Kerbal Space Program 2 - END OF THE LINE? Future Uncertain Among Layoffs
2024 ж. 1 Мам.
72 806 Рет қаралды
Confusion surrounds the future of KSP2 as studio Intercept Games appears to be closing down. Publishers Take-Two have issued a round of layoffs which appear to be affecting this studio, yet few details have been confirmed.
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Cant wait for the T2 ceo to get a 30mil bonus at the end of the year after GTA6 released
Well, they did have to lay people off to keep it that high 🤔
"Thank GOD this CEO was here to Just Stand Around And Play Golf In His Office while these devs released this game - just like they would have done if the CEO didn't exist at all"
This is why experienced people won't be going back to AAA companies, instead finding their own Indie studios. At the same time, AAA companies will struggle to find experienced devs, further contributing to poor quality of their games (this is already the case). Completely predictable.
If they will release gta6 and it will be good then it will be deserved bonus
@@harryshuman9637 We said 5, 10 years ago that Indie would take over. Industry(spoken for by AAA) said it would never happen. People now still don't see it happening, because its not all at once, with a big press conference. No, it's happening one piece at a time, and very easy to understand unless you sit in the denial crowd, addicted to AAA schlock. But it's All Going According To Plan, and the death of AAA is glorious and sweet. Couldn't be more deserving. The greed, the false advertising, the wordsmithing, the talking down to customer.... all of it will burn to the ground and disappear and there will just be 1 Million Small Devs actually trying to make GREAT GAMES instead of just a lot of money, once again. The Gamer Is Finally Getting THEIR Industry Back. As It Should Be. Nothing Else To See Here.
KSP 1 was an indi game with a lot of love put into the game. KSP 2 was just another "investement" on a corporate spead sheet somewhere. and it shows...
Because Squad sold it to take 2 lol Everyone knew this would happen
I was too giddy and bought it, knowing very well, that it would probably blow up or for some other reason not be a worthy successor. TBH I'd already be happy if it was like modded KSP1 with modern graphics/framerate minus quirks.
I always thought there shouldn't be a "2" of games like this. This type of game is more like a "platform" that can be supported one way or another with updates and content, if not just community-modifications and all that. - Anything that KSP2 supposedly brought to the table could probably have been implemented in the first game. But I don't know about any technical limitations, cause I didn't follow these games that closely. - I just know that it's indeed bs to make another standalone one and I never wanted this.
@@TheYear-dm9op You were the target audience. People have a real issue with "sequels" in that they think they'll get more of that same feeling they got from the original, but especially for videogames it often doesn't pan out that way. - Well, at least for this TYPE of game. It tends to be a bit different for story-driven games and such...
It's like the saying goes in the corporate world: "If at first you succeed, fail and fail again."
The overlords at head office must be saying, "It's a niche product."
I wouldn't be surprised
CEO " you can have $1 right now or $100 if you wait until next quarter." Shareholders " I'll take the dollar! 🤑"
Which to be honest, it is. What annoys me the most is this mentality of "we are not making X profit so treat it like we are losing money and shut it down".
@@hherpdderp That's a little unfair. It's more like "You can have $1 now, or give me $10 and hopefully I'll give you $100 in the future, but I might actually need another $10, and you may never get your $100"
@@hherpdderp that sounds like a good investment if you know how shareholders work
Open source the game. The community will fix it over time.
Well that would be a good idea for fans if it is indeed the beginning of the end, they wouldn't make money so I just don't see that ever happening.
Tbh there are some real talented people here so idk.
@@malumphasma They wont make money anyway. The game is in a bad shape and no one buys it, the costs are written of as loss.
It would definitely be the first option they would do if they would care about player satisfaction rather than infinite exponential growth at any cost
companies just don't give their property away like that. we would need a dev to be willing to burn every bridge to leak it.
The player numbers are bad because nothing is happening. There is no communication, no updates, that means no players. Everything was to be expected from the beginning about what happened with KSP2.
the player numbers are bad because the game is bad
Hard to justify KSP2 when KSP (modded) does basically everything better.
@@teilzeitberndHard to justify KSP2 when KSP (vanilla) does basically everything better
@@NewsofPE Original. 🙄
They promised us the stars, and delivered a barely functional pile of hot garbage.
So early access now means: Give us money and maybe we'll try and make a game. It might be good or it might not even happen. Who knows and who cares as long as you give us money.
Sort of like car or health insurance today: give us a huge monthly check and if you do get in accident, maybe we might cover you - but maybe we won't.
to play devil's advocate, it's always been this way. I bet there are far more abandoned early access games than successful ones. It's unfortunately the risk people take buying into them. That said, a company as big as T2 not only has no excuse pulling this especially when their big money maker is fairly close, but also, they shouldn't have even needed to use early access to begin with.
@@IkarosTypeAlpha Well said and I agree completely.
Yep, but the CEO will get a $6.022x10^23 bonus
@@daviddickey9832 Only in a bad quarter.
Hate to say I’m not really shocked. With the way this game flopped and the slow development process bringing it to a state that could even match KSP1, it was very likely Take2 was gonna can it as a failed release.
I lost interest in it after T2 screwed over the original studio Star Theory.
i tried to play kerbal one, i got it free on epic and if i liked it i would 100% buy it on steam and likely 2 as well after it had been updated and performance improved (fuck epic) but i couldnt play ksp1 as the anti cheat/ account management thing was broken and would not let me in to actually try it
@@farmerpandasyoutube4800 that’s why you never play games on Epic. For digital ownership steam is king by miles
@@farmerpandasyoutube4800 I recall the time when ksp was DRM free
@@nilsdock *old man voice* back in my day, it was possible to actually play the fuckin game
Wow, if Matt is pissed, things are really really bad.
he and the other KSP content creator have done free advertismenet for quite a while and Take two interactive dont give a shit. several of them pretty much need to change job and find joy in other games and make videos of them.
My thought exactly lol
@@Infernal_Elf Yeah, EJ_SA already more or less moved on other games too.
I’ve learned to not buy games until they’re in good shape. Case in point.
Exactly. Never buy anything based on potential.
never trust early access of any kind.....
Same. Why buy a game riddled with bugs? It's a shitshow.
I'm pretty guilty of careless early access purchases, but KSP2's high price always smelt off to me, looks like i dodged that bullet.
@@judgedrekk2981 unless if it's from a trusted company, some early access games such as teardown and beamng drive are trustable
I wish I'd been wrong on this one. I would have liked a proper sequel to my beloved Kerbal.
"Are you still alive?" *cricket noises * Well... that tells us all we need to know, right?
you can talk to crickets?
So releasing an alpha as an early acces game also doesn’t help sales? I keep learning everyday 👍
shame the company CEO's don't
It absolutely does, it did with KSP1. It's just that there was no point buying KSP2 until it surpassed KSP1. In effect they canablised their own sales.
@@HALLish-jl5mo well i think a LOT more people would've still bought it, even with beeing surpassed by it's predecessor, if it wasn't for that outrageous price-tag.
@@HALLish-jl5mo KSP was free in it's very early stage.
@@ScepticGinger89 KSP1 was also barely a game back when it was free. KSP2 released with gameplay probably equivalent to early 2013 KSP1, with better graphics and worse performance. KSP1 was fairly cheap back then, but it cost money.
So a couple of enthusiasts form an Indy company and launch a successful product. The professionals take over and run it into the ground, but they do so very professionally. Am I the only one who sees a pattern here?
I think they were trying to build the whole game at once as a single product. The original KSP Devs produced a minimum viable product at each stage of the release, so even if they stopped development there would be a complete (If not good) product. The KSP2 Devs keep saying that they already have work done on the Colony stages, which is useless to the current state of the game and would be draining work from the core development since it will need to be constantly updated as they change they core features which we do see.
"Professionals".
Sad that professional Unity devs get less done in 5 years then a small team of web devs from Mexico that are doing marketing
I'm really bitter about this one. I put well over 2,000 hours into ksp 1, definitely top 3 favourite games. I refunded ksp 2 within 20 minutes, it didn't have the love. It was broken and buggy sure, but it didn't have the love. Knew it was a corporate cash grab but maybe.. maaaaybe they'd make a go of it.. Ever since part of me has been kind of hoping it would fall over, just as a middle finger to those bastards for trying to ruin one of my favourite things.. but god I'll never be hyped for anything like I was after that first trailer.. Bring back squad!!
Exactly same here. 3200 hours in Kerbal and lots of that with RSS and Kerbalism. I refunded Kerbal 2 in an hour. It felt like a poor 3rd party knock off. Remember Scott manly told them to not fuck it up. They have.
Anatomie of a disaster: 1. A well established, mid-sized game studio with on of the largest publishers on this planet had the audacity to release an early access title 2. They intentially blown up the hype about the game beginning years before the early access release 3. The price was almost three times higher then the original game 4. They released a bug ridden mess, even for early access standards 5. Absolutely no communication with their fanbase Well, who could've thought that this is going to tank hard? I bought it, "played" it for ~2 hours and refunded it. This is just a disgrace and pure disrespect for every KSP fan out there. Well, Take Two was involved, but somehow that fact escaped my better judgement, as I love KSP1 and simply ignored the massive red flags. Now here we are. And for the lay offs, well corpos doing what corpos are always doing, burning the dev and granting boni to the bosses. But if you worked on KSP2 as a dev and didn't hear the bell 6 months ago, not even god can help your lack of foresight ...
Intercept Games was not a well established studio. It was a third of the corpse of Uber Entertainment stapled onto some new hires and built specifically to make KSP2. The studio was brand new and had no prior releases, and was even invented three years after development started. The development of the game had more history than the studio did.
You forgot at the very start the hostile takeover when part of the original dev team was poached by T2 from the KSP studio founders. It was all set up as a disaster from the beginning when they did a hostile takeover of a dev studio.
Price almost 3 times higher? You know that KSP 1 cost 40€ right? And that is Base Game
@@daskampffredchen9242 I got it for 20. I compared the initial prices of both games. But I wasn't aware, that they increased the price of the old one.
@@NineSun001 Ok thats fair
In space, no one can hear you scream.
I'm on Earth, everyone can hear me cry now
That would explain why FDev never respond to player complaints
Underrated comment
In Earth atmo, they can hear my unmanly wailing.
I'm currently denying the laws of physics to make sure everybody here's my crying
If they don't outright cancel the game, this will be the SECOND time that this game has been reassigned to another studio. Its downright shameful the development cycle this game has been through, and worse the previous lead devs NOT listening and outright lying to the community that anticipated it. I doubt we will ever see the game completely fleshed out, we'll probably get what we have now and no more.
Definitely what happens when it's ran by shareholders.
This have nothing to do with devs ,this is pure corpo bullshit planing to ruin people lifes ,this 3 echelon ahead cut from reality of real working people like devs . Let's wait an official response from Nate or Dakota before trashing the dev team .
if they do outright cancel the game it's refund time
@@malumphasma It definitely looks like Take 2 is buying into the Jack Welch manual for corporate governance. What kind of weird executive executive do you have to live in to look at GM and go "yea that was a success we should keep doing that"
@@malumphasmaShareholders share some blame, sure, but the devs themselves are also shit. Have you forgotten all their lies already? Not to mention the glacial "development" pace.
I still maintain that the biggest reason KSP2 was met with such negative reviews and has struggled to recover ever since is due largely to the exorbitant price they put on it from day one. If it had been priced at a level that matched its very early-development state, then players who bought it at launch would have been far more likely to accept the many issues it had.
And that a established studio with a giant publisher behind it had the audacity to release it as a early access title. KSP2 was nothing more then a shameless money grab, now we can be sure of that.
If a single dev can produce a game like Manor Lords, then there really isn't an excuse for the half-baked game that Take-Two has pushed out.
The pricing was certainly an issue but the ongoing technical development of the game was a complete mess. What other game in the last couple of years had the capacity to destroy the Windows system registry by injecting thousands of unwanted registry keys and basically turning the game into a malicious virus. Someone was definitely asleep at the wheel at Intercept.
@@therealjamespickering Works of love > works of capital.
Take two has over 11.5k employees, I don't know what they are doing with all of them but NOT ONE can bother giving a good answer. Also a good cost reduction strategy is not doubling your executive pay in 2023, seriously no single person can actually make use of that much pay.
Hey the CEOs are the job creators! They deserve 300 times the salary of the regular employee. Billionaires are worth every penny!
The dev team of ksp2 was kind of small
@@keylaneproductions1977 intercept had 76 employees I think, I don't know the dev team size but I'd assume it's more than 12.
The vast majority of those employees will either know nothing about this or be unable to speak on the company’s behalf on this issue
Oh but you don't understand. Mr. CEO just *_needs_* to buy his 12th yacht!
The gaming industry is facing turbulent times. The days of "We've always done it this way!" seem to be numbered.
the situation is trash. A triple A Publisher abuses the early access system to make off with backers money and ruins a very good IP. Steam should D-list them so they can't make any more money off of this, that is the only positive outcome that is available at this point. Might send a message for people to stop abusing early access. I personally might have felt different if this was just a group of Independent guys and they just ran out of money, but no, Take 2 has the resources, but they rather cut their losses, and lose what little trust they had with another group of gamers, so it is what it is
They have done this before.
"Take-Two announced a cost reduction program to identify efficiencies across its business and to enhance the Company's profile... investing for growth... rationalizing its pipeline... eliminating several projects... streamlining its organizational structure... eliminate headcount" The corpo speak is strong here. That they don't view the employees of these studios as people is peak capatalism. The executives have gotta get their bonuses though.
I suspect the next folks to be laid off will be the PR drones who write that shit because ChatGPT can easily produce that kind of drivel.
aka "we need increasing profits for our shareholders sooo byebye jobs! you're not making us enough money sowwy >w
When deficiencies are called efficiencies because corporatespeak best practices forbids any words with a negative connotation. It's not a divorce, I'm restructuring my marriage.
@@rhoskii3308 and that is the thing. It's not "we need to cut costs to make money, which we aren't doing right now" it is "we need to cut costs to make *even more money than we are already making*"
@@fleetadmiralj even worse its "We need to burn our ability to make EVEN MORE money in the medium to long term in order to extract the maximum amount of profit possible in the next 3 months" This has Jack Welch style Lean Strategy written all over it, lighting the house on fire to stay warm for the night.
Even in alpha, KSP1 felt and played like a game that was a passion project for its developers. The sense I've had from the KSP2 product and team, is that for them, it's just another job.
I guess I need to review the early access license agreements. I feel that I paid full price for a game in good faith that it would eventually be what I thought I was paying for... mainly, KSP with colonies and interstellar exploration. The multiplayer was a nice bonus. If it gets cut off and "Released" without at least 2 of the 3 major new features, I think I will be investigating what legal recourse I have. I would like my money back. I already have a game that is essentially the same as KSP2 in it's current state... it's called KSP1
That's definitely grounds for a lawsuit regardless of any excuses a TOS makes, TOSes rarely hold up under legal scrutiny
this sounds like a class action law suit
@@nilsdockcan the results of class action not be we all get $3 back but force them to open source it?
@@davescott7680 No it's impossible because it would force them to give a lot of licenced codes and assets. Legally it seem almost impossible win anything given the product exist. Unfortunally I was pretty sure from the start it would end like, given the time they needed to solved the couples of really breaking game at launch... I mean, sure I understand a save system can be difficult to debug, but taking weeks to solve a message spam... That's a joke.
@@davescott7680 that would be the ideal scenario
I'm extending an extra special, heartfelt "eat gravel" to all the apologists who said this wasn't happening.
I could understand if there is only a handful of passionate people that actually know what they're doing so management decided to let everyone else go. ... I can dream. Rip KSP2, may you get Nomansskied one day.
The studio was 76 people large... Some of the employees were remote, so it's most likely it's a complete closure.
Like dang it needed a few months to do a nomansky
The acquisition of the KSP IP by Take Two Interactive is akin to The Death Star exploding Alderaan for us space gamers.
Never put money down on a game that "might" be good one day. Wait until its actually good.
Fans of KSP aren't gonna pass up a sequal. If it went into early access, it was probably about to be cut. Maybe the best thing anyone could have done is wishlisted the game on mass but not bought it in EA.
Nah, if it's dirt cheap like the original was in early access, then it can be worth the gamble. The problem is when they try and sell you "early access" at near full price.
I'm glad I didn't buy KSP2.. I had a bad feeling about it from the start. If some other developer/publisher takes over, it might be resurrected?
You do not want this code. It is hot garbage. For lessons how to code games properly, see the original devs.
@@TheBelrick KSP1 was also a mess of recurring bugs (the Kraken, landing gear on terrain, wobbly rockets, etc.) due to poor design. KSP2 was an opportunity to fix it by starting from scratch, but the new developers bungled it and made the same mistakes.
@benjwgarner they reused code. It was a sham. We should class action just to teach them a lesson.
@@benjwgarner LOL. millions of people happily played KSP1 for thousands of hours in the state you claimed it to be in. Given that no one played KSP2 for any length of time says you just lied. KSP1 solved immense coding challenges. KSP2 dev team clearly learned nothing from them.
@@benjwgarner A system like KSP is very complicated to plan and execute. No doubt, Squad had to consolidate more than they built. KSP2 was developed using Extreme Go-horse methodology.
Nate Simpson has been doing Kerbal Fyre Festival Program for more than 5 years now... It had to end at some point. No amount of tenderloin dinning of KSP content creators at ESA's headquarters can forever delay the inevitable reality that lies and/or overhyping eventually catches up with the lack of hability to manage a game's development.
RIP KSP2 and Fuck greedy Take 2 Interactive overlords. Never ever preorder or buy day 1
I usually do not, but i wanted to support and was hopeful so i made an exception. I blame noone then myself.
@@HomerNarr sad to hear. Companies with Billion dollar budgets dont need Support before they deliver proper product. but they tried to make private division look like an indie company.
@Infernal_Elf Well as said in the video no one knows the future of the game yet so no need to be childish about this
@HomerNarr same here. I thought maybe just this one... But @Infernal_Elf you are correct, I definitely fell hook line and sinker
Don't tell me how to spend my money.
I saw that coming when they launched a skeleton of a game for a ludicrous price tag after news of a troubled development (they switched dev team iirc?).
They stole the employees and game from the original studio using barely legal backstabing.
Welp, that sucks. First we got a buggy alpha called "Early Access" and now this.. Back to KSP 1.
70 is a lot of employees, judging by the state of the game, I can’t imagine more than 10 actually ever working on KSP2.
Keep putting out that space content Obsidian Ant! We love it!
Wonder what the odds are on pushing out 1 final update and slapping a 1.0 on it before the clock runs out.
🤣
There's no one there to make it happen, very low.
They might release some broken parts of what was promised slap 1.0 on it call it full game and abandon it. so people cant force em to do refunds.
That's quite literally what I think is happening right now. Do a quick patchwork, squeeze out as much promised content as they can in whatever state they have it ready in so people can't file a class action lawsuit on them for false advertisement and abandon the game. EA did the exact same thing with BF 2042. They did just barely enough work to make the game playable and added the barest minimum of content to still be able to call it a new season and the second they fulfilled their promise, breaking of which would open them to an unwinnable class action lawsuit, they dropped the game.
@@goofy851 yep
It doesnt matter if they officially cancel thr game or not because even with 70 people they were still YEARS from finishing this game. Now, With a reduced dev team half the size (at best) coupled with the cataclysmic history and awful reputation this game has, it will never last long enough to be completed. KSP2 officially died today. It was half-assed from its conception and botched at every stage since. Best thing Take 2 can do is sell the rights to another company that might see the value in it
I knew it was bad news when Take Two bought Squad's game division or however that deal worked. I knew Take Two would ruin everything given enough time. Sometimes, it sucks to be right.
When you give them that second chance and you still get the legs swiped out from under you, that sucks pretty hard too. Corporate structure is just too large to produce anything good. And this actually goes beyond the gaming industry but I digress
The game was over when we saw those flashy trailers that were meant to sell the team! Not the game
I do love that they didn't even get to the one big feature they kept advertising. Colonies.
I hope they leave the game in a mode where modding can continue to update the game to a certain degree.
Thats really sad I never got into KSP, but I appreciated what it was doing
What does that even mean? A video game doesnt need your support. These guys were apart of the GTA company. It was always going to be a scam.
You still can get into KSP, just get the original. It's pretty fleshed out in the original intent of its creator.
@@durbeshpatel3047 I appreciated the art Not everything has to be a political statement Relax
@@Citizen-Nurseman Its not even art its an empty shell designed to scam people, What part of that do you support? Im sorry but you either support this scam or you are dumb, theres nothing even there
@@durbeshpatel3047 How old are you? None of what you said translates to the real world.
Last time i ordered early access. It is stupid anyway.
It’s okay to buy early access as long as it has the price tag of an early access. If you buy an “early access” for full price they are just scamming you in your own face. The risk of severe bugs and ultimately a cancellation, is what the discount is for. But there was no discount 😂
Not at all, from legit smaller developers finding their feet it is great for both the dev and the community. KSP1 Factorio Rimworld Prison Architect All EA, all done by small independents and all of them amongst my top five all time played games If it's a developer owned by a great big publisher on the other hand, alarm bells just ring.
@@L8ugh1ngm8n1 Techtonica abandons X1 version development leaving the game unplayable on that platform..... never trust early access even if well intentioned! never pay for unfinished product even if the seller is selling through a friggin cardboard box and can't afford to go through more trustworthy channels....
@La8ugh1ngm8n1 it is definitely a balancing and guessing act in certain circumstances, however I agree wholeheartedly that when there is a big publisher involved that should be a very large red flag. I have to admit, I had that feeling but I took a shot thinking maybe they would leave this one small studio to do what they should have been able to do with time and resources.... Oh well, they were the first I ever gave that chance to and they will definitely be the last.
Very low player numbers. Well yes, it’s not a finished game. Who would have thought.
Its finished. as in dead
"It's not finished." That's not an argument. because there exist hundreds of unfinished early access games with thousands of players every day, reaching in high tens of thousands upon every update. KSP2 is pure shite, but some people refuse to admit it, cling to it, pretending KSP1 never existed.
@@tomasz9429 what are you on about.
Its a beta that was sold as finished. Its still in Beta months later.
They shouldn't have released it if it wasn't finished. The first one was such a success that there's no excuse for this garbage.
i knew the moment i heard TakeTwo was in charge, this project was on thin ice. putting the game in the hands of such a careless publisher is just guaranteed to kill it unless its GTA levels of successful
Long live KSP 1. The community is taking it with mods further than KSP 2 would ever be.
Would still be nice to get more than 60 fps with a 3090 xD . (and/or better graphics)
@@TheYear-dm9op Search for "ksp in 2023" by PingoPete
Dead Kerbal Walking!
Hahaha, i got so much hate from this community when i called KSP2 a failed project when it was first released. Sucked in, i was right you were wrong. The skill and passion required to make this game was not found within the dev team.
@@TheBelrick Nope … I didn’t buy it. It was very clear that this was going to take a very long time or wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t want to spend $80 for the sandbox. Such a shame for the legacy to be this.
@@MyBlueZed Not from my perspective. There is only one KSP game and that is made by squad. Just like there is only 6 Star Wars films. Always remember, from the four years from initial announcement , the new devs produced a non functional tech demo. Gross incompetence
@@TheBelrick I concur. All that wasted effort on glitzy ‘coming soon’ promos on KZhead.
Well at least Intercept Games got 2 months notice of the closure from Take 2 even though it sounds like a number of KSP2 developers have already been laid off.
what a shame. I tried Juno but that game doesn't have that special something that KSP has... such a shame...
It's missing whimsical, playable, self-inserts.
Juno feels dead ,lifeless and blank
@@ukraine_supporter_777 ik
@@ukraine_supporter_777 ikr*
Yeah, Juno is neat for its multitude of procedural parts, and the slightly larger scale solar system compared to KSP, but it lacks any sort of character whatsoever. Also the contract system in Juno is kinda garbage once you start going interplanetary imo.
I had so much hope in KSP 2 but when I've seen Take 2 was involved I decided to wait and see... Well thats one more reason to never trust Take 2 ever again
"Jason Shreier, who has an excellent reputation in the industry" lol, the excellent humor is part of why I love this channel
Yeah. I laught out loud.
He does, for accuracy. That some gamers don't think so doesn't really matter.
@@okankyoto Sometimes one just cant separate art from the "artist"
@@okankyoto inaccuracy was never his problem, it's that he selectively picks and chooses what to cover to avoid inconveniencing parties he has a relationship with (ie he was quiet about problems at blizzard until other people broke the story and suddenly he had years-old insider scoops to share).
I love the original KSP and was thrilled to see they were adding multi-player. If multi-player was in the game as soon as it was available for purchase, I would have bought multiple copies for myself and friends. But since it wasn't a feature in the game, I have been holding off until it is. Now it looks like it never will be. Multiplayer on KSP 1 is all I would have needed to buy KSP 2.
Then you should have never looked at KSP2. There is a mod for multiplayer in KSP, look into it if that is what you are after.
"support" is most likely, IMHO to be just to fulfill a contractual/legal requirement and by a skeleton staff.
the amount of concurrent players shouldn't mean anything as i for one own the game and am waiting for it to develop. i already paid full price for the bloody game...
The number of concurrent players reflects the number of ongoing sold copies. If concurrent numbers are low, then it means the game isn't selling well. The company will need way more than just the initial sales to fund ongoing development.
@@ObsidianAnt people don't want to pay money to be alpha testers anymore. And imho, rightfully so.
They should learn to code...
DEI says otherwise
I really wanted to get into this game but never even played the first, I love space games and had been waiting to see if this one turns around. Sad to see that I probably wont ever get to experience it the way it was intended, and I probably wont ever bother now.
Alan Lewis's released statement along with the silence across the board from Intercept execs (e.g., Nate Simpson) suggests the company is in a "quiet period" prior to a sale or merger. This explains why developers are not leaking... they don't want to spoil the deal. Look for an announcement in June, when the layoffs take effect. Fingers crossed that the acquirer will re-hire the Intercept devs.
Reasonable hypothesis.
I hope whomever aquires them trim the fat. Clearly something isn't working, more than a few don't deserve to be working on this project and need to go ASAP.
This definitely is not unheard of and very plausible. I fear however since gaming industry is considered high risk, it would simply be acquired by another huge company that has to justify that expenditure to its investors. Today's investors are real jittery and if a profit doesn't show quickly, well you already see results
Kerbal space program with the RP-1 modpack makes regular ksp feel like a tutorial, and ksp2 feel like a failed side project.
Good riddance. And before anyone blames TakeTwo, the only reason they're being painted as the villain here is that people can't accept they were betrayed and lied to by the actual dev team for years. This game had delay after delay granted and the dev team were clearly going in circles with it. TakeTwo had to read them the riot act and demand they release something before it turned into Duke Nukem all over again. "They should've just delayed it again for years!" For how many years can a publisher tolerate losses like that when no clear progress is being made? Go look at Star Citizen. You just have to watch 10 minutes of dev video blogs to know this game was going nowhere. And all the while, technical standards increase and march on, whether you release your game or not. How long till large sections needed rewriting to work with new standards or hardware? Remember that one devblog where they spent weeks of time emailing university professors back and forth to establish that the interplanetary drive should have a pink flame? But at the same time if you actually read their notes, the game is STILL single threaded! No wonder it runs so badly.
Agree 100%: people are too quick to blame the publishers out of habit, but in this case, the developers themselves have to take the lion's share of the blame for ruining the reputation of a once-proud franchise.
Amazes me that a modern game can release without multithreading support when bloody Portal did it in 2007.
I had very high hopes for KSP2, so much so that I bought the game on the day it was released, not with hopes of playing but with the knowledge that it would need work. The purchase was my way to show support for the developers. I do hope KSP2 will see further development. The original KSP is, in my opinion, one of the best game/simulations ever released. I can honestly say I have a better knowledge of orbital mechanics than I did before I started playing KSP. When I was growing up back in the dark ages of the 1960's I would play with my plastic models of space ships. I created my own Apollo missions in my grandparent's basement at a time when all the visuals were generated in my head. Jump to the present day and I find myself marveling at where we are now, with computer graphics and at the wizened age of 64 years of age I am still flying those missions that once existed only in my mind. With any luck KSP2 will continue to be developed. In the meantime I will continue playing KSP while doggedly refusing to let go of my childhood wonder of space. My thoughts are with those people who make a living creating KSP2. I wish all of them a positive outcome.
i lost faith in them when the console update didnt include the manuver node update the first time they said it would be there its just slid further down hill ever since
Steam numbers may not be quite accurate - I bypassed the launcher - so I play it, but not through Steam.
Me too, I play it through wine on linux and I'm not sure if it's just my setup but steam doesn't seem to work on wine anyways
Launcher doesn't matter. You'll still register as playing KSP2. Same goes for any other game. You could even launch some random app with a /path/to/app.exe %command% put in the launch properties section & would still appear as Playing KSP2.
@@_thresh_ why would you not use native steam + proton
@@Koffiato only games that use Steam DRM. KSP1 you could even play with Steam closed. I'm not sure about KSP2 though.
@@danilooliveira6580 ksp2 does not have steam drm, it works without steam even installed
Can we stop prettending that the main concern is people losing their jobs? I hate to play devils advocate here but after 7 years looking at what they delivered... im just saying: i understand
Personally I don't believe it's so much the coders and the programmers themselves. I believe it's the business model. Having worked for corporations, what happens is people who have no idea of the product they're selling or the service they're giving just keep pushing dead ideas around to make something look profitable to push out to shareholders. And they all do this while making easily a half million or more a year. Think about it, if the salaries of all these people who don't even touch the game were cut out of the price of the game it very well could have released for $10. I'm sure you've seen GTA VI is going to cost a minimum of $70, most likely more. Makes sense they would put out an alpha game for 50.
For those who don't know. Take-Two has to notify and give a period due to the WARN notice. What tends to happen with something like this and why no one has gotten in contact with the KSP team is how it normally works is they kick everyone out just before the WARN notice goes live. This is to prevent workplace violence and corporate sabotage. When its 90% of the building being laid off, its very likely that everyone was let go the day before the WARN notice posted. They're "laid off", but left on payroll for the WARN notice period so they can still keep you under their corporate thumb - and then they're made to sign a non disclosure agreement if they want a severance package. And then on top of that, there likely is already a NDA in place so anyone kept to wrap this up can't talk about it. And I suspect this is why there was no communication or trust building prior. What many are seeing is Dakota is still there, but it appears most of the rest of the staff is gone. Likely they are going to push out another patch or 2, and then that will be that.
It's really hard to develop a performant game of this style in unity. I'm really not surprised about this.
Given that KSP 1 was created by a grand total of 6 people, I never understood how KSP 2 ended up with a team where you could lay off 70 people. Hopefully this isn't a cancelation, but instead just getting rid of the asset creation team that are basically finished. It seems like the assets for the colony stuff are already created, so what were those people going to be doing?
Modern work policy on the US West Coast. Many employees, no one knows exactly who does what. Half of the team works from home, just sending a few spreadsheets. Environment extremely concerned about not being toxic. One-hour meetings that could be summarized in an email and lead nowhere. Zero-punishment policy, even if employees fail to deliver results, no CRUCH! Time allowed for the employee to settle in. Two-hour brunch every day. Every month employees eagerly await their salary. They blow it all on a night out. The project is closed. The bosses say the experiment obviously wasn't a success and it's time to move in another direction. Most employees are fired but find a new job 2 months later via LinkedIn, repeating the process. KSP1 was done by a Mexican team. Outside the US West Coast, people really work, there's nothing offensive about it, it's just the current reality...
@@antonybr1 Weirdly KZhead keeps deleting my comment with literally nothing offensive in it. All I did was draw a comparison with the sudden late-90s inflation then bursting of web-based businesses.
NASA should buy the license
As far as I know sadly Nasa is grossly underfunded as well.
What a stupid idea, thats even worse than take 2! NASA hardly does anything anymore.
That is such a dumb idea
More like SpaceX
Thanks, been waiting for a decent summary of what is known.
I really did love ksp 2's charm even looking past the bugs 😢 i hope it will continue in some form
Completely unfinished and rushed to EA game - only content I was extremely excited about "colonies" now potentially being binned off? I'd never buy another Take2 product if this is the case.
Seems like when it comes to bloated business structures in the gaming industry, it always ends similar. Either an incomplete buggy game with no features or a completed buggy game with broken features
mans really pretending he ain't gonna get GTA6 when it drops XD
@SA80TAGE I'm not, I put like 4 hours into gta5 so I'll be getting 6 when it's reduced.
@@SA80TAGE i 100% won't , gta online already is a pay2win shi*t show and take 2/Rockstar are putting out one red flag after another, you have to be blind to still believe that it will be like the old Rockstar games.
@@SA80TAGENot all of us are so easily parted with our money, dear Consoomer.
2:40 "We are worried the stockholders and executives are at risk of getting wheelbarrows full of money instead of dump trucks full, so we will be sacrificing the long term viability of our company in order to maximize profits and manipulate the next earning call in the style of Jack Welch"
accurate
I tend to believe that development of the game will continue after the current developing studio is closed. The layoffs are purportedly to cut costs, and continuing development up to the layoff, if they intend to stop developing the game, is just a waste of money. So, when they say they are still working on it, and will continue supporting it, I think that is a strong hint the game is going to be completed, at least for now. However, the lack of a clearer statement on the fate of the game, especially considering the community reaction to the news, is troubling. I think they need to make that statement, one way or another. I also think they will need to refund anyone who bought the game if they discontinue development, since one of the terms of sale is that the buyer would eventually get the completed product.
Unfortunately when you purchase and early access game it states that the game may never progress beyond the point at which you purchased it. So no one is entitled to a refund unless they were to have it processed under the steam refund terms of "less than 2 hours played/14 days from purchase" and I don't see T2 giving refunds out of the kindness of their hearts, they would rather just take some bad rep and keep the money to recoup some of the losses. The continued development of the game is only happening as a requirement of the delayed layoff mandated by the State of which the office is located in. Hopefully the game will be transferred to another studio for full completion but at this point, with the game going through so many hands already and such slow progress I think it is more likely it will just be shelved. The IP be locked away never to be seen again, like many other IP's of the past.
the one game I finally broke my golden rule of "dont pay full price for an early access"..... "These guys actually will make this good so no worries" what a disaster
People blaming Take Two... why? When images of the Dev team at Intercept clearly has "other" priorities than making a good game. The state the game was delivered to us after being delayed for 2 years is absolutely unacceptable. What happened during those 2 years? What would the product have looked like if they had delivered it to us and DIDNT have Covid as an excuse to delay?? KSP2 is simply another victim of community managers posing as developers who are pushing messaging to gamers instead of pushing games to gamers. Everyone knows it everyone can see it, I am sure many wont want to acknowledge it. KSP2 belongs on DEI Detected. I loved KSP and it got me passionate about space. My current steam playtimes KSP: 1846.8 hours KSP2: 39.2 hours
^This! Agree 100%: this is one of the rare cases where the publishers aren't solely to blame: the arrogant so-called developers whose 'development' extends to (1) endless posts rather than actually fixing/finishing their game and (2) creating themselves as Kerbal avatars are the main cause of this franchise's downfall.
Lol KZhead autodeletes my comments any time I say anything about the sort of people who worked (or rather did no work) on KSP2.
Saying that there is low player numbers on a game STILL in early access with a 50€ price tag is beyond stupid. I've been burned out from games because of early access due to bugs and resets, so I was just waiting for the full release and I bet alot of people were on the same boat.
early access, bugs, wipes; fine, fine, I can deal, I love being involved in the process of developing games, especially because they offer a great low cost to entry... "Costs twice as much as it's finished, feature complete predecessor" - get fucking bent game.
I hope they at least give it to another dev team to take over or sell the IP to another publisher. KSP is still a very popular franchise so I guess we all have to just wait and see.
The thumbnail is brutal.
An unfortunate Kerbal dying in the toxic atmosphere of Duna with after their helmet shattered... Actually, now that i'm thinking about it, the Kerbal is also smiling at the same time. So, i guess it intentionally broke its helmet?
That's what you get when you're in the jaws of bad publishers.
But aren't they all bad? I mean if you look at the top selling games that are the most innovative, indie games are way out performing big house titles
@@malumphasma No publisher is ever perfect. At the same time, generalization is never a good thing. There are some publishers that mess up less than others, or at least try to do right by their partners and consumers.
If they were indie they would have been bankrupt years ago
Im so glad I didnt buy this steaming pile.
It's such a scary industry, big shout out to all the devs out there just trying to keep afloat doing what they love amongst the sharks
Hell, if the road map looks like that but they optimise it further and get mod support working well. I'd be fine with that. Just get it to KSP1 parity but with less jank and slight QOL. If they throw their hands up, and give up but just open source everything then that would be another acceptable outcome. I have very low hopes it will ever complete the road map though. I dont need interstellar (hell, i cant even get to Duna, never mind another star system), i just want a nice looking and optimised ksp1 that i don't need to install a million mods for.
I think that we need to talk more about the elephant in the room. Seattle is a ultra progressive environment and all business are feeling the side effects. DEI for the win? 😢
You really blaming it on "wokeness"? What's your middle name? "Stretch Armstrong"?
So you are saying the whole project was axed because a few staff members had blue hair?
@@Whocaresfrfrfrim You any idea how much trouble a few bluehairs can cause?
@@drunkenhobo8020 just fire them if their trouble, like any other bad employee🤷
Thank you for the report.
I still wonder where it all went so wrong. KSP1 went so well and everyone was on board. The game was niche, but the community strong and paid. There are not that many of this super suprise hits. KSP Subnautica and some more and every time a second game kill it all I wonder how the same ppl couldl forget what made it work.
KSP2 came out prematurely and I was sad that it didn't come out in a decent enough state
KSP started the wrong way. To make KSP2, they should have made a very robust engine to prevent Krakens like in KSP1. They didn't do that and have been suffering for that mistake since. f.e., to fix the wobbly rockets, they kinda had to hack their own game by making extra invisible struts.
Hey, idk if you are doing your thumbnails or outsourcing them but whoever does them deserves a massive raise!
Seen this coming miles away.
Colonies and Multiplayer was the two milestones that was going to set KSP2 apart from (unmodded) KSP1. Without those milestones, KSP2 is just a polished KSP1 that burns system resources.
I'm very glad that No Man's Sky's story turned out so well, but I hate that it gives hope to so many people that the same can happen with their favorite early-access corpoware.
maybe if they had included joystick support
This is very sad. I was so looking forward to future content updates :-(
Shame, met some really nice people at the Seattle office while working on it. They even got my kids on early access the KSP2 and shirts.
The most baffling thing about ksp2 is that the kraken still exists. I cant imagine a higher priority when making a new ksp than fixing the engine so large ships don't randomly tear themselves apart. They didn't even do that so I don't see any reason for ksp2 to exist.
I've got KSP and with the huge mod support I never saw the need to get KSP2.
😢 this is truly sad, even if ksp2 survoves this period of uncertainty, this event will inevitably delay the process of delivering the promised features. Im probably not the only person who has been waiting for the multiplayer and colonies features, only to see this and hang up the hat on kerbal space program. What a shame to end up like this. Im not optimistic, especially with escape from tarkov, helldivers 2 and sony controversy and ARk2's switcheroo with Ark SA.
I feel like there are 3 options here for KSP 2: 1) They move development to a new studio. This in of itself will have a lot of problems, especially if most or all of the original team is laid off. Any new team is going to need quite a bit of time to just assess what is there. They may decide to make different decisions about where to go in the future, possibly pull it from early access, etc. We'd probably expect a significant delay on any further development if this happened, and this is probably the "best" option. 2) Take 2 just cancels the game. This is probably the odds-on likely scenario given what we know and the state of the game. They could have decided they just aren't going to get out of the game what they would need to put into it in the future and are just going to cut their losses. 3) Option 2 opens up a possible third option: another outside studio purchases the IP and assets from Take 2 in order to continue development themselves. If T2 decides to cut their losses, there isn't much disadvantage to them selling it to someone else who may be interested in continuing development. Of course, the biggest question here would be "who would that be?" Also you run into most of the same issues as option 1 regarding a new team having to evaluate what they actually have, etc. However, this option also opens up the possibility of hiring some of the old devs, which could ease some of those problems.
Any word on refunds?
thanks for the update. KSP1 🚀
This reminds me of The Simpsons. When someone leaves the room in an unpleasant situation and all you can hear off-screen is the squealing of car tires...
KSP1 at the end already had some kerfuffle with the hostile buyout if I remember right. I guess that's it then.
Been a lot of layoffs in tech after the plunge in market liquidity. Now that KSP2 is done, it's likely going to another team to maintain it. Not uncommon in the game industry. Personally, I wish indie studios would just remain like that instead of always selling out to big publishers who need to feed a massive corporate beast. RIP Squad and the amazing concept they gave us.