between Steam and the two owning parties, not me, the obligations to me haven't changed and neither have the guidelines. To exemplify this, imagine someone bought the game right a day before the sale was finalized, and then well within 14 days and 2 hours of playtime asks for a refund, a totally legal refund then... who pays? You've got your answer.

On the other hand the conversation of who has to push the title onto one of those three roads is also between Steam, TTwo and whoever bought the thing now. Once again, that is not my problem, that's a problem the new owner has inherited and hopefully knew before purchasing the title.

37 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Honest question, because I'm not all up-to-date with Steam's policies:  Although it would make sense for the new owner to formally shut down development and announce it as such on Steam, are they actually obligated to do so?  Does Steam have the right to force them to update a product that they weren't responsible for?  I personally believe that they should, because it's simply false marketing/advertising otherwise.  But, again, the new owner, whomever they are, wasn't there for the initial releases and such, and therefore isn't technically obligated to do anything with the products they weren't involved with at the time they were "developed".

Steam tries to be as hands off as possible, that's why the store is filled with adult games with questionable themes, or why they reinstated HATRED for example. In this regard is the same. We're all calm, we haven't gone to Steam with mass flagging or refund requests, and so they don't perceive there to be a problem with the title. They also technically have no deadline for how long between updates for an EA title to be considered abandoned, so really Steam won't perceive a problem until someone raises it, and the KSP community lacking a backbone and passively waiting for things to magically fix themselves has done nothing but help TTWO keep the money they scammed off them. Again, I'm very thankful I managed to pay next to nothing for it, otherwise I would indeed be angry and resentful as you think I am.

37 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Not all of us are as salty over the whole thing as you are, though.  While I agree that there is a section of the community that will be all like "Never again; fool me once and all", I'm pretty sure there will be a decent-enough group of people who will at least give the new owner the chance to do the right thing.  As I said above, you can't hold the new owner responsible for what the previous owner did.  That's just not right.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'll never buy an EA title again.  Not even if someone gifted me the Steam code (although I prefer Epic, but that's not the point of this discussion) would I redeem it for an EA title.  Never again; fool me once and all.  But I'm certainly not going to be liquided at the new developer/owner because of Take Two's horrendous job of handling the product; that's on Take Two.  If you don't want to give them a chance, that's your call.  But I don't think it's right.

There's a big difference here: I may be wrong, but asking for what I rightfully believe to be mine doesn't make me salty. Salty is not the opposite of passive. As for the rest... I've seen you on the subreddit, you know what the larger community thinks of KSP2. It's been 6 months since the last update, almost a year since the only feature update, and you'll still get downvoted into oblivion for mentioning the thing.

When you buy a business, you acquire its assets, its capital, its debts, and its legal obligations. That's what the new owner acquired.

37 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

  If this were true we would have seen at least 1 class action suit in the US alone over this.  I know that the cost of going through legal channels can be very prohibitive for the average rocketeer, but that doesn't mean there aren't any who are wealthy.  Not to mention the crowd-funding option, which, if the community was really that angry and upset at TT, would probably be a viable option to generate the funds.  There was a lot of talk in the beginning about doing this, but it seems to have fizzled out.  Why?

There's about 20 to 40 people posting recurrently on these topics. 15 of us are international to the US and can easily get refunds with our local laws backing us. From the remainder, most are okay with KSP2 being what it is, others don't think $50 was a big loss, and others don't think the effort of going through years of legal battle for a $50 refund as worth it.

Edited November 15 by PDCWolf

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Agreed.  HarvesteR got way lucky that his employer (at the time) allowed him to create KSP to begin with, and he sold them on the idea because he was so passionate about it. 

The luck was mutual. HarverteR was willing to quit and pursue the project somewhere else.

Without Squad, it's uncertain if he could manage to gather traction for the project - a Marketing company is good on... Marketing, and without good marketing professionals, this project probably would not had the visibility it needed.

Without HarvesteR, Squad would not had the chance to score a big hit, that so could be used to leverage the company. They may had pulled themselves out of the game business, but make no mistake: Squad, the Marketing Company, is bigger that they would be without KSP.

[Skorj]

On 11/14/2024 at 5:38 PM, Superfluous J said:

Same diff to me. I've never had to "license" a digital game twice, unlike several "real" games I "bought" forever and then lost or scratched the CD.

I've gone back to some games I had from 20 years ago and found that while the media worked fine, the CD key had faded as it was printed with a different sort of ink than the manual.  Rather disappointing.  GOG is the closest thing to forever we have, and that's the KSP install I've used for quite some time now. 

[Fizzlebop Smith]

I'm still pretty miffed about the way all of it was handled.

The steam work verbiage, best practices and developer FAQ quite clearly make it clear that early access was (is being) abused.

It should have been removed or rubber stamped. Not sit in Limbo while trying to source out prospective buyers. If they were contracting a other person to finish... different story.

It's pretty much concensus the technical debt is too great to surpass, righ? So it has to be someone that can either completely sink the cost or another angle.

Mobile Pod Racing?

Per Mission DLC (to fund development) 

Merch

Ad Banners on Forum

I have lost all faith any benevolent entity will do *right by the kerbals*

 

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

I'm still pretty miffed about the way all of it was handled.

[...]

It's pretty much concensus the technical debt is too great to surpass, righ? So it has to be someone that can either completely sink the cost or another angle.

[...]

I have lost all faith any benevolent entity will do *right by the kerbals*

1. Yes. Welcome to America. It's surprising what you can get away with when you're a big corporation and you can afford good lawyers, especially when consumer protection laws are extremely weak. And if you think all this is outrageous, wait until you get your first hospital bill.

2. It's "the other angle." T2 is the one taking the loss here. They have written off PD and sold it, likely at a solid loss. Whoever buys the KSP rights doesn't have to recover the KSP2 losses, those are largely absorbed by T2.

3. Thread carefully here because it's easy to wander into "beancounters only want to destroy the game the Noble Programmers try to create out of Love For Humanity" territory and reality is more complex than that. For sustainable prolonged development, the game needs to be a commercial success. Straying away from the True Kerbal Spirit (whatver that is) is detrimental  for long term support from its fan base. But so is "We WaNt It As NeRdY AnD CoMpLeX As PoSsIbLe" because without sufficient sales development will stop.

[Scarecrow71]

23 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

There's no anger and resentment, for starters, I've always been nothing but calm when writing here and when talking about this topic. Remember that someone on the Discord photoshopped my comments to try and pin racism to me, and even when Dakota himself told me about it, I was calm.

You can be angry and still remain calm.  And if you wish to hold the new owner responsible for something TT did?  That's anger.  Or, at least, some form of ill will towards someone for something they simply did not do.

23 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Now, the guidelines have been cited numerous times: if you post an EA game you have three options: You finish the game to 1.0 (which really doesn't require anything but changing the version number, they could simply just do that), you retire your game from Early Access, or cancel the game initiating mass refunds and a perpetual delisting from Steam. As per Steam's own guidelines, they're indeed obligated to take one of those roads.

And as has been pointed out numerous times, Steam isn't holding developers responsible or accountable for updating their EA tags when games are clearly no longer in development.  If they did, corporations would probably never release games in EA due to the requirement of mass refunds.  Slope, meet slip.

23 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

This is not asking the original owner to pay for gas for some hypothetical car, this is much more complex. I licensed access to an early access title on a platform where EA titles can go three ways (read above), not only did the title not go any of those three ways, but the ownership of said title has now been passed to someone else. Who the money comes from for my refund is something that has to be talked between Steam and the two owning parties, not me, the obligations to me haven't changed and neither have the guidelines. To exemplify this, imagine someone bought the game right a day before the sale was finalized, and then well within 14 days and 2 hours of playtime asks for a refund, a totally legal refund then... who pays? You've got your answer.

To answer that last part:  Take Two.  The money went to them when you purchased it, even if the purchase was a single day prior to them finalizing the sale of the IP.  Why?  Because they legally held the IP at the time you purchased it.  So TT would be responsible for paying the refund.  Which then brings me back to what I said about that hypothetical car and the previous owner.  The previous owner is only liable for the things that happened on their watch, not after ownership was transferred.  I can't say enough that you are trying to hold the new owner - who, to this point, is unknown - responsible for what TT did.  Take the car situation, for example.  If it runs out of gas, that's on you, not the previous owner.  You can't be mad at the previous owner for something that isn't their fault, right?  Same situation here.  You can't be mad at the new owner of the IP for something that TT did.  A bit in reverse, here, but you should take my meaning.

23 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Steam tries to be as hands off as possible, that's why the store is filled with adult games with questionable themes, or why they reinstated HATRED for example. In this regard is the same. We're all calm, we haven't gone to Steam with mass flagging or refund requests, and so they don't perceive there to be a problem with the title. They also technically have no deadline for how long between updates for an EA title to be considered abandoned, so really Steam won't perceive a problem until someone raises it, and the KSP community lacking a backbone and passively waiting for things to magically fix themselves has done nothing but help TTWO keep the money they scammed off them. Again, I'm very thankful I managed to pay next to nothing for it, otherwise I would indeed be angry and resentful as you think I am.

Well, for starters, that's all on Steam.  If they aren't going to be hands-on with their own policies and store, then what's the point?  Oh, right - to make money.  Which Steam and TT did through this whole mess.  And the almighty buck is what drives the world.  Or, at least this country, anyhow.

As far as the KSP community lacking a backbone...I think you are highly wrong.  We, including yourself, have been very vocal and strong in our words about what happened and what we think should be the outcome of this.  The issue is that we as a community don't have the funds to pursue anything beyond review-bombing the game and posting our negativity on forums and Reddit.  Which we have done.  And if Steam isn't recognizing what is happening with the game on their own site through the reviews and refund requests, well, again, that's on Steam for not giving 2 squirts.

23 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

There's a big difference here: I may be wrong, but asking for what I rightfully believe to be mine doesn't make me salty. Salty is not the opposite of passive. As for the rest... I've seen you on the subreddit, you know what the larger community thinks of KSP2. It's been 6 months since the last update, almost a year since the only feature update, and you'll still get downvoted into oblivion for mentioning the thing.

Using Reddit as a measuring stick is not the right way to go.  You've said that before yourself.  Is it a portion of the community?  Yes.  But it's not the only portion, so you can't really use that as the end-all of the discussion.  There are people here and on Discord that aren't as irritated over this as you see in the negative posts on Reddit.  Some of which are mine, yes; I won't hold back and be all fru-fru with my words.  This game stunk to all holy heck, from the day it dropped until the final update.  I haven't even launched it since I think March, and I doubt I ever will again, especially not when I have the 1.12.5 and a whole boatload of mods that make the original far better than the sequel.  But the opinions of one portion of the community are not the same as the entirety of said group.

23 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

When you buy a business, you acquire its assets, its capital, its debts, and its legal obligations. That's what the new owner acquired.

When you buy a business, you acquire whatever the contract says you acquire.  And beyond knowing that they acquired the IP, we have no clue of what is in the contract.  So we don't know if they acquired capital, debt, legal problems, staff, equipment...nothing.  We know nothing of the actual details.

23 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

There's about 20 to 40 people posting recurrently on these topics. 15 of us are international to the US and can easily get refunds with our local laws backing us. From the remainder, most are okay with KSP2 being what it is, others don't think $50 was a big loss, and others don't think the effort of going through years of legal battle for a $50 refund as worth it.

Which is my point.  Trying to go the legal route here would be an exercise in futility.  You'd first have to herd the cats and get everyone on board and going in the right direction.  Then someone has to take the lead and collect legal fees from all interested parties.  Then a compelling argument has to be drafted and presented to a lawyer...who may or may not even want to take the case.  That's months of work just to try to get someone to say "Yeah, we'll investigate it".  So you get what you pointed out:  some are international and following their laws, while those of us in the US are pretty screwed and just have to take it on the chin.  Does it suck?  Yep.  Big old moose.  But there ain't a whole lot we can do about it now except wait it out and see what happens with the new owner.

I will state that I don't have much hope here.  KSP2 is dead as dead can be, and nothing the new owner does will ever rectify that.  I am also of the mind that the IP is either going to be sold off to an interested party (Rocketwerkz comes to mind, but there are others out there), even if only to gain access to the assets to be used in other games.  I think KSP has gone as far as it can, and we can all just hope that KSA is what we wanted KSP2 to be.  Again, not a whole lot of hope here.

[Gargamel]

I know the subjects are quite tangled, but let’s try to stay focused on the acquisition, and keep past events in other threads.   

And now my non mod opinions:

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I think KSP has gone as far as it can, and we can all just hope that KSA is what we wanted KSP2 to be.  Again, not a whole lot of hope here.

I still say that somebody convinced a VC group to make the purchase and RW took the KSP IP piece mail from that.   I’m still hoping KSA is KSP3, merely under a working title.     
 

Even if whatshisname managed to acquire PD himself, most likely with backing, it’s not a bad acquisition.    A small publishing studio that focuses on small Indy developers working on niche products could be a very doable scenario.    

[PDCWolf]

2 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

I know the subjects are quite tangled, but let’s try to stay focused on the acquisition, and keep past events in other threads.   

And now my non mod opinions:

I still say that somebody convinced a VC group to make the purchase and RW took the KSP IP piece mail from that.   I’m still hoping KSA is KSP3, merely under a working title.     
 

Even if whatshisname managed to acquire PD himself, most likely with backing, it’s not a bad acquisition.    A small publishing studio that focuses on small Indy developers working on niche products could be a very doable scenario.    

Can we move the discussion to another thread or point me to one where I can continue? I really don't see how discussing around the refunding of KSP2, the obligations of the new owner and possible routes the development or abandonment of KSP2 might take are not precisely what this thread is for, but I'm up for moving it to another if I can somehow be shown how this is not related to the literal acquisition of the studio and rights to the franchise... which is what opened the thread.

[Gargamel]

1 minute ago, PDCWolf said:

Can we move the discussion to another thread or point me to one where I can continue? I really don't see how discussing around the refunding of KSP2, the obligations of the new owner and possible routes the development or abandonment of KSP2 might take are not precisely what this thread is for, but I'm up for moving it to another if I can somehow be shown how this is not related to the literal acquisition of the studio and rights to the franchise... which is what opened the thread.

That’s a fair question, because as I said it’s a tangled topic.    To pick apart your question, I’d say the refunds and abandonment discussions are not related to the acquisition.   Those are past events or hypotheticals that have been rehashed ad naseum in many other threads.    
 

If you notice, we didn’t remove anything for being off topic.  It’s just a friendly reminder to keep on topic before we stray too far away.   

[PDCWolf]

1 minute ago, Gargamel said:

That’s a fair question, because as I said it’s a tangled topic.    To pick apart your question, I’d say the refunds and abandonment discussions are not related to the acquisition.   Those are past events or hypotheticals that have been rehashed ad naseum in many other threads.    
 

If you notice, we didn’t remove anything for being off topic.  It’s just a friendly reminder to keep on topic before we stray too far away.   

If the problem is hypotheticals... this whole thread is at fault. If this thread is supposed to be all "I hope this or that entity bought it" which is still a hypothetical, or "this makes me happy/sad", then I'd really be needing a thread to have the big boy discussions because for me it sounded pretty natural that the discussion of an abandoned product being acquired by a new owner is gonna be nothing but what's it exactly been: does it create opportunity to ask for a refund, does it mean it's abandoned for good, what would be the obligations of the new owner regarding the product, and so on.

So yeah, I'd much rather have those discussions moved to a place where they're deemed appropriate rather than skirting some imaginary line of off-topic that I really can't draw.

[AstroEvada]

What are the odds that the KSP IP was acquired by some private equity firm looking to make a cheap buck?

[Lisias]

13 minutes ago, AstroEvada said:

What are the odds that the KSP IP was acquired by some private equity firm looking to make a cheap buck?

Higher than we would like, but not a sure thing neither.

Tencent was, in theory, ruled out because the RocketWerks guys openly said they are not working with the KSP IP, and since Tencent is one of the RW funders, it would be expected that if Tencent had bought PD, they would be the ones to receive KSP rights to work with.

But there's also Embracer, and even Microsoft was mentioned on a point (they bought Minecraft, after all).

In a way or another, all the possible educated guesses based on the currently available data apparently are already on the table, I think we need some more (verifiable) news from this point.

Being absolutely frank about, anything, absolutely anything can happen at this point. Including nothing.

[Tony Tony Chopper]

14 minutes ago, AstroEvada said:

What are the odds that the KSP IP was acquired by some private equity firm looking to make a cheap buck?

Well, wouldn't Paradox Interactive had to be successful first then?

[Scarecrow71]

Wild theory time.  Please remember that this is a wild theory that has no basis in our current reality whatsoever.

What if - and just go with me here - what if...HarvesteR bought PD?  Gargamel put forth above the idea that a venture capital firm could have purchased the publisher.  So what if Felipe was able to get investors and purchase the rights back?  I mean, he has said that once he is done with Kit Hack he had an idea for a kerbal-esque game, right?

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I mean, he has said that once he is done with Kit Hack he had an idea for a kerbal-esque game, right?

I think he said he was working  on something Kerbal-esque. We now know this is KSA.

[Scarecrow71]

9 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

I think he said he was working  on something Kerbal-esque. We now know this is KSA.

Oh, yeah, he is.  I guess that means that I just basically reworded the speculation about Rocketwerkz.

Edited November 17 by Scarecrow71

[Deddly]

6 hours ago, Lisias said:

RocketWerks guys openly said they are not working with the KSP IP,

They did? When?