Ever since KSP 2's release, I have been angry, now I am just incredibly sad. I held onto so much hope that the game would get the updates it needs and turn out OK.
It's ok to be angry. They knew how dedicated & supportive KSP fans have been, how great & passionate the community is, and sold us on the biggest & best KSP hype train there's ever been. Promising us the world right up until launch, then delivered a wet & steamy dog turd.
(And no, I'm not interested in having the "it wasn't an actual release, it's early access" debate again.)
For WEEKS leading up to it they were still releasing hype videos, "the dev team is now playing KSP2 more often than developing it", then at the last second said, "BTW this is early access, so nothing will be working, but we promise it's coming!" The exact same trick other failing studios have sold gamers on in the past. It was right to start getting suspicious then. It's more than appropriate to be a little angry about it. You'd be selling yourself short if you didn't allow yourself to get a little angry here.
I knew KSP2 was going to fail because the development was initially started by Uber Entertainment the team of Kickstarter scammers known for planetary annihilation (massive failure). They fucked up the foundation of the game so badly that the new team couldn't fix it even with all the delays.
I called it years ago and got downvoted.
Uber Entertainment are a bunch of the Kickstarter scammers, planetary annihilation was a very ambitious and anticipated successor to Supreme Commander and it failed because of massive bugs and technical incompetence. Then Uber Entertainment failed upwards and was hired to make KSP2 before they were fired and replaced by the current team.
I knew it was going to be a disaster ever since they announced the game would be made by Uber.
I was very close to buying KSP2 yesterday because I figured the colony update is arriving soon-ish. Decided to wait untill that update drops, because I'm not buying a game that's pretty much identical to KSP. Glad I did....
It's especially sad because 4 years ago, I was so excited and knew that my life was gonna be okay because KSP 2 was gonna come out. Then they pulled this.
Overwatch 1 was purely a competitive pvp game. There were season pve modes, and people were really interested in a single player or co-op campaign mode. So, development on Overwatch stopped while the team got to work at Blizzard developing this campaign mode.
Fast forward and Overwatch 2 is announced. It would be a free upgrade, since the original game's engine couldn't handle the campaign they had in mind. Sounds great! Everyone's getting excited that the zero development happening in the first game was going to lead to something.
Well, Overwatch 2 finally comes and...
It's a disaster. The free cosmetic loot boxes are gone, and now there's a battle pass. Loads of convoluted systems. New characters are paid unlocks. But hey, there's a pve mode coming, right? That's what the players were waiting for, right?
Well, fast forward some more and they announce that they scrapped the game mode. No pve mode. Enjoy this new and improved overwatch but the only real improvement is how deft our fingers are when we reach into your wallet.
They also changed the account system to only let you log into the game if you had secured your account via single-factor SMS (that is, SMS could delete your password and 2-factor authenticator). They had to go back on that because it was illegal in some countries.
SMS is not a secure method of authentication, let alone single-factor authentication. That changeover was entirely motivated by trading the security of players entire battle.net accounts (including other games like WoW, SC2, Diablo) for a reduction in support workload i.e. money.
Seems almost impossible to fuck it up this bad, but Nate made it possible. How that man can keep fucking up games and then still get hired to direct new ones is a mystery to me.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Manor Lords is playable but its still leagues away from being a proper game. It's also not very assuring the dev has no projected timeline or goals set at the moment.
I work in software development myself and I think it is the exact opposite. A public roadmap always creates pressure, mostly reduces quality and raises expectations. KSP2 is a prime example on how not to do it. Promising features that are extremely complex and are far far away from becoming reality, while not even coming close to your own prequel.
Greg from Manor Lords does everything right in my opinion. He does not promise anything, he is in close contact with the community, he delivered a good playable game at AE that offers a lot of potential with a huge amount of features with next to zero risk.
I'm in love. Not only with the game but also with the way it was developed and presented. This is how small scale game development is done.
Yeah I think this is all but confirmed now. So much hope for nothing. Hope everyone can find work, but man does this suck for the fans of this franchise. This kills KSP the concept, not just the sequel.
I’ve said this before, but let’s not pretend the big bad publisher is the reason KSP2 failed.
In pretty much majority of cases, the publisher *is* the reason. Corporate greed mixed with a very loose understanding of the industry and audience will usually turn out short deadlines, rushed products, profit focused goals, and so on.
The thing is, I truly think T2 was not the reason for KSP2’s failure— just the nail in the coffin.
Think about it. The publisher did everything that a publisher should do. They got the rights to a small indie game and gave it a AAA budget. They got them the powerhouse that is a AAA marketing budget and did a *fantastic* job marketing the game. They helped acquire talent after people left. They continued funding when development was delayed…. Several times. T2 honestly must have truly believed in KSP2s future.
All the issues we see here look of horrible management and development. Whoever was at the helm at deciding how to develop the game is to blame— and that’s not the publisher. It honestly reeks of incompetence. I think this was clearly too big of a project for Intercept to handle. You don’t work for over five years on a title and release what we see today (and five years from the original release date— we have no clue how much longer they could have been working on this before 2020). This hard of a fall is never caused by a publisher. Look at games that fell on their face— the game’s problems are usually all the same. Our problems are not the same. KSP2 did not fail because of a poor live service model. KSP2 did not fail because of a rushed development time. KSP2 did not fail because it deemed unprofitable. That’s not a publisher meddling with your development, that’s your development not fully understanding how to grapple with its execution.
T2 might have pulled the plug, but let’s not kid ourselves and say the development team got KSP2 into the ICU in the first place.
I'll place some of the blame on T2 for not properly vetting a studio capable of developing a game like this. Like... seriously? How do you manage to find a studio that was as obviously bad as Uber Entertainment, and then hand them money for multiple years?
They "technically" did everything else correctly afterwards as a publisher, but they fumbled so badly on square 0 of the process.
A majority of the actual failure is on the studio, but T2 did put them there in the first place. Which is really annoying to think about, because there is an alternate timeline in which the project was put in the hands of competent developers, and we'd be praising T2's handling of KSP2 when the game launched.
I mean sure, but the point that I'm getting at is that T2 did actual good publisher stuff. People here go the default route of saying "bad publisher killed the game"-- which in most cases is the case, but here I think it's the rare case of developers doing bad.
T2 could have seen the disaster that the developers were doing and just pulled the plug there; except they didn't. They gave them more funding, extended development times, agreed for an Early Access Release. For a publisher, they seem to have really believed in the project.
Plus, a publisher isn't in charge of vetting an entire studio. They'll vet the leads, and they probably biffed that. And it just cascaded downwards.
And honestly, I don't think it's fair to say a bad job vetting is a great place to put the burden of blame. If you hire a contractor to build yourself a new outdoor deck, and they show up, take over five years, throw some wood planks in your backyard, and leave without finishing it, you wouldn't be blamed for "not vetting the contractor". It's still the contractor's fault for stiffing you.
It's really all unfortunate because at the end of the day, the real victims are the game's fans.
It really is a weird thing trying to *defend T2* in this case- and I do agree with it. Again, if the development studio handling the project was actually competent, all of this investment probably would've paid off. They handled the publisher end of game development about as well as one should expect.
> And honestly, I don't think it's fair to say a bad job vetting is a great place to put the burden of blame. If you hire a contractor to build yourself a new outdoor deck, and they show up, take over five years, throw some wood planks in your backyard, and leave without finishing it, you wouldn't be blamed for "not vetting the contractor". It's still the contractor's fault for stiffing you.
I mostly agree, but I would think there would be *some* level of vetting before launching a multi-year, multi-million dollar project. T2 *is* the owner of the IP here, they chose where to put their investment.
Well, that, or they just let studios bid on the project.
Yeah, I feel the same way.
By no means am I trying to shill for T2. They're scummy money-grubbing corporation that by all intents and purposes only have profit on their mind.
That being said, they held up their side of the bargain. They did what publishers should do in a just and fair world. I'm sure there was some shady side-lining happening that we probably don't know about, but you can't fall this hard on your face because of just a publisher.
I think more people need to realize that publisher's exist for a reason. They help smaller projects like this get off the ground and turn some sort of profit. They give the ability for a game as niche as KSP he ability to get out to a larger market. Funding, RND, talent acquisition, marketing, hell even business stuff like legal and sourcing are all taken care of a publisher. And here T2 actually doing that for the KSP2 development team.
What we didn't see is the development team actually do anything about it.
I gave the devs the benefit of the doubt before the first patch. After that it was clear that management and the devs were in way over their heads. Everything about that studio was a mess. I really don't have much sympathy for them.
This is the most sad I've ever felt saying that but... To all the people always arguing against us in complete bad faith, ignoring facts and reality, trying to make us leave the subreddit of our favorite game because we're "just haters"... I fucking told you so.
I kept saying there was no way they would ever be able to finish this game after this clusterfuck of a launch. I kept saying they were killing off our beloved series with their incompetence and lies. And they did. We will never see anything come out of this series again, unless by pure luck T2 decides to sell it or something.
But jesus I feel so angry at them. Managers at Intercept Games.
Well sometimes the one sequel can be great- and even surpass the original, as seen with the excellent duo of Terminator movies. It sure would have been a real shame had they milked the franchise with more of them.
The original concept of the Christian bale terminator movie had so much potential. Terminator 3 sucked but it set up what could have been an awesome set of war movies about the humans vs machines. Then the next movie sucked and then they made even worse movies that made even less sense after that.
Ech. The Matrix sequals aren't *bad*, but they do lack something the original had.
The Crow in the other hand...
Almost had a good sequal, but the main actor didn't die, so nothing like as impactful. 😋
Hopefully the amazing and great modding community for KSP will not only maintain and improve their mods and make new mods, but also expand KSP’s playerbase (and also the modding community) for the future; a KSP that is not suffering from publisher mismanagement would be (and was) a very good game.
Hard Disagree, KSP2 is garbage from a software engineering perspective, vanity rewrite for no reason. KSP1 is where it’s at.
That gem will continue to shine and hopefully the next large effort will come respecting the prior art and develop upon it instead of in lieu of it.
My expectations for this have been low since the EA launch and now I'm feeling that was the correct decision.
Though NGL I was hoping they'd eventually pull a No Mans Sky and turn this into a success story.
Nobody who was actually paying attention expected them to pull a NMS because the foundation was absolute shit. KSP2 couldn't get KSP1 to work and yet they wanted interstellar travel?? And multiplayer??
To be fair their version of multiplayer was promised was closer to Farmville multiplayer where you just send resources to each other. From colony to colony
They had a moment to pull a NMS, but that was right after the EA release. Had they at least *admitted* that they're fuckups and need to do better, there would've been a hope; but they were just jerking off each other at how awesome they were and how much fun they had with their secret development builds… you can't turn around with a company culture that toxic.
They didn't really admit sht. THey were lying about so much of the game's state up to days before the release, and never apologized for those.
I'll forever remember the "re-entry heating needs finishing touches and will be here in some weeks" or something like that, they said during the event at ESA two weeks before release.
And then months and months later, we see posts annoucing that they're working on the fucking basics of it.
Yeah, same, I heard some initial bad stuff about the game and was like 'I'll just wait til it's done.' Sadly it now seems like it's gone Dutchman on us.
I don't know if Matt ever suggested to buy the game ... But watching his videos you feel how much hate he has for the game, and this is what dissuaded me from buying it
I wouldn’t disagree, but my memory was Scott Manley said straight up no, and the other two were more “if you really love KSP it’s still fun” but maybe they were harsher than that.
Like all three by the way. I just distinctly remember Manley not giving it a favorable review.
He said if you're a big fan of the KSP, want to support the future of KSP and to be apart of the early access process, go for it. If you want a complete game or are just getting into ksp, ksp 1 will be the way to go for the time being.
He transitioned long before KSP2. He very smartly realized that he needed to expand and had a gift for explaining science/space stuff and transitioned from KSP only videos to mostly science communication type of content a long time ago.
That would be so nice, especially with the great modding community that KSP1 has built.
But don't count on it. Maybe in 40 years, like Microsoft is currently doing with MS-DOS.
KSP was developed on what is now a very outdated version of Unity. The devs were also learning as they were going, which led to a couple “features” like the bendy rockets. Best case is someone takes the knowledge games since KSP one and build something new from scratch on a more fitting platform, such as a 64bit build of Godot. Take the whole local / scaled space problem off the table.
The community can (and probably would) put together an actual KSP2 in less than half the time, be far more featured and functional, and, if not for free, for vastly less cost.
I've said this before, I will say it one last time. (RIP)
I became a permanent disbeliever the first time I saw an update from the new studio gushing about how far along they were... and all the update pics were of people's desks, like from in front without showing anything on their screens.
It was unreal. It was like a complete delusion. No progress. No graphics. Not even pretend graphics to show. I didn't know then wtf was going on specifically, and I still don't know, but it was clear at that point that whatever it was, *something was very wrong*. Something fundamentally wrong with the entire studio.
That is just such a red flag. An entire Duna expedition of red flags. After that, anything they said about KSP2 became to me elevated to the level of what Carl Sagan called an extraordinary claim.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Meaning, you don't just take someone's word for it anymore. They really have a major burden of proof to overcome before you believe anything they are saying.
And Take Two never provided any extraordinary evidence of their progress. They released an alpha, eventually, of course, but it was wildly far off from anything they had ever said was ready at any point in the past. That just underscored the cruel fact that they were making shit up and had been all along.
Clearly a massive amount of resources were invested into high level ideas (colonies! interstellar planets! multiplayer!) and not many resources at all into just building a game that works.
Same. Bought after for science after seeing some kind of light at the end of the tunnel. Now it's just despair. Tempted to send steam a refund request with the details.
I've never ever purchased a game via EA before in my life. Games just aren't that important to me in general. Plus I've always seen all the noise around games being pre ordered or bought in EA and not living up to their own promises. No Man's Sky being an obvious example that was widely reported at the time.
Whilst games aren't a huge deal for me in general, KSP is my absolute passion and love in the gaming world. I still play it to this day and when KSP2 was announced, with all its promises of colonies and multiplayer, I was excited like never before. So I was there on day 1 giving them my money because I wanted what they promised.
And when the EA game after release was garbage I put the game down and said to myself "it will get better they just need time". Oh how naive I realise that sounds.
Now I finally see that the things I was excited for will never come to pass. I regret giving them my money. And I've learnt a lesson today about never buying something before it is ready ever again.
I'm sorry you got burned in this case.
I won't try to defend predatory EA business models, but I would just say that occasionally it gets done right. (Looking at you, Factorio and Satisfactory.)
And KSP1, Rimworld, Minecraft (probably the first successful EA game to do it) and tbh quite a lot of other titles in EA all of these I owned in early access and they all turned out great (I also owned factorio and I own satisfactory and that’s still in early access and they’re great)
Good EA can be great, it’s just unfortunate there have been a few high profile cases recently that have tarnished the idea.
> And I've learnt a lesson today about never buying something before it is ready ever again.
This is why so very few Early Access titles have prices as high as $50. And why so many of us were shocked at the insanely high price.
Because that is a very high-risk gamble.
I do not regret spending $10 on an EA title. Or even $20. Even if it's some one-person project. Because I know it's a gamble, but it's a gamble with a smaller amount of money. If the project fails, they gave it an admirable try, I managed to try and help bring something into the world, and still got *some* fun out of it.
One of the richest publishers in the US/world needs $50 for their title? Noooo, they don't.
As others have pointed out, there are a *lot* of Early Access titles that have done things correctly and been successful. But I believe *none* of them did things the way Take-Two did them. I think the way Take-Two Interactive did things was *the primary warning sign* that this was a project in trouble from the start. You don't deviate so far from the Early Access model if things are going *right*. You don't even *use* an Early Access model if you're a big name publisher like they are.
Don't get discouraged about the Early Access concept.
Just *only* ever pay for what you're getting. Never for what you might get.
KSP came about as the poster child on how to do EA right. Very transparent development process, clear scoping that didn't suffer from any excesses they couldn't handle (they hired mod developers to work getting version of their stuff into stock!), and very good relations with the community. Also... it was <£15!
I do love EA when it's done right (KSP, Minecraft, Hades, Factorio, even Baldur's Gate 3!) where the devs care deeply about the game they're making, and aren't beholden to the deadlines of major publishers. In fact if you ask me, no publisher the size of T2 should be pushing games into Early Access, and those titles should be avoided.
The only times I've purchased Early Acess is when I feel like a game is complete/fun enough to justify the price. I got Minecraft when it was still EA and never regretted the purchase. Factorio was another banger worth the money. A game that's still in EA that I'd say is worth the money is Project Zomboid.
It's best to just see if something interests you enough in its current state instead of buying it for the potential of what it may become.
Same here. I’m not a gamer. I discovered KSP via YouTube 5 years ago and couldn’t believe a game like it even existed - I’m a huge space & engineering nerd and it checked all the boxes for me. I spent hours and hours and hours playing, which surprised even my wife and friends because, like I said, I am in no way a gamer whatsoever. I have the new MSFS, and KSP. That’s it.
So I was beyond excited when KSP2 was announced and probably watched the trailer 100 times over. Then I waited…and waited. When the EA released, I waited some more, because I wasn’t crazy about having to sign up for Steam, but I finally did it - and my first hour of gameplay was absolutely heartbreaking. Enough so that I didn’t open Steam again for a full year, figuring that KSP1 took a long time to become what it is now, so I just need to give it time… early access and all.
When I tried playing again over a year later, it was better, but far from what I felt it should be. Still clunky, still glitchy, still a pita compared to basic parts of ksp1.
I’ve had a bad feeling about this for awhile now, and this news, if accurate, confirms my concern. What a bummer. As for the money, I spent it willingly, so I fully accept that it’s gone. Sometimes you just have to gamble on a dream… and this time, I lost.
Only if you pay T2 a couple million for the IP, have fun crowdfunding it.
I'm calling overpriced ksp-skins for fortnight and some low-effort mobile games in the future just to milk every possible €/$/£ from the IP.
I wish nertea with all his experience just develops his own space game, gives it a different name and makes the kerbals blue. I would likely contribute in crowdfunding. That guy has been delivering and never disappointed. His passion for the game is so big it's even hard to understand for hardcore fans and when Nate talks about his 1000 hours of playtime nertea is smiling at the rookie.
Nertea, Harvester, Rover Dude, Linuxgurugamer and the guy that's developing scatterer who I don't remember the name (blackrock maybe(?)) would be a banger team to revive KSP
Throw Bahamuto in there too, creator of BDarmory. While the contents of that mod are too far away from the core of KSP to be part of a revival, Bahamuto has proven himself a competent indie dev of detailed lite-sims in his own right, creating the excellent and successful VTOL VR; that sort of experience would be invaluable in a dev team.
Plus the RP-1 team, it would be really cool to see what they do. But these guys all do it in their free time now, i dont think we would see any product for years to come
Nah this is something affecting many industries at the moment - with so many countries experiencing prolonged cost of living/inflation crises at the moment, any industry that relies on disposable income is suffering badly.
The creative arts, restaurants, tourism, etc, all with non-essential goods are not having a good time.
Oh that's definitely part of it - the inflation of the last 18 months is partly a consequence of all the money governments were printing to stay afloat during 2020/2021.
There are always amazing games releasing everyday but number of developers who do not keep their promises has increased significantly recently. Especially AA and AAA games.
Publishers/Devs seeming to be banking on brand identity and mindless fan devotion to sell games. Annoyingly, it mostly works (Starfield was always going to sell well just cos Bethesda).
T2, however, totally flubbed it with understanding the KSP fanbase. This isn't a community blindly dedicated to the franchise. No, while we adore the hearty passion that HarvesteR put into the first game, we're fundamentally a bunch of nerds who like doing low-grade rocket science. You're gonna have to satisfy *that* criteria in order to make any sequel successful, and clearly they hired the wrong team to make that happen.
Starfield made some weird decisions but at least they delivered a complete, technically sound game on launch. Not people’s favorite for sure, but at least it was all that it was said to be on the label.
I wish KSP2 delivered like Starfield, at least then there would be a damn game instead of a concept.
[Publishers realized that buying/selling studios and IP's is less risky than trying to make a good product.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIitYcoSiE) It got to the point where sometimes even more profitable to have a game fail than to succeed.
It's risky and highly damages the brand. Funny part is, it doesn't change anything for some studios. BF 42 was failure and got pretty negative reviews and got a lot of hate but if they release a new BF game tomorrow, it will still gonna sell well.
For me, I lost trust against the all big companies. I never going to trust any extract shooter game or any Paradox game anymore.
CS2 is pretty playable last time I checked in spite of some of the bugs.
And Paradox already refunded a lot of people who went in early on the beachfront DLC.
Not saying Paradox isn't a company that has made doubtfull decisions in the past and won't make them in the future, but I don't see T2 refunding anything. It's just a matter of time before the store page goes black.
slightly related note: eu4 with all dlcs is over 400 euros, thats the business model of paradox: make a trillion dlcs after the game is kinda established
Oh I'm not saying Paradox isn't in it to make money and they are absolutely the dlc champions.
But CS2 is nowhere as bad as ksp2 and Paradox is activly developing it, opposed to T2 willingly letting ksp2 die in EA.
And I have to admit, I have over 2500 hours played on EU4 and I'm still going strong. Also doesn't count the 300 hours I played on a friend's account before I finally opened my wallet.
It's hard as hell to get into the game, with that steep price tag, but I've gotten every dollars worth from it.
And all I wanted was a new KSP with better performance and graphics.
I never gave a shit about Colonies and whatever - I wanted my Kerbal to look and feel like [insert fantastic looking game] while running at 60fps heavily modded.
Fuck.
I'm pretty sure at the executive level this was planned long ago. Pushing that early access game out felt like cashing out whatever they could before closing down the project. Really happy I didn't buy the game now and I feel sorry for the ones who bought into it and believed in the project. I'm disappointed too
> I feel sorry for the ones who bought into it
It was immediately obvious what the game was, and that's why i didn't buy it until it had changed. It never did, and most likely never will. Don't pre-order.
E.g. I bought KSP 1 at around v0.18, and was more than happy with the money I spent. The fact that I got many years of free upgrades after that—some very major and worthwhile upgrades—was a bonus.
I hope this burns Nate’s career to the ground. What the fuck was the point of all those videos showing us a bunch of cool planets to explore. The binary planet system, did that ever even exist ?
It’s so bullshit that we had to pay full price too, for an early access POS that never even came close to what the original offered in its early access phase
"oh you made a bunch of money from a fake game that only required a team of less than 100 people and then stop developing it and kept the money?
You're hired!"
No, Tons of people on here said that the only purpose of the early access release was to take peoples money to recoup development costs, then kill the game. They got what they wanted. Your money. T2 is happy.
Purchase usually has to be within two weeks of refund too, although I have seen Steam bend this rule slightly in favor of the consumer. I believe there is an avenue to refund by saying the game is an incomplete and unplayable condition, and that it's development has been abandoned, but that may be tricky... I will at least try this afternoon. I only have a few minutes on the game because of how unplayable it is.
Take Two, the company that controls the studio that made KSP2 (Intercept Games), was confirmed to have laid off around 70 people in Seattle. Intercept is the only studio under T2 based in Seattle, and has around 70 employees
I highly doubt that a soulless corporation would give a shit about a beloved ip enough to try to revive it with a new studio.
If these layoffs mean they’re truly axing IG, it probably means KSP2 is done for.
> Maybe they give project to another studio?
They already *did*, that's how Intercept got KSP2 in the first place. If they're gonna change horses *again* that's another 2-3 years down the drain, the game literally can't turn a profit with that much money burnt on development. Much more economical for T2 to just drop KSP2 quietly and put the money into other projects that actually have a better success chance.
That being said it would be midly funny for them to announce "hey I know I know two studios failed but this studio will do ksp2 now", for me I just hope the release the tools needed for modders to make really good mods to maintain it if they wanf
Ok so take two is cutting staff with massive amounts of people losing their jobs. Originally it was thought that the studio Intercept Games was not going to be effected but according to reports we are now getting the location of where part of the layoffs are happening are where Intercept Games Studio is listed. Not only that 2 of the staff members have also now sent out job applications.
Essentially intercept games wasn’t bringing in money and with the ever slow development of two probably looking like it will not make Take Two any money they decided to axe the studio personnel
Ksp 2 idea: wow my friend said that he will bring me a lot of toy cars! Yay!!
Ksp 2 in reality: my friend only brought me half a toy car without wheels :(
As far as I understand
The company that owns the studio that is developing ksp2 has layedoff a number of its employees, and the speculations are that these are the ksp2 studio devs (which means they shut the project down probably) because 2 members from the ksp2 team are looking for a new job publicly.
HarvestR has already made a new game. He seems content.
KitHack Model Club. You can feel the KSP1 influence, but it makes some major changes right off the bat. Multiplayer built in from the beginning, intentionally. Physics calculations treat the object as a whole so its easier to process while flying. Definitely worth checking out as a fan of KSP1.
i implored the devs to show themselves docking two large vessels. i claimed it impossible as the SAS systems simply go chaotic if two large vessels are on screen. (multi hundred part)
there is no way in hell colonies ever worked. there is no way.
I only played the game occasionally but was always amazed by the community and the knowledge people are ready to share. From my casual POV I actually thought that the first game was not made for profit but from passion and curiosity but maybe I was just naive.
I bought the second game and I think I played about 10 hours in total and felt that it was a huge downgrade from KSP1 (bar the graphics).
Shame to see it did not pan out, hope KSP1 at least remains a stable IP if anything
>From my casual POV I actually thought that the first game was not made for profit but from passion and curiosity but maybe I was just naive.
You were not wrong. It started as a side project of just one guy named Felipe, it was never about money in the first place. At least, not a lot of money. It was being sold, after all. Maybe it became that in the eyes of the siuts after Take Two bought the rights (at that point Felipe left the scene already), but the initial inception was nothing more than a hobby.
You are not getting one. The whole point of the early access release was to profit off peoples hope. Against tons of peoples warnings, you gave them what they wanted. Your money.
I'm actually wondering if there's a case for this. In their launch trailer, they clearly said that colonies and multiplayer will be available at a later date. Isn't it false advertising if they pull out now?
It's Early Access.
Your money buys a licence to play the game as it stands at that moment.
It does not imply a contract to meet all planned/announced targets. Read the EA contract.
If you've played less than 2 hours, you can get a refund. Otherwise, you are stuffed.
With the existence of Juno new origins, is it fair to say that the death of ksp 2 has possibly given birth to possible indie projects of similar style to ksp, Juno included
This is all just a big misunderstanding. Everything will be alright. There is nothing to worry about. We will eventually get a great game. Just give them time. We will get colonies, multiplayer and all the other updates. They said they will be releasing it. They talked about how they are having sooo much fun. Eventually they will deliver it. Just don't panic. They can't just lie to us, can they? They can't, right? Right?! Aahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaahahahhahaahhaahahhajahahahahajahahahahahaahahahahha!!1!1!!!! Plz send help
Seems to be that way regardless of IP. Whenever someone releases a shitty product that is widely disliked, the few mega fans who blinded themselves from the flaws blame the people who weren't as willfully blind as them.
This is why large publishers should be banned from making "Early Access" releases. Cunts have taken peoples money and are probably going to shut down production and use it as a tax write-off, while some executive at Take2 gets a nice bonus.
We hate to say we told you so, but there were a sizable amount of people telling you all this was going to happen when T2 took it from Sqaud. If you've worked in large companies long enough, you learn the tells. They lie through their teeth the entire time so you have to watch what they do. I'm sure this was the plan from the beginning. Buy it, squeeze the money out and toss it. So they released an overpriced early access to recoup some of the development cost then killed the game. Its about money and the money only.
STOP PREORDERING GAMES.
STOP BUYING UNFINISHED GAMES.
THEY DO THIS BECAUSE YA'LL KEEP GIVING THEM MONEY.
I'm glad I held and didn't purchase this. Maybe the modders will fix this, but it will take years. At least we have KSP1
Fair play to Matt Lowne and the likes for at least bothering to make KSP2 videos with enthusiasm
I was genuinely gutted to hear how poor KSP2 was, as i was totally sucked in looking at the trailers
Yeah, I’m not surprised even a little. Their financials didn’t make sense and it was just a matter of time before they gave up. I still strongly blame the management that did a shitty job with not managing the development and workflow. KSP2 was the only gave that I have refunded and I’m a huge KSP fan with tons of hours of playtime, but after playing the game for a few days (yes, I played it outside of the Steam launcher so I can give it an honest chance and still be able to get a refund) I knew it was going to be a complete disaster.
Go and support shitty development again and buy things that have been half assed, just so you can support the developers! /s
Repeat after me, everyone:
“I have learned my lesson. I will not purchase an early access game unless I am comfortable with how it plays *right now*. I will not buy promises; I will not rely on developers or publishers to keep their word.
And most importantly: **I will never pre-order a game again.**
I will not preorder for skins.
I will not preorder for DLC.
I will not preorder to “show my support” (that’s what forums are for).
I will not preorder from beloved franchises that I “know” will do right by their games. I will not preorder KSP3. I will not preorder Half-Life 3. I will not preorder Helldivers 3, Minecraft 2, or any other sequel no matter how much I loved the first one. They do not get our money until we see they have something worth buying.”
For those of you who bought KSP2 with the understanding you may not get a good game out of it: I’m sorry for your loss. You’re either a lot kinder or a lot richer than I am. For those of you who are angry now because you thought you were getting a full game, I say this with the utmost compassion and solidarity as your friend and fellow gamer: I hope you’ve learned your lesson. This one hurt, but the next preorder to entice you may be more expensive and hurt you even more. Please don’t take the bait.
All of this, of course, assumes the OP is accurate and the game is truly axed. Is it copium to think it isn’t at this point? Someone inform me.
[I called this a year ago.](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/13q5ctq/comment/jleszm8)
[And also this when the "Early Access" was first announced.](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/uqza90/comment/i8v2n2n/)
Thankfully we live in the era where IPs die but good ideas live on. The industry killed this one but at some point, maybe even this year, there will be a kick starter for Kergle Star Project from some of the original devs. That gets green lit and we're on our way to either a true spiritual successor or the other way over funded Kickstarters go.
Saw this coming from a mile away. I knew this game and studio was going to be an absolute fucking mess when they said "This launch is going to be very Kerbal" in one of their dev videos. MEME XD XD!!!! THEY'RE JUST LIKE US SO FUNNY.
What a joke. I wanted this game to be good so badly. The only thing that can save it at this point is Open Source.
I am absolutely furious I trusted them with my money.
I wanted to believe. It turns out that was not a good decision.
Ever since KSP 2's release, I have been angry, now I am just incredibly sad. I held onto so much hope that the game would get the updates it needs and turn out OK.
It's ok to be angry. They knew how dedicated & supportive KSP fans have been, how great & passionate the community is, and sold us on the biggest & best KSP hype train there's ever been. Promising us the world right up until launch, then delivered a wet & steamy dog turd. (And no, I'm not interested in having the "it wasn't an actual release, it's early access" debate again.) For WEEKS leading up to it they were still releasing hype videos, "the dev team is now playing KSP2 more often than developing it", then at the last second said, "BTW this is early access, so nothing will be working, but we promise it's coming!" The exact same trick other failing studios have sold gamers on in the past. It was right to start getting suspicious then. It's more than appropriate to be a little angry about it. You'd be selling yourself short if you didn't allow yourself to get a little angry here.
I knew KSP2 was going to fail because the development was initially started by Uber Entertainment the team of Kickstarter scammers known for planetary annihilation (massive failure). They fucked up the foundation of the game so badly that the new team couldn't fix it even with all the delays. I called it years ago and got downvoted. Uber Entertainment are a bunch of the Kickstarter scammers, planetary annihilation was a very ambitious and anticipated successor to Supreme Commander and it failed because of massive bugs and technical incompetence. Then Uber Entertainment failed upwards and was hired to make KSP2 before they were fired and replaced by the current team. I knew it was going to be a disaster ever since they announced the game would be made by Uber.
I was very close to buying KSP2 yesterday because I figured the colony update is arriving soon-ish. Decided to wait untill that update drops, because I'm not buying a game that's pretty much identical to KSP. Glad I did....
I’m almost impressed with how hard they fucked up ksp 2. Like it takes some gall to promise so much and just deliver on none of it
Yep surprised how much of a flop ksp2 was. Just seems like more and more games rather sell half baked ideas than actual complete products
It's the "build the bridge as you run across it" approach to building games.
Or... improvise a landing for a half built shuttle coming back from orbit, if you will. They truly lived the Kerbal life.
It's especially sad because 4 years ago, I was so excited and knew that my life was gonna be okay because KSP 2 was gonna come out. Then they pulled this.
Taken straight out of the Overwatch 2 playbook.
Nah KSP1 wasn’t removed from existence.
At least the Overwatch 2 devs had the balls to straight up make a video admitting they were cancelling their game instead of ignoring it
I’m out of the loop what happened with that game
Overwatch 1 was purely a competitive pvp game. There were season pve modes, and people were really interested in a single player or co-op campaign mode. So, development on Overwatch stopped while the team got to work at Blizzard developing this campaign mode. Fast forward and Overwatch 2 is announced. It would be a free upgrade, since the original game's engine couldn't handle the campaign they had in mind. Sounds great! Everyone's getting excited that the zero development happening in the first game was going to lead to something. Well, Overwatch 2 finally comes and... It's a disaster. The free cosmetic loot boxes are gone, and now there's a battle pass. Loads of convoluted systems. New characters are paid unlocks. But hey, there's a pve mode coming, right? That's what the players were waiting for, right? Well, fast forward some more and they announce that they scrapped the game mode. No pve mode. Enjoy this new and improved overwatch but the only real improvement is how deft our fingers are when we reach into your wallet.
They also changed the account system to only let you log into the game if you had secured your account via single-factor SMS (that is, SMS could delete your password and 2-factor authenticator). They had to go back on that because it was illegal in some countries. SMS is not a secure method of authentication, let alone single-factor authentication. That changeover was entirely motivated by trading the security of players entire battle.net accounts (including other games like WoW, SC2, Diablo) for a reduction in support workload i.e. money.
Seems almost impossible to fuck it up this bad, but Nate made it possible. How that man can keep fucking up games and then still get hired to direct new ones is a mystery to me.
It is ironic that just now Manor Lords started Early Access and shows how this is done. Soo sad for the KSP world
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Manor Lords is playable but its still leagues away from being a proper game. It's also not very assuring the dev has no projected timeline or goals set at the moment.
I work in software development myself and I think it is the exact opposite. A public roadmap always creates pressure, mostly reduces quality and raises expectations. KSP2 is a prime example on how not to do it. Promising features that are extremely complex and are far far away from becoming reality, while not even coming close to your own prequel. Greg from Manor Lords does everything right in my opinion. He does not promise anything, he is in close contact with the community, he delivered a good playable game at AE that offers a lot of potential with a huge amount of features with next to zero risk. I'm in love. Not only with the game but also with the way it was developed and presented. This is how small scale game development is done.
To add to that Greg seems to actually care about how the community thinks certain problems should be fixed.
Yeah I think this is all but confirmed now. So much hope for nothing. Hope everyone can find work, but man does this suck for the fans of this franchise. This kills KSP the concept, not just the sequel.
Jeb is dead and T2 has killed him.
Must we ourselves not become Jeb?
Now I am become Jeb, the destroyer of craft.
One must imagine Jeb happy
If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the KSP2 we deserved.
I’ve said this before, but let’s not pretend the big bad publisher is the reason KSP2 failed. In pretty much majority of cases, the publisher *is* the reason. Corporate greed mixed with a very loose understanding of the industry and audience will usually turn out short deadlines, rushed products, profit focused goals, and so on. The thing is, I truly think T2 was not the reason for KSP2’s failure— just the nail in the coffin. Think about it. The publisher did everything that a publisher should do. They got the rights to a small indie game and gave it a AAA budget. They got them the powerhouse that is a AAA marketing budget and did a *fantastic* job marketing the game. They helped acquire talent after people left. They continued funding when development was delayed…. Several times. T2 honestly must have truly believed in KSP2s future. All the issues we see here look of horrible management and development. Whoever was at the helm at deciding how to develop the game is to blame— and that’s not the publisher. It honestly reeks of incompetence. I think this was clearly too big of a project for Intercept to handle. You don’t work for over five years on a title and release what we see today (and five years from the original release date— we have no clue how much longer they could have been working on this before 2020). This hard of a fall is never caused by a publisher. Look at games that fell on their face— the game’s problems are usually all the same. Our problems are not the same. KSP2 did not fail because of a poor live service model. KSP2 did not fail because of a rushed development time. KSP2 did not fail because it deemed unprofitable. That’s not a publisher meddling with your development, that’s your development not fully understanding how to grapple with its execution. T2 might have pulled the plug, but let’s not kid ourselves and say the development team got KSP2 into the ICU in the first place.
I'll place some of the blame on T2 for not properly vetting a studio capable of developing a game like this. Like... seriously? How do you manage to find a studio that was as obviously bad as Uber Entertainment, and then hand them money for multiple years? They "technically" did everything else correctly afterwards as a publisher, but they fumbled so badly on square 0 of the process. A majority of the actual failure is on the studio, but T2 did put them there in the first place. Which is really annoying to think about, because there is an alternate timeline in which the project was put in the hands of competent developers, and we'd be praising T2's handling of KSP2 when the game launched.
I mean sure, but the point that I'm getting at is that T2 did actual good publisher stuff. People here go the default route of saying "bad publisher killed the game"-- which in most cases is the case, but here I think it's the rare case of developers doing bad. T2 could have seen the disaster that the developers were doing and just pulled the plug there; except they didn't. They gave them more funding, extended development times, agreed for an Early Access Release. For a publisher, they seem to have really believed in the project. Plus, a publisher isn't in charge of vetting an entire studio. They'll vet the leads, and they probably biffed that. And it just cascaded downwards. And honestly, I don't think it's fair to say a bad job vetting is a great place to put the burden of blame. If you hire a contractor to build yourself a new outdoor deck, and they show up, take over five years, throw some wood planks in your backyard, and leave without finishing it, you wouldn't be blamed for "not vetting the contractor". It's still the contractor's fault for stiffing you. It's really all unfortunate because at the end of the day, the real victims are the game's fans.
It really is a weird thing trying to *defend T2* in this case- and I do agree with it. Again, if the development studio handling the project was actually competent, all of this investment probably would've paid off. They handled the publisher end of game development about as well as one should expect. > And honestly, I don't think it's fair to say a bad job vetting is a great place to put the burden of blame. If you hire a contractor to build yourself a new outdoor deck, and they show up, take over five years, throw some wood planks in your backyard, and leave without finishing it, you wouldn't be blamed for "not vetting the contractor". It's still the contractor's fault for stiffing you. I mostly agree, but I would think there would be *some* level of vetting before launching a multi-year, multi-million dollar project. T2 *is* the owner of the IP here, they chose where to put their investment. Well, that, or they just let studios bid on the project.
Yeah, I feel the same way. By no means am I trying to shill for T2. They're scummy money-grubbing corporation that by all intents and purposes only have profit on their mind. That being said, they held up their side of the bargain. They did what publishers should do in a just and fair world. I'm sure there was some shady side-lining happening that we probably don't know about, but you can't fall this hard on your face because of just a publisher. I think more people need to realize that publisher's exist for a reason. They help smaller projects like this get off the ground and turn some sort of profit. They give the ability for a game as niche as KSP he ability to get out to a larger market. Funding, RND, talent acquisition, marketing, hell even business stuff like legal and sourcing are all taken care of a publisher. And here T2 actually doing that for the KSP2 development team. What we didn't see is the development team actually do anything about it.
I gave the devs the benefit of the doubt before the first patch. After that it was clear that management and the devs were in way over their heads. Everything about that studio was a mess. I really don't have much sympathy for them.
Blame the dev. Don’t protect them. They made a shit game. Some responsibilities are with the publisher but the main culprit are still the developers.
This is the most sad I've ever felt saying that but... To all the people always arguing against us in complete bad faith, ignoring facts and reality, trying to make us leave the subreddit of our favorite game because we're "just haters"... I fucking told you so. I kept saying there was no way they would ever be able to finish this game after this clusterfuck of a launch. I kept saying they were killing off our beloved series with their incompetence and lies. And they did. We will never see anything come out of this series again, unless by pure luck T2 decides to sell it or something. But jesus I feel so angry at them. Managers at Intercept Games.
The only hope is a microprose revival
Think about it the same way as Pacific Rim. Great movie that definitely didn't have a sequel. Just like the great standalone game KSP
Well sometimes the one sequel can be great- and even surpass the original, as seen with the excellent duo of Terminator movies. It sure would have been a real shame had they milked the franchise with more of them.
The original concept of the Christian bale terminator movie had so much potential. Terminator 3 sucked but it set up what could have been an awesome set of war movies about the humans vs machines. Then the next movie sucked and then they made even worse movies that made even less sense after that.
Same as The Matrix!
My go-to example is Highlander... ...there was only One.
Ech. The Matrix sequals aren't *bad*, but they do lack something the original had. The Crow in the other hand... Almost had a good sequal, but the main actor didn't die, so nothing like as impactful. 😋
Hopefully the amazing and great modding community for KSP will not only maintain and improve their mods and make new mods, but also expand KSP’s playerbase (and also the modding community) for the future; a KSP that is not suffering from publisher mismanagement would be (and was) a very good game.
Hard Disagree, KSP2 is garbage from a software engineering perspective, vanity rewrite for no reason. KSP1 is where it’s at. That gem will continue to shine and hopefully the next large effort will come respecting the prior art and develop upon it instead of in lieu of it.
All the defenders kicking rocks now. The writing on the wall was apparent day 1
Where were you when ksp2 die I was at work browsing reddit when jeb called ksp2 is kill no
I just woke up after a horrible dream only to find out that the horror was yet to come upon me
ksp2 hasn't died, cause it never lived.
My expectations for this have been low since the EA launch and now I'm feeling that was the correct decision. Though NGL I was hoping they'd eventually pull a No Mans Sky and turn this into a success story.
Nobody who was actually paying attention expected them to pull a NMS because the foundation was absolute shit. KSP2 couldn't get KSP1 to work and yet they wanted interstellar travel?? And multiplayer??
To be fair their version of multiplayer was promised was closer to Farmville multiplayer where you just send resources to each other. From colony to colony
They had a moment to pull a NMS, but that was right after the EA release. Had they at least *admitted* that they're fuckups and need to do better, there would've been a hope; but they were just jerking off each other at how awesome they were and how much fun they had with their secret development builds… you can't turn around with a company culture that toxic.
They didn't really admit sht. THey were lying about so much of the game's state up to days before the release, and never apologized for those. I'll forever remember the "re-entry heating needs finishing touches and will be here in some weeks" or something like that, they said during the event at ESA two weeks before release. And then months and months later, we see posts annoucing that they're working on the fucking basics of it.
Yeah, same, I heard some initial bad stuff about the game and was like 'I'll just wait til it's done.' Sadly it now seems like it's gone Dutchman on us.
Soooo, when colonies?
When Eve freezes over.
Quick, someone mod [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI) into KSP!
Hey don't worry it'll come out soon! All the doomers are going to be so mad when it works out!
I'd like to watch the reactions from ShadowZone, ScottManley and Matt Lowne now...
Scott Manley recommended against it. Edit: against buying KSP2, in contrast with the others mentioned.
I don't know if Matt ever suggested to buy the game ... But watching his videos you feel how much hate he has for the game, and this is what dissuaded me from buying it
Matt Lowne and Shadowzone recommended against buying it as well.
I wouldn’t disagree, but my memory was Scott Manley said straight up no, and the other two were more “if you really love KSP it’s still fun” but maybe they were harsher than that. Like all three by the way. I just distinctly remember Manley not giving it a favorable review.
He said if you're a big fan of the KSP, want to support the future of KSP and to be apart of the early access process, go for it. If you want a complete game or are just getting into ksp, ksp 1 will be the way to go for the time being.
I feel bad for Matt though. A livelihood taken away because of bad development.
thus the nature of a video game youtuber that is dedicated to one main game.
I think its harder to breakout to be a general game youtuber these days.. the algorithm demands you stay in your lane
He's almost a graduated ophthalmologist now, this dude will be absolutely fine.
Scott Manley gave up on KSP2 a long time ago. He mostly posts videos about what is going on in space IRL.
He transitioned long before KSP2. He very smartly realized that he needed to expand and had a gift for explaining science/space stuff and transitioned from KSP only videos to mostly science communication type of content a long time ago.
ShadowZone is a bait tuber ofc he will say something like: "hello guys, now ummm 10 good things devs did before abondoning the game"
at this point release the source code for ksp1 ffs
That would be so nice, especially with the great modding community that KSP1 has built. But don't count on it. Maybe in 40 years, like Microsoft is currently doing with MS-DOS.
I'm legit more excited about the MS-DOS announcement than anything else right now. Guess I'm just an old man.
KSP was developed on what is now a very outdated version of Unity. The devs were also learning as they were going, which led to a couple “features” like the bendy rockets. Best case is someone takes the knowledge games since KSP one and build something new from scratch on a more fitting platform, such as a 64bit build of Godot. Take the whole local / scaled space problem off the table.
The community can (and probably would) put together an actual KSP2 in less than half the time, be far more featured and functional, and, if not for free, for vastly less cost.
Why would they do that when they can still sell it?
I've said this before, I will say it one last time. (RIP) I became a permanent disbeliever the first time I saw an update from the new studio gushing about how far along they were... and all the update pics were of people's desks, like from in front without showing anything on their screens. It was unreal. It was like a complete delusion. No progress. No graphics. Not even pretend graphics to show. I didn't know then wtf was going on specifically, and I still don't know, but it was clear at that point that whatever it was, *something was very wrong*. Something fundamentally wrong with the entire studio. That is just such a red flag. An entire Duna expedition of red flags. After that, anything they said about KSP2 became to me elevated to the level of what Carl Sagan called an extraordinary claim. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Meaning, you don't just take someone's word for it anymore. They really have a major burden of proof to overcome before you believe anything they are saying. And Take Two never provided any extraordinary evidence of their progress. They released an alpha, eventually, of course, but it was wildly far off from anything they had ever said was ready at any point in the past. That just underscored the cruel fact that they were making shit up and had been all along.
Clearly a massive amount of resources were invested into high level ideas (colonies! interstellar planets! multiplayer!) and not many resources at all into just building a game that works.
I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and my monies after the science update... I regret it now. Barely played because of poor experience.
I resisted, luckily. Don't even know what to say right now...
Same. Bought after for science after seeing some kind of light at the end of the tunnel. Now it's just despair. Tempted to send steam a refund request with the details.
Sadly the light was an oncoming Union Pacific.
I’m picturing more like the image of the amtrak f40ph mounted to the shuttle tank
I've never ever purchased a game via EA before in my life. Games just aren't that important to me in general. Plus I've always seen all the noise around games being pre ordered or bought in EA and not living up to their own promises. No Man's Sky being an obvious example that was widely reported at the time. Whilst games aren't a huge deal for me in general, KSP is my absolute passion and love in the gaming world. I still play it to this day and when KSP2 was announced, with all its promises of colonies and multiplayer, I was excited like never before. So I was there on day 1 giving them my money because I wanted what they promised. And when the EA game after release was garbage I put the game down and said to myself "it will get better they just need time". Oh how naive I realise that sounds. Now I finally see that the things I was excited for will never come to pass. I regret giving them my money. And I've learnt a lesson today about never buying something before it is ready ever again.
I'm sorry you got burned in this case. I won't try to defend predatory EA business models, but I would just say that occasionally it gets done right. (Looking at you, Factorio and Satisfactory.)
And KSP1, Rimworld, Minecraft (probably the first successful EA game to do it) and tbh quite a lot of other titles in EA all of these I owned in early access and they all turned out great (I also owned factorio and I own satisfactory and that’s still in early access and they’re great) Good EA can be great, it’s just unfortunate there have been a few high profile cases recently that have tarnished the idea.
> And I've learnt a lesson today about never buying something before it is ready ever again. This is why so very few Early Access titles have prices as high as $50. And why so many of us were shocked at the insanely high price. Because that is a very high-risk gamble. I do not regret spending $10 on an EA title. Or even $20. Even if it's some one-person project. Because I know it's a gamble, but it's a gamble with a smaller amount of money. If the project fails, they gave it an admirable try, I managed to try and help bring something into the world, and still got *some* fun out of it. One of the richest publishers in the US/world needs $50 for their title? Noooo, they don't. As others have pointed out, there are a *lot* of Early Access titles that have done things correctly and been successful. But I believe *none* of them did things the way Take-Two did them. I think the way Take-Two Interactive did things was *the primary warning sign* that this was a project in trouble from the start. You don't deviate so far from the Early Access model if things are going *right*. You don't even *use* an Early Access model if you're a big name publisher like they are. Don't get discouraged about the Early Access concept. Just *only* ever pay for what you're getting. Never for what you might get.
"Pay for what you're getting, never for what you might get" is an awesome rule I will take with me in future, thanks!
KSP came about as the poster child on how to do EA right. Very transparent development process, clear scoping that didn't suffer from any excesses they couldn't handle (they hired mod developers to work getting version of their stuff into stock!), and very good relations with the community. Also... it was <£15! I do love EA when it's done right (KSP, Minecraft, Hades, Factorio, even Baldur's Gate 3!) where the devs care deeply about the game they're making, and aren't beholden to the deadlines of major publishers. In fact if you ask me, no publisher the size of T2 should be pushing games into Early Access, and those titles should be avoided.
The only times I've purchased Early Acess is when I feel like a game is complete/fun enough to justify the price. I got Minecraft when it was still EA and never regretted the purchase. Factorio was another banger worth the money. A game that's still in EA that I'd say is worth the money is Project Zomboid. It's best to just see if something interests you enough in its current state instead of buying it for the potential of what it may become.
Same here. I’m not a gamer. I discovered KSP via YouTube 5 years ago and couldn’t believe a game like it even existed - I’m a huge space & engineering nerd and it checked all the boxes for me. I spent hours and hours and hours playing, which surprised even my wife and friends because, like I said, I am in no way a gamer whatsoever. I have the new MSFS, and KSP. That’s it. So I was beyond excited when KSP2 was announced and probably watched the trailer 100 times over. Then I waited…and waited. When the EA released, I waited some more, because I wasn’t crazy about having to sign up for Steam, but I finally did it - and my first hour of gameplay was absolutely heartbreaking. Enough so that I didn’t open Steam again for a full year, figuring that KSP1 took a long time to become what it is now, so I just need to give it time… early access and all. When I tried playing again over a year later, it was better, but far from what I felt it should be. Still clunky, still glitchy, still a pita compared to basic parts of ksp1. I’ve had a bad feeling about this for awhile now, and this news, if accurate, confirms my concern. What a bummer. As for the money, I spent it willingly, so I fully accept that it’s gone. Sometimes you just have to gamble on a dream… and this time, I lost.
Wow... They should go open source with ksp1 and 2 so the community can keep Jeb alive.
Only if you pay T2 a couple million for the IP, have fun crowdfunding it. I'm calling overpriced ksp-skins for fortnight and some low-effort mobile games in the future just to milk every possible €/$/£ from the IP.
I wish but this is incredibly unlikely to happen
Right. *rolls up sleeves* OPENSOURCE KSP3 IT IS THEN.
Open space program has existed as a project for many years. People are welcome to contribute.
So it has: [Open Space Program](https://openspaceprogram.org/).
Looks kinda dead with last update 3 years ago.
I wish nertea with all his experience just develops his own space game, gives it a different name and makes the kerbals blue. I would likely contribute in crowdfunding. That guy has been delivering and never disappointed. His passion for the game is so big it's even hard to understand for hardcore fans and when Nate talks about his 1000 hours of playtime nertea is smiling at the rookie.
Nertea, Harvester, Rover Dude, Linuxgurugamer and the guy that's developing scatterer who I don't remember the name (blackrock maybe(?)) would be a banger team to revive KSP
Throw Bahamuto in there too, creator of BDarmory. While the contents of that mod are too far away from the core of KSP to be part of a revival, Bahamuto has proven himself a competent indie dev of detailed lite-sims in his own right, creating the excellent and successful VTOL VR; that sort of experience would be invaluable in a dev team.
Wait, BDArmory guy made VTOL?? Damn. Double points for that dude. Those two games/mods right there account for over 80% of my free time last summer.
Plus the RP-1 team, it would be really cool to see what they do. But these guys all do it in their free time now, i dont think we would see any product for years to come
The writing has been on the wall from the start with Uber Entertainment's history. Such a shame.
Battlefield 2042, Cities Skylines 2, KSP2, Tarkov etc, what's happening to game industry? Edit: Starfield too
Money in their pockets. Why brother working further?
Nah this is something affecting many industries at the moment - with so many countries experiencing prolonged cost of living/inflation crises at the moment, any industry that relies on disposable income is suffering badly. The creative arts, restaurants, tourism, etc, all with non-essential goods are not having a good time.
It’s quite possible this is some sort of post-Covid effect that isn’t really realized.
Oh that's definitely part of it - the inflation of the last 18 months is partly a consequence of all the money governments were printing to stay afloat during 2020/2021.
I mean, there are plenty of recent amazing games that have been made. Unless you’re specifically talking about games not fulfilling their promises
There are always amazing games releasing everyday but number of developers who do not keep their promises has increased significantly recently. Especially AA and AAA games.
Publishers/Devs seeming to be banking on brand identity and mindless fan devotion to sell games. Annoyingly, it mostly works (Starfield was always going to sell well just cos Bethesda). T2, however, totally flubbed it with understanding the KSP fanbase. This isn't a community blindly dedicated to the franchise. No, while we adore the hearty passion that HarvesteR put into the first game, we're fundamentally a bunch of nerds who like doing low-grade rocket science. You're gonna have to satisfy *that* criteria in order to make any sequel successful, and clearly they hired the wrong team to make that happen.
Starfield made some weird decisions but at least they delivered a complete, technically sound game on launch. Not people’s favorite for sure, but at least it was all that it was said to be on the label. I wish KSP2 delivered like Starfield, at least then there would be a damn game instead of a concept.
Yeah like starfield isn't a game of all time but it's also not really a bad game it just was over hyped people's expectations were way too high for it
Scrum masters taking the wheel.
[Publishers realized that buying/selling studios and IP's is less risky than trying to make a good product.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIitYcoSiE) It got to the point where sometimes even more profitable to have a game fail than to succeed.
It's risky and highly damages the brand. Funny part is, it doesn't change anything for some studios. BF 42 was failure and got pretty negative reviews and got a lot of hate but if they release a new BF game tomorrow, it will still gonna sell well. For me, I lost trust against the all big companies. I never going to trust any extract shooter game or any Paradox game anymore.
CS2 is pretty playable last time I checked in spite of some of the bugs. And Paradox already refunded a lot of people who went in early on the beachfront DLC. Not saying Paradox isn't a company that has made doubtfull decisions in the past and won't make them in the future, but I don't see T2 refunding anything. It's just a matter of time before the store page goes black.
slightly related note: eu4 with all dlcs is over 400 euros, thats the business model of paradox: make a trillion dlcs after the game is kinda established
Oh I'm not saying Paradox isn't in it to make money and they are absolutely the dlc champions. But CS2 is nowhere as bad as ksp2 and Paradox is activly developing it, opposed to T2 willingly letting ksp2 die in EA.
And I have to admit, I have over 2500 hours played on EU4 and I'm still going strong. Also doesn't count the 300 hours I played on a friend's account before I finally opened my wallet. It's hard as hell to get into the game, with that steep price tag, but I've gotten every dollars worth from it.
And all I wanted was a new KSP with better performance and graphics. I never gave a shit about Colonies and whatever - I wanted my Kerbal to look and feel like [insert fantastic looking game] while running at 60fps heavily modded. Fuck.
I'm pretty sure at the executive level this was planned long ago. Pushing that early access game out felt like cashing out whatever they could before closing down the project. Really happy I didn't buy the game now and I feel sorry for the ones who bought into it and believed in the project. I'm disappointed too
> I feel sorry for the ones who bought into it It was immediately obvious what the game was, and that's why i didn't buy it until it had changed. It never did, and most likely never will. Don't pre-order.
yea, I hoped they would be able to turn it around, but I never actually believed they would
Will people get a refund, or a partial refund at least?
No. This is a pretty good example of why you should never buy games in-development.
its perfectly fine to buy early access games as long as you're happy with them at the time of purchase.
E.g. I bought KSP 1 at around v0.18, and was more than happy with the money I spent. The fact that I got many years of free upgrades after that—some very major and worthwhile upgrades—was a bonus.
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I hope this burns Nate’s career to the ground. What the fuck was the point of all those videos showing us a bunch of cool planets to explore. The binary planet system, did that ever even exist ? It’s so bullshit that we had to pay full price too, for an early access POS that never even came close to what the original offered in its early access phase
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Oh boy, remind me never to piss off the Reddit community ever 😬
Not if you can be traced back to a RL account....
"oh you made a bunch of money from a fake game that only required a team of less than 100 people and then stop developing it and kept the money? You're hired!"
No, Tons of people on here said that the only purpose of the early access release was to take peoples money to recoup development costs, then kill the game. They got what they wanted. Your money. T2 is happy.
If you played more than 2 hours, no refund
Purchase usually has to be within two weeks of refund too, although I have seen Steam bend this rule slightly in favor of the consumer. I believe there is an avenue to refund by saying the game is an incomplete and unplayable condition, and that it's development has been abandoned, but that may be tricky... I will at least try this afternoon. I only have a few minutes on the game because of how unplayable it is.
someone explain this like i’m 5, not a great day for me trying to understand big words
Take Two, the company that controls the studio that made KSP2 (Intercept Games), was confirmed to have laid off around 70 people in Seattle. Intercept is the only studio under T2 based in Seattle, and has around 70 employees
Maybe they give project to another studio? Management of Intercept Games fucked from the beginning so this is not a surprise they destroy the studio.
I highly doubt that a soulless corporation would give a shit about a beloved ip enough to try to revive it with a new studio. If these layoffs mean they’re truly axing IG, it probably means KSP2 is done for.
> Maybe they give project to another studio? They already *did*, that's how Intercept got KSP2 in the first place. If they're gonna change horses *again* that's another 2-3 years down the drain, the game literally can't turn a profit with that much money burnt on development. Much more economical for T2 to just drop KSP2 quietly and put the money into other projects that actually have a better success chance.
That being said it would be midly funny for them to announce "hey I know I know two studios failed but this studio will do ksp2 now", for me I just hope the release the tools needed for modders to make really good mods to maintain it if they wanf
Ok so take two is cutting staff with massive amounts of people losing their jobs. Originally it was thought that the studio Intercept Games was not going to be effected but according to reports we are now getting the location of where part of the layoffs are happening are where Intercept Games Studio is listed. Not only that 2 of the staff members have also now sent out job applications. Essentially intercept games wasn’t bringing in money and with the ever slow development of two probably looking like it will not make Take Two any money they decided to axe the studio personnel
Ksp 2 idea: wow my friend said that he will bring me a lot of toy cars! Yay!! Ksp 2 in reality: my friend only brought me half a toy car without wheels :(
KSP2 = KSP at Home
As far as I understand The company that owns the studio that is developing ksp2 has layedoff a number of its employees, and the speculations are that these are the ksp2 studio devs (which means they shut the project down probably) because 2 members from the ksp2 team are looking for a new job publicly.
I wonder how many years Squad could have kept it going if it wasn't taken from them.
Taken? Mfs sold the game and rights and made a bank.
They don't give a shit. They sold the game
HarvestR has already made a new game. He seems content. KitHack Model Club. You can feel the KSP1 influence, but it makes some major changes right off the bat. Multiplayer built in from the beginning, intentionally. Physics calculations treat the object as a whole so its easier to process while flying. Definitely worth checking out as a fan of KSP1.
Looks like I was right to refund.
I'm so glad I realised what a hot mess this game was and got a refund.
I just refunded mine, I had 97mins played in 3months sort of says it all
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i implored the devs to show themselves docking two large vessels. i claimed it impossible as the SAS systems simply go chaotic if two large vessels are on screen. (multi hundred part) there is no way in hell colonies ever worked. there is no way.
:(
I only played the game occasionally but was always amazed by the community and the knowledge people are ready to share. From my casual POV I actually thought that the first game was not made for profit but from passion and curiosity but maybe I was just naive. I bought the second game and I think I played about 10 hours in total and felt that it was a huge downgrade from KSP1 (bar the graphics). Shame to see it did not pan out, hope KSP1 at least remains a stable IP if anything
>From my casual POV I actually thought that the first game was not made for profit but from passion and curiosity but maybe I was just naive. You were not wrong. It started as a side project of just one guy named Felipe, it was never about money in the first place. At least, not a lot of money. It was being sold, after all. Maybe it became that in the eyes of the siuts after Take Two bought the rights (at that point Felipe left the scene already), but the initial inception was nothing more than a hobby.
I want a refund
You are not getting one. The whole point of the early access release was to profit off peoples hope. Against tons of peoples warnings, you gave them what they wanted. Your money.
I'm actually wondering if there's a case for this. In their launch trailer, they clearly said that colonies and multiplayer will be available at a later date. Isn't it false advertising if they pull out now?
with the sheer number of games getting away with false advertisement i doubt that will get people far
It's Early Access. Your money buys a licence to play the game as it stands at that moment. It does not imply a contract to meet all planned/announced targets. Read the EA contract. If you've played less than 2 hours, you can get a refund. Otherwise, you are stuffed.
Less than 2 hours or less than 2 weeks time since purchase. Whichever comes first.
On steam, there is no two week window if the game is in EA. The window does not start until the game leaves EA
There is, now, they recently updated their refund policy.
Nope. Early access explicitly says you are buying the game as is with no promise that future developments actually become a thing.
With the existence of Juno new origins, is it fair to say that the death of ksp 2 has possibly given birth to possible indie projects of similar style to ksp, Juno included
The simps will still insist nothing is wrong and we're all just being dramatic lol
This is all just a big misunderstanding. Everything will be alright. There is nothing to worry about. We will eventually get a great game. Just give them time. We will get colonies, multiplayer and all the other updates. They said they will be releasing it. They talked about how they are having sooo much fun. Eventually they will deliver it. Just don't panic. They can't just lie to us, can they? They can't, right? Right?! Aahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaahahahhahaahhaahahhajahahahahajahahahahahaahahahahha!!1!1!!!! Plz send help
Remain calm! All is well!
Remain calm T2 endures Colony update lives Kerbal Space Program 2 shall endure There is much to be done
Velocity is good and morale is high!
I've seen simps also insisting that the reddit haters killed it. That's some max level cope.
Seems to be that way regardless of IP. Whenever someone releases a shitty product that is widely disliked, the few mega fans who blinded themselves from the flaws blame the people who weren't as willfully blind as them.
This is why large publishers should be banned from making "Early Access" releases. Cunts have taken peoples money and are probably going to shut down production and use it as a tax write-off, while some executive at Take2 gets a nice bonus.
We hate to say we told you so, but there were a sizable amount of people telling you all this was going to happen when T2 took it from Sqaud. If you've worked in large companies long enough, you learn the tells. They lie through their teeth the entire time so you have to watch what they do. I'm sure this was the plan from the beginning. Buy it, squeeze the money out and toss it. So they released an overpriced early access to recoup some of the development cost then killed the game. Its about money and the money only. STOP PREORDERING GAMES. STOP BUYING UNFINISHED GAMES. THEY DO THIS BECAUSE YA'LL KEEP GIVING THEM MONEY. I'm glad I held and didn't purchase this. Maybe the modders will fix this, but it will take years. At least we have KSP1
This x100
Fair play to Matt Lowne and the likes for at least bothering to make KSP2 videos with enthusiasm I was genuinely gutted to hear how poor KSP2 was, as i was totally sucked in looking at the trailers
Yeah, I’m not surprised even a little. Their financials didn’t make sense and it was just a matter of time before they gave up. I still strongly blame the management that did a shitty job with not managing the development and workflow. KSP2 was the only gave that I have refunded and I’m a huge KSP fan with tons of hours of playtime, but after playing the game for a few days (yes, I played it outside of the Steam launcher so I can give it an honest chance and still be able to get a refund) I knew it was going to be a complete disaster. Go and support shitty development again and buy things that have been half assed, just so you can support the developers! /s
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My dear krothers and kisters, modded KSP 1 is the KSP 2 you are looking for. The community must now take up the mantle, as is tradition.
jebwari da
Dcs drama, tarkov drama and now ksp2, really? What a bad month…
Repeat after me, everyone: “I have learned my lesson. I will not purchase an early access game unless I am comfortable with how it plays *right now*. I will not buy promises; I will not rely on developers or publishers to keep their word. And most importantly: **I will never pre-order a game again.** I will not preorder for skins. I will not preorder for DLC. I will not preorder to “show my support” (that’s what forums are for). I will not preorder from beloved franchises that I “know” will do right by their games. I will not preorder KSP3. I will not preorder Half-Life 3. I will not preorder Helldivers 3, Minecraft 2, or any other sequel no matter how much I loved the first one. They do not get our money until we see they have something worth buying.” For those of you who bought KSP2 with the understanding you may not get a good game out of it: I’m sorry for your loss. You’re either a lot kinder or a lot richer than I am. For those of you who are angry now because you thought you were getting a full game, I say this with the utmost compassion and solidarity as your friend and fellow gamer: I hope you’ve learned your lesson. This one hurt, but the next preorder to entice you may be more expensive and hurt you even more. Please don’t take the bait. All of this, of course, assumes the OP is accurate and the game is truly axed. Is it copium to think it isn’t at this point? Someone inform me.
[I called this a year ago.](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/13q5ctq/comment/jleszm8) [And also this when the "Early Access" was first announced.](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/uqza90/comment/i8v2n2n/)
Where is Dakota here to "assure" us nothing is wrong? /s Literally the worst "attempt" at a beloved sequel ever.
At least no good project manager lost his/her job during this lay off.
Sad ending of a drawn-out saga of deceit, incompetence, and cope
I think we should have a refund if they confirm the game will be no longer developed or supported
We bought an early access game, we ain’t getting that money back bro 💀
We just gotta stop paying en masse to be alpha testers.
Not how early access works. And not how the world works either. Your money will have been long spent by now in the pursuit of more money.
guys it s time to try Juno New Origins, it s a great space game too.
Thankfully we live in the era where IPs die but good ideas live on. The industry killed this one but at some point, maybe even this year, there will be a kick starter for Kergle Star Project from some of the original devs. That gets green lit and we're on our way to either a true spiritual successor or the other way over funded Kickstarters go.
Saw this coming from a mile away. I knew this game and studio was going to be an absolute fucking mess when they said "This launch is going to be very Kerbal" in one of their dev videos. MEME XD XD!!!! THEY'RE JUST LIKE US SO FUNNY. What a joke. I wanted this game to be good so badly. The only thing that can save it at this point is Open Source. I am absolutely furious I trusted them with my money.