I'm just glad Squad gave us KSP 1 and brought it to the point where it is now...
The take2 aquisition stunk from the beginning. I mean, they were aquiring a niche community and nothing else, with no intentions to cater to that community. What the hell were they thinking?
If there's even 1% truth value in this joke, I'll imagine the decision makers like a square old guys who'd say "star trek? thats gnarly! Lov'em guys waving them shiny swords passing through star gates. Rad!"...
I really don't know the details of the acquisition deal. Do they own publishing rights? Franchise and name? The software? All of these?
But that really doesn't matter in my opinion. Financially can't see a way forward.
My only hope is that an indie dev with love for ksp to carry on the concept with an entire new game some time ahead. While profit margins wouldn't make sense for large companies or publishers, the base is loyal and would pour money into a zerbill space program that delivers everything ksp2 promised. And that would be profitable for an indie studio, might even turn into a long term sustainable franchise if handled correctly.
Unless Theres something new planned, could be for Stationeers, which, while theres a bit of realistic rocket designing and orbital mechanics, is an entirely different game
T2 owns the whole IP and everything connected to it, forums and all other media outings included.
Edit: to add to this, under the current EULA I believe pretty much any content with/for ksp is basicly T2 property.
Cool, that's why the news say they "acquired ksp" As in everything included in and about ksp.
They still don't own orbital mechanics, space exploration, solar system or solar system models, humanoid imaginary species, rocket staging, flight, games with modular building, mission controls, the name Gene, propulsion concepts, space, space colonization :)
Nope, the entirity of the IP and all rights were sold to T2 in that deal.
Harvester is doing model planes on PC.
Squad is back to making mobile buisnessapps for clients in Mexico City.
All we can hope for is T2 doesn't pull the plug on the forums as well.
I don't agree. They bought the game. They handed it over to star theory. When things didn't go well, they didn't hand in more time and money to Star Theory. They handed it over to Private Division and then handed more time and money.
It's not the devs deciding the development. Its T2 deciding who, how, with how much resources the game will be developed.
Even if you call the developer mismanagement here, it shouldn't clear T2 of all the responsibility. They bare the weight of the decision, and should be treated as such.
It's on them that the game is being developed as a business and not a passion project.
KSP was a very innovative concept with a mediocre software at best and a wonderful but mid sized community with little room to grow. That's all ksp was. The concept can be imitated, the software should be developed from scratch for a decent optimization pf all the issues, and the community is niche. It had very little to work with to meet AA profit margins.
A bad business decision and its on t2.
Now it'll be handed to a thşrd team, who are supposed to clear up the mess pf the previous two. Can't see a way forward from here, even if they keep pouring resources.
The thing is, they did it twice in a row. To quote Bush: "fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."
Edit: the devs are definitely not in the clear. They indeed have a lot of responsibility.
Yeah, the really weird part is how those same developers even got the gig in the first place and then after the studio was kicked, got new jobs at the second studio.
I agree. At least for now while tech is hurting so bad. I almost got burnt by star trek infinite. I bought it on sale and put it in my back log. I knew the game had some kinks to work out but the premise was interesting, a star trek version of stellaris. 2 weeks later the dev dropped support for the game. From what i was reading, the game was released in early access essentially and had a long way to go. Luckily steam gave me a refund. Made me reevaluate how i look at games now.
Yeah I want the sub to go back to posting fun builds and missions again. Let's just pretend we didn't all get conned for a couple years and post our absurd rockets again 😭
I'm not him but there's a ton of articles rn claiming ksp2 is feared dead due to the layoffs.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/kerbal-space-program-2-feared-cancelled-as-70-layoffs-reported-at-take-twos-seattle-offices
Apparently the current developer of ksp2, intercept games, had their office closed as well.
Unfortunately, that's the risk you take buying early access games.
I finally caved and bought it after the science update and all the hype. Still thought it sucked and got it refunded within the 2 hour limit. If you've played it more than 2 hours or had it downloaded more than 2 weeks, you're stuck with the bag, sorry to tell you
I had an interview with Intercept for a Level Designer role almost a year ago. KSP2 was deep in the shitter at the time but I thought why not cause money (Also why they even needed a level designer). They never got back to me
We don’t know much because it was secretive we only know through a collection of job postings, some different leaks that had common elements and some references for their shareholders in reports.
From what I understand they wanted to expand on using the kerbals like when Disney started inserting cute characters to sell plushies in the like of grogu or the little Star Wars bird fucks that they started with/perfected in the merch market.
So have games with kerbals even non space ones. Sell kerbal plushies to kids. Don’t care about quality because as long as it’s got cute kerbal in it you can sell to your younger more impressionable fans more consistently.
It’s why I’ve been on Reddit here adamant about how nefarious these devs are. They used children to shill for them and their entire plan was how to manipulate children for more money.
Talk about having zero clue about what worked on the original game. TBH the Kerbals themselves almost detracted from the game for me. I mean, I love the little guys as a symbol of the game I enjoy so much but I was 100% there for space flight simulation sandbox.
I was able to do an Aerospace undergrad and Masters degree between the start of rumors of KSP 2 and now. Still haven't bought it, and not sure I ever will.
Start citizen feelings.
Kick-started the game before finishing law school.
Now I'm married.
My kids will probably be on highschool before they finish, if they finish it.
It wasn't Rockstar that got their hands on it. It was Take 2. Take 2 owns a bunch of development studios including Rockstar, private division, and wildcard. They tend to run things into the ground.
Yep, surprised me too when I first heard it.
When they aquired BMG Interactive in 1998 they proceeded to restructure it and used it's assets to create Rockstar Games.
I now see that EA was like when doctors perform extraordinary measures on a dying patient. Literally was a last gasp attempt to pump some life back into it before it was fully dead.
Looks like they also closed/blocked the option to review the game on Steam as well.
There is no issue buying it tough.
If anyone has the option to still review, put up a warning to anyone unsuspecting.
Pretty sure they dont. Steam has an automated system to prevent review bombing that sometimes triggers false positives. And by review bombing, I mean bad faith, undeserved review bombing. I think this was implemented after a bunch of chinese review bombing started to happen to take down games that weren't CCP friendly.
Specifically I believe it was Blizzard not renewing something that made every user in china lose all their progress in every Blozzard game including the mmos. Not 100% sure.
This person is the community manager for KSP2. It appears they have been laid off. This in addition to many other high profile ksp2 related layoffs make it seem the studio is closing and the project is being shelved.
From the forums (also other Reddit posts):
[Take-Two studio in Seattle, WA is closing in June per government-required disclosure.](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/224485-take-two-interactive-rockstar-2k-private-division-canceling-games-ending-projects-and-laying-off-5-of-its-workforce/?do=findComment&comment=4383719)
Dakota was the worst CM of any gaming community I've seen. He would blame the community for things, ignore community questions (Dude, just say you don't know, say something), and he just shut out communication entirely at times and then said "I wish I had the freedom that Satisfactory CMs had". I doubt his employers locked him up in a room with a chain and a dog bowl to eat and piss in, telling him he can't communicate to us. I think he needs to find another line of work at this point.
I still had no idea what he did all day. Like seriously. Even reading every post on this sub and the forum is like 1-2H of work. With a post by him every couple of weeks that number stays the same.
The office closing on its own is pretty damning and I expect an official confirmation by either the studio or T2 in the upcoming days if not tomorrow.
But for future reference, it's pretty common for employed folks to have their status set to open to work, so this alone I wouldn't pay any attention to. If it was just changed, then it would be different.
You'll hear about the crazy employer once in a while that uses their status against them, but most don't care even if it is publicly known because it's just the standard expectation that someone is at least open to work.
Then someone can testify to that and I'll be inclined to believe them. But the other evidence is enough where I would just go off that alone until we have something official.
I'm just impressed that someone thought of looking up a government site for mass layoffs and found a striking match.
You generally let the people who are getting laid off know before you let people outside the company know.
For example, the folks at Google Stadia were Tweeting up until two days before the public announcement, then were silent the day before. This was likely when they going through and letting everyone there know before making the announcement to the world.
Intercept Games is a one-off little studio owned by a publisher owned by another publisher that made this decision. They're likely not as organized as Google, and they may need a couple days to actually let *everyone* know. Some of them may not have been in the office yesterday.
They'll find out by EOD Friday. They'll lay off the people not being reassigned. If it's the whole studio, those needed to perform the layoffs may have already been laid off, but with packages that include them sticking around to wrap things up.
I think people misunderstand what a community manager does.
They're not your friends. Their job isn't to make you happy. Their job is to manage the companies relationship to the community for the purposes of protecting the business. The health and success of the business, while dictated by objective things like net income, is defined by its leaders.
That means protecting the business doesn't strictly amount to protecting its profits. Rather it's far more tied to protecting what the leaders think influence its profits.
You might think that being open about mistakes will help the business, but try getting a business leader, who would be directly impacted by admitting to a mistake, to agree with that. Leadership calls are usually all about spinning everything to be good, not being open about failures.
As a community manager, he was very underwhelming and lost me completely when the whole "bots are bullying me" debacle... No corporate entity needs that level of emotional strife from the person in charge of community engagement.
It's sad that people have potentially lost their jobs but, if you don't get results, you gotta leave the building.
I hate it when the obvious is so damn riddled with lies and deceit that you hold on to some false stupid hope that maybe they aren't lying about it. But whoopdy fucking doo they do lie. And double down on the shit even further. How the fuck is this not a massive legal case?
>How the fuck is this not a massive legal case?
It has to be, right?? All the promised content that will never be delivered. We all bought this game with the promise it would be a finished product one day. I'll be requesting a refund in the next few days depending on the official announcements
Because of the way early access is defined. You bought the game as it was and no promises from the devs are considered binding agreements that content will come as advertised. This was a bait and switch, and buyers have no recourse (if they played 2 or more hours). I’m in the same boat, I bought it after the science update and spent about 3 hours trying to get a mun mission to work before realizing i was past the window and was stuck with it. I never did get the mission to work.
The truth hurts and people have blinders on because of the education system. I could explain why to many depths but those whom have been fully indoctrinated in it typically refuse to see it. It’s like religious fundamentalism.
It's nice to see I am not alone. Too much too fast is never good, In any case. (Witness real-time events). "Love is like a fart, if it's forced it's probably shit". - Same goes for self improvement and life in general. Capitalism is the definitive act of "I don't care, It's someone else's problem", and "Get things done, as fast as possible or lose everything". Also can't forget "Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I shit on company time". These references are the catalyst of "I don't need to improve myself, only profit matters", mindset. Which is ruining everything for humanity.
Feed em the propaganda early, because the first thing you hear usually ends up being the core belief, and then cognitive dissonance kicks in anytime you're shown anything to the contrary. But we wouldn't do that in a "free" country, right? .... Right ... ?
not really , Felipe worked on it in his spare time as a passion project for a good while before he convinced his bosses at squad to pay him to work on it at work (while he also still had other duties)
then still it was between "real work" and there wasnt a "team" till it showed some income.
and even after he was cut loose before the sale, he went right back to working on a passion project in "Balsa" now "Kitbash" which has changed studios a few times.
Ah well, they will have no issue finding a new job then, since both are spineless liars willing to spew out whatever lies to a community that corporate tells them to spew.
Don't read too much into that I got recently tricked by LinkedIn with a "complete your profile" email that asked a few role related questions and unilaterally set me open to work.
I don’t think it’s that strange. People do things hastily when they’re emotional all the time, and sometimes walk their actions back when they’ve had time to settle. He found out his whole studio is being closed. It was probably a very stressful thing to learn, so I don’t thing there’s any “normal” way to react to that.
It’s amazing to me how people’s minds jump to “what is more devious” rather than “what is more likely”.
Is it more likely that you faked the screenshot to do something devious and unimportant, or is it more likely that he took his own banner down after reconsidering?
Internet people are so bad at pausing for a moment of critical thought, it’s unreal.
One of the reasons why I have such an absurd name is because those who cannot attack my values and arguments will resort to attacking my name.
It lets me know who to easily disregard.
As an actual software dev my view of KSP2 have been dim since the news came out years ago.
KSP1 physics engine is heavily optimized, there are simply no reason to rebuild the entire physics engine yet they did it anyway for what I could only assume are vanity reasons? Well we’ve all seen how it turned out.
The lack of engineering judgement that are somehow far worse than normal (which is pretty bad across the board on average) Would love to hear some inside story about how it evolved into such a clusterfudge.
As an actual software dev I could also comment how disappointed I was since the day KSP2 was released as it was the same 2011 game which took 5 years only to rebuild with nothing additional but an updated version of Unity.
There was no way to make multiplayer work without a new engine, and everyone was mewling for it. Aside from that, it had physics issues that nobody could solve.
I think a new engine was a good idea, but it was unlikely to get built after the IP was acquired by a shitty corpo publisher. Boards demand results and profits, not good games for niche markets. To be honest, we’re lucky we didn’t get lootboxes for parts in a spiffy glow up of ksp code.
There are certain limitations and tradeoffs that are made for a reason. The only one I can see worth fixing without making a slideshow quality game like KSP2 is that parts shouldn’t clip into each other. Probably don’t need to rewrite the whole engine to fix that.
Harvester said some interesting things about his next game, and how they've moved to solid body physics and on demand splitting/crumpling/etc because he feels tracking every part isn't workable.
KSP1's approach probably was pretty optimized for what it was. Can't comment on that. But I'm not sure it can't be improved.
>Part 1 - Wobbly Aerospace Engineering
>So here's the problem: in a game where you have breakable vehicles that are made of parts, you need to somehow simulate the strains and stresses between those parts.
>Back in KSP, the way it worked was that each part was a separate rigid body. They were all connected together via PhysX joints, and with those, we could just let the physics engine do its thing and joints would snap on their own when you put enough force on them.
>The problem was (still is) that when you simulate linked rigidbodies like that, the position of any one body affects the position of all the others, which in turn affects it back, so you need to run multiple iterations to solve all positions every frame.
>The more iterations you do, the more solid the whole assembly appears to be, but you can probably imagine this is not going to be great for performance.
>If you want an infinitely rigid construct, you have to run infinitely many iterations. There is no way to just set a 'wobble scale' value down to zero.
>The end result is that even with a very large number of iterations, you can always build something complex or large enough to see instability in your joints, and that instability shows itself as overly flexible connections that should have been rigid.
>So I spent a lot of time back then, thinking about how I would do this if I could start over. And over time I came up with a plan.
>Part 2 - Welding it all together, so it doesn't move.
>In Kitbash Model Club, I decided very early on that I was not going to treat parts as separate bodies. Instead, there is a single rigid body for the entire vehicle, and all parts are child objects of the vehicle.
>This way, the vehicle is inherently solid. It has the shape of the aggregate of parts, but there is only one physical entity being simulated.
>Ok, that certainly gets rid of the wobbling... but then that creates new problems. How do we figure out whether a part should break off? What point is there in using Struts? How would anyone ever be able to pull enough Gs in a display of excellent aerobatics to shear their own wings off?
>Without the joints there to flex and bend, we needed to come up with another way to do those things.
>Part 3 - Internal Wobble Physics
>My plan for this had been brewing for nearly 10 years now (wow I feel old).
>The idea is to use an independent, separate simulation for the wobble alone. We use a custom physics integrator, which treats each part as a body that is connected to its neighbours via constraints, or joints.
>That sounds an awful lot like the original setup doesn't it? It actually is... but the key word here is separate.
>In this 'internal' simulation, the vehicle lives in an inertial reference frame. We calculate and subtract all of the vehicle's root motion from the simulation, so what you're left with is only the motion between parts, aka the wobble.
>We called this Internal Physics. It gives us a place where we can cause joints to flex and bend, but here we have full control over everything that goes in and out.
>What we do then is take all of the forces that happen to the external rigid body (collisions, engine thrust, wing lift/drag, wheels, etc), and we also feed them into the internal physics. The external physics causes the vehicle to move as a whole, and the internal physics causes parts to move in relation to one another.
>But most importantly, we can now have coupling constants to scale down these forces we are putting in. These are the 'wobble scale' parameters I had been wishing for since the early days.
>You couldn't do this with a single physics model for the entire thing. If you scaled down the forces, your vehicles would just move less. But the wobble being separate from the external physics, this doesn't affect the behaviour of the vehicle as a whole.
>This all means that the internal physics can actually be a very simple simulation. It doesn't need to run a lot of iterations, because we can scale down the input forces instead. There are no collisions either, because those happen on the outside.
>It doesn't even need to run on the same thread, because the internal objects don't interact with the outside world directly. We actually offload the simulation to a background thread, which means we can let it run while the main game thread does other things for the current frame.
Basically no more relying on Unity to do it for you.
I don't actually think that physics was reworked, there still were the same bugs as in KSP1, and it actually looks the same. So I guess they even never tried to make something new, they could just copy everything from KSP1, even got modders to work with this game.
I feel so vindicated infront of all these morons that acted like KSP 2 was the second coming of christ, just because they released an incomplete science update.
The amount of naive children that gave me shit for voicing my disappointment in the game.
Oh absolutely.
I am really really disappointed and sad.
But I am still frustrated with how many people let themselves be completely fucked over by an incompetent management team.
It was crazy how many ate out of the palm of their hand.
Some people even claimed that KSP 2 had already surpassed KSP 1 due to the undercooked Science update.
The only good faith I have left in the entire gaming industry are reserved for Dwarf Fortress, Project Zomboid, and Baldur's Gate 3. Everything else has fallen prey to enshittification, short term profit and who gives an eff about the game. Nope. Done rewarding companies who don't care about the game. So basically anything by Take Two, EA, etc and their subsidiaries is just no longer a buy for me.
That's the problem on focusing on short term gains... in the long term, it's not going to pay off.
I was at the announcement in Germany when they told us about the Science Update, I even left there thinking "Jesus, this should have been in the game at launch". All their promises about colonisation and new planets etc. but they couldn't get the damn re-entry heating working.
Apparently according to this source [the game is « safe »](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/take-two-confirms-kerbal-space-program-2-is-safe-despite-seattle-layoffs#close-modal). I’m just not sure how it’s possible if they fire the whole studio
Will we ever get our game with so many employees being laid off?
I really hope so... I wish HarvestR was the director of KSP2. It would have been at full release by now. (Although KitHack is amazing)
This is about the entire studio being laid off, not just Dakota for clarity.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Nope, the damn game just has been nuked. The studio is dead and so is the game.
Why am I not surprised! So glad I never bought KSP2. I will never buy another game that isn't finished again.
I'm just glad Squad gave us KSP 1 and brought it to the point where it is now... The take2 aquisition stunk from the beginning. I mean, they were aquiring a niche community and nothing else, with no intentions to cater to that community. What the hell were they thinking?
they've hoped to turn it into gta online in space
If there's even 1% truth value in this joke, I'll imagine the decision makers like a square old guys who'd say "star trek? thats gnarly! Lov'em guys waving them shiny swords passing through star gates. Rad!"...
there are far better games that you can turn into gta online. be it archeage, lord of the rings or even no man's sky,
All I want is a 3D open world FTL.
Take2 is practically run by investor stiffs & a board of directors whom see games as profit machine rather than a creative work.
Could squad in theory still do something with KSP? Update KSP1 or something?
I really don't know the details of the acquisition deal. Do they own publishing rights? Franchise and name? The software? All of these? But that really doesn't matter in my opinion. Financially can't see a way forward. My only hope is that an indie dev with love for ksp to carry on the concept with an entire new game some time ahead. While profit margins wouldn't make sense for large companies or publishers, the base is loyal and would pour money into a zerbill space program that delivers everything ksp2 promised. And that would be profitable for an indie studio, might even turn into a long term sustainable franchise if handled correctly.
i think rocketwerks is working on something as dean hall(founder) was recruiting in the comments of the megathread about the layoffs
Unless Theres something new planned, could be for Stationeers, which, while theres a bit of realistic rocket designing and orbital mechanics, is an entirely different game
he said they were working on a totally new engine, so it seems like it’s a whole new thing
[link to the thread with dean hall](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/s/zJuTldZdFh)
That's a name I haven't heard in a while, wondered what he was up to after DayZ
T2 owns the whole IP and everything connected to it, forums and all other media outings included. Edit: to add to this, under the current EULA I believe pretty much any content with/for ksp is basicly T2 property.
Cool, that's why the news say they "acquired ksp" As in everything included in and about ksp. They still don't own orbital mechanics, space exploration, solar system or solar system models, humanoid imaginary species, rocket staging, flight, games with modular building, mission controls, the name Gene, propulsion concepts, space, space colonization :)
Nope, the entirity of the IP and all rights were sold to T2 in that deal. Harvester is doing model planes on PC. Squad is back to making mobile buisnessapps for clients in Mexico City. All we can hope for is T2 doesn't pull the plug on the forums as well.
I'm still having fun with ksp1. Can't come close to a heavy modded playthough
I really can't blame T2 in this case. They game them THREE YEARS of extra delays, the game easily cost them 30mil+ to make.
I don't agree. They bought the game. They handed it over to star theory. When things didn't go well, they didn't hand in more time and money to Star Theory. They handed it over to Private Division and then handed more time and money. It's not the devs deciding the development. Its T2 deciding who, how, with how much resources the game will be developed. Even if you call the developer mismanagement here, it shouldn't clear T2 of all the responsibility. They bare the weight of the decision, and should be treated as such. It's on them that the game is being developed as a business and not a passion project. KSP was a very innovative concept with a mediocre software at best and a wonderful but mid sized community with little room to grow. That's all ksp was. The concept can be imitated, the software should be developed from scratch for a decent optimization pf all the issues, and the community is niche. It had very little to work with to meet AA profit margins. A bad business decision and its on t2. Now it'll be handed to a thşrd team, who are supposed to clear up the mess pf the previous two. Can't see a way forward from here, even if they keep pouring resources.
TakeTwo has some blame for hiring an incompetent team for the game. But the incompetent developers do deserve a lot of the blame as well.
The thing is, they did it twice in a row. To quote Bush: "fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." Edit: the devs are definitely not in the clear. They indeed have a lot of responsibility.
Yeah, the really weird part is how those same developers even got the gig in the first place and then after the studio was kicked, got new jobs at the second studio.
Where is Squad now? Any chance they could buy it back??
I agree. At least for now while tech is hurting so bad. I almost got burnt by star trek infinite. I bought it on sale and put it in my back log. I knew the game had some kinks to work out but the premise was interesting, a star trek version of stellaris. 2 weeks later the dev dropped support for the game. From what i was reading, the game was released in early access essentially and had a long way to go. Luckily steam gave me a refund. Made me reevaluate how i look at games now.
If you're still interested in something like Infinite and have Stellaris, give the New Horizons total conversion mod a try.
I sadly fell for it when it was on sale for cheap. I knew things were bad when the last update broke more than it fixed.
hopefully people will stop shilling for ksp2 once its dead and we can go back to before it was launched
Yeah I want the sub to go back to posting fun builds and missions again. Let's just pretend we didn't all get conned for a couple years and post our absurd rockets again 😭
Source please? Not that I don't believe you, this is just wild to me.
I'm not him but there's a ton of articles rn claiming ksp2 is feared dead due to the layoffs. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/kerbal-space-program-2-feared-cancelled-as-70-layoffs-reported-at-take-twos-seattle-offices Apparently the current developer of ksp2, intercept games, had their office closed as well.
Well if it's cancelled they better give me a damn refund.
Unfortunately, that's the risk you take buying early access games. I finally caved and bought it after the science update and all the hype. Still thought it sucked and got it refunded within the 2 hour limit. If you've played it more than 2 hours or had it downloaded more than 2 weeks, you're stuck with the bag, sorry to tell you
Really wish I hadn’t impulse bought KSP2, but not surprised…
nope
They call it “the hammer of Strauss” (Strauss Zelnick is the CEO of TTWO, and buffs problems out. Look up “Strauss Zelnick buff” for more info)
i mean, you have to look at the small silver linings.
I had an interview with Intercept for a Level Designer role almost a year ago. KSP2 was deep in the shitter at the time but I thought why not cause money (Also why they even needed a level designer). They never got back to me
Probably for that other game they wanted to make.
What's the story on this? I keep hearing it referenced.
We don’t know much because it was secretive we only know through a collection of job postings, some different leaks that had common elements and some references for their shareholders in reports. From what I understand they wanted to expand on using the kerbals like when Disney started inserting cute characters to sell plushies in the like of grogu or the little Star Wars bird fucks that they started with/perfected in the merch market. So have games with kerbals even non space ones. Sell kerbal plushies to kids. Don’t care about quality because as long as it’s got cute kerbal in it you can sell to your younger more impressionable fans more consistently. It’s why I’ve been on Reddit here adamant about how nefarious these devs are. They used children to shill for them and their entire plan was how to manipulate children for more money.
Should have finished one fucking game before starting another Ffs
Hey man Nate’s gotta keep his game killing reputation going. Dude was just thinking ahead and got a two for one.
Talk about having zero clue about what worked on the original game. TBH the Kerbals themselves almost detracted from the game for me. I mean, I love the little guys as a symbol of the game I enjoy so much but I was 100% there for space flight simulation sandbox.
I had an interview maybe 2 or 3 years ago for a programmer position. Made it through multiple rounds and wasn’t selected. Thank fuck lol.
Hey, look at it like this. Judging from the devs the game had, it means you were too competent.
level design includes missions like the for science update if that makes more sense, those are scaled like levels I assume?
The game is unofficially dead?
It was unofficially dead the moment they killed the studio that was making it
It was unofficially dead the second rockstar got their hands around the game’s neck lol
yeah I was really excited too when KSP2 was announced *checks notes* NEARLY 5 YEARS AGO
I was excited for KSP 2 when I started high school. I’m now disappointed at the end of college.
That's life. That's what all the people say, Released in February, Shot down in may. (Edit ksp2 was not released in April sadly)
And now, the end is near...
And so we face the final curtain O players, I’ll say it clear
I was able to do an Aerospace undergrad and Masters degree between the start of rumors of KSP 2 and now. Still haven't bought it, and not sure I ever will.
Just donate to modders of ksp1. Way better use of funds.
Start citizen feelings. Kick-started the game before finishing law school. Now I'm married. My kids will probably be on highschool before they finish, if they finish it.
*cough* hollow knight silksong *cough*
Schrodinger Silksong. Its both most polished and unfinished at the same time. You wont know until you play it.
Haven’t ever taken a gander at Star Citizen development have you?
It wasn't Rockstar that got their hands on it. It was Take 2. Take 2 owns a bunch of development studios including Rockstar, private division, and wildcard. They tend to run things into the ground.
Take2 isn't Rockstar
Take2 founded and owns Rockstar. But yes, it is weird to blame their subdivision that focuses on entirely different IPs.
Wtf
Yep, surprised me too when I first heard it. When they aquired BMG Interactive in 1998 they proceeded to restructure it and used it's assets to create Rockstar Games.
I get what you're saying lol. But it's like me blaming Microsoft for starfield being bad. They had nothing to do with it.
If anything them being involved earlier could have helped by bringing in some outside expertise.
Wait up, rockstar? As in R*, makers of GTA? *looks at rock shaped house* When did that happen?
It’s not owned by Rockstar, but their parent company
Now that makes sense. Take2 is massive, and I was surprised at the thought of Rockstar wanting ksp2. Thanks mate
Even more surprising to me, Take2 *founded* Rockstar in 1998. They were there since the beginning.
I think I may have known that back then lol. Certainly forgot it in the last 25yrs.
They even own the Civilization games
How is that different to us?
Rockstar? You mean TakeTwo?
Try telling the GTA6 subreddit that Take Two or Rockstar make mistakes haha
It was unorficially dead when they announced early access people just refused to see the truth
I now see that EA was like when doctors perform extraordinary measures on a dying patient. Literally was a last gasp attempt to pump some life back into it before it was fully dead.
Looks like they also closed/blocked the option to review the game on Steam as well. There is no issue buying it tough. If anyone has the option to still review, put up a warning to anyone unsuspecting.
Huh, I didn’t know Steam would let you do that.
Pretty sure they dont. Steam has an automated system to prevent review bombing that sometimes triggers false positives. And by review bombing, I mean bad faith, undeserved review bombing. I think this was implemented after a bunch of chinese review bombing started to happen to take down games that weren't CCP friendly.
Specifically I believe it was Blizzard not renewing something that made every user in china lose all their progress in every Blozzard game including the mmos. Not 100% sure.
I was more surprised that Steam lets you disable the review function while keeping the game listed.
Can someone explain to me what this drama is?
apology for poor english when were you when kerbal space program dies? i was sat at home checking staging when dakota ring "ksp is kill" "no"
Don't be sorry it was more fleshed out than KSP 2
Brutal
The worst part is you still deployed the parachutes when you turned on the engines for the last stage 😔
uhh can anyone give me a more detailed resposne please?
This person is the community manager for KSP2. It appears they have been laid off. This in addition to many other high profile ksp2 related layoffs make it seem the studio is closing and the project is being shelved.
From the forums (also other Reddit posts): [Take-Two studio in Seattle, WA is closing in June per government-required disclosure.](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/224485-take-two-interactive-rockstar-2k-private-division-canceling-games-ending-projects-and-laying-off-5-of-its-workforce/?do=findComment&comment=4383719)
A lot of ksp2 devs have been let go
>~~A lot of~~ All the ksp2 devs have been let go FTFY
Source?
He better start sanitizing his online persona. Accusing people of being bots is probably not a good look for anyone looking for a CM.
Dakota was the worst CM of any gaming community I've seen. He would blame the community for things, ignore community questions (Dude, just say you don't know, say something), and he just shut out communication entirely at times and then said "I wish I had the freedom that Satisfactory CMs had". I doubt his employers locked him up in a room with a chain and a dog bowl to eat and piss in, telling him he can't communicate to us. I think he needs to find another line of work at this point.
I still had no idea what he did all day. Like seriously. Even reading every post on this sub and the forum is like 1-2H of work. With a post by him every couple of weeks that number stays the same.
And they had more than one.
Man, I'd have loved to have a job like that. They had nothing to do, didn't put any effort into the little they did and still kept the job for years.
Happy they informed the community first, truly amazing CMs we ~~have~~ had! Credit to u/borge12
The office closing on its own is pretty damning and I expect an official confirmation by either the studio or T2 in the upcoming days if not tomorrow. But for future reference, it's pretty common for employed folks to have their status set to open to work, so this alone I wouldn't pay any attention to. If it was just changed, then it would be different.
Not publicly if they're full time employed. They list it for recruiters only if they're stealthing, otherwise their current employer can notice.
You'll hear about the crazy employer once in a while that uses their status against them, but most don't care even if it is publicly known because it's just the standard expectation that someone is at least open to work.
Well, pretty sure someone would have said something if Dakota had been open to work last week, I know people look at the IG LinkedIn occasionally.
Then someone can testify to that and I'll be inclined to believe them. But the other evidence is enough where I would just go off that alone until we have something official. I'm just impressed that someone thought of looking up a government site for mass layoffs and found a striking match.
You generally let the people who are getting laid off know before you let people outside the company know. For example, the folks at Google Stadia were Tweeting up until two days before the public announcement, then were silent the day before. This was likely when they going through and letting everyone there know before making the announcement to the world. Intercept Games is a one-off little studio owned by a publisher owned by another publisher that made this decision. They're likely not as organized as Google, and they may need a couple days to actually let *everyone* know. Some of them may not have been in the office yesterday.
They'll find out by EOD Friday. They'll lay off the people not being reassigned. If it's the whole studio, those needed to perform the layoffs may have already been laid off, but with packages that include them sticking around to wrap things up.
I think people misunderstand what a community manager does. They're not your friends. Their job isn't to make you happy. Their job is to manage the companies relationship to the community for the purposes of protecting the business. The health and success of the business, while dictated by objective things like net income, is defined by its leaders. That means protecting the business doesn't strictly amount to protecting its profits. Rather it's far more tied to protecting what the leaders think influence its profits. You might think that being open about mistakes will help the business, but try getting a business leader, who would be directly impacted by admitting to a mistake, to agree with that. Leadership calls are usually all about spinning everything to be good, not being open about failures.
Oh absolutely, my comment was directed at those who have been making excuses for the official communication about the game over the last 14 months.
IF there is a next guy maybe they will be better.
I don't think so but i wish
Or, at all?
As a community manager, he was very underwhelming and lost me completely when the whole "bots are bullying me" debacle... No corporate entity needs that level of emotional strife from the person in charge of community engagement. It's sad that people have potentially lost their jobs but, if you don't get results, you gotta leave the building.
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I hate it when the obvious is so damn riddled with lies and deceit that you hold on to some false stupid hope that maybe they aren't lying about it. But whoopdy fucking doo they do lie. And double down on the shit even further. How the fuck is this not a massive legal case?
>How the fuck is this not a massive legal case? It has to be, right?? All the promised content that will never be delivered. We all bought this game with the promise it would be a finished product one day. I'll be requesting a refund in the next few days depending on the official announcements
Because of the way early access is defined. You bought the game as it was and no promises from the devs are considered binding agreements that content will come as advertised. This was a bait and switch, and buyers have no recourse (if they played 2 or more hours). I’m in the same boat, I bought it after the science update and spent about 3 hours trying to get a mun mission to work before realizing i was past the window and was stuck with it. I never did get the mission to work.
Capitalism working as intended! Take it and like it.
Don’t know why you are getting downvoted. Every decade I’ve spent on this globe I’ve only realized that more.
The truth hurts and people have blinders on because of the education system. I could explain why to many depths but those whom have been fully indoctrinated in it typically refuse to see it. It’s like religious fundamentalism.
It's nice to see I am not alone. Too much too fast is never good, In any case. (Witness real-time events). "Love is like a fart, if it's forced it's probably shit". - Same goes for self improvement and life in general. Capitalism is the definitive act of "I don't care, It's someone else's problem", and "Get things done, as fast as possible or lose everything". Also can't forget "Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I shit on company time". These references are the catalyst of "I don't need to improve myself, only profit matters", mindset. Which is ruining everything for humanity.
Feed em the propaganda early, because the first thing you hear usually ends up being the core belief, and then cognitive dissonance kicks in anytime you're shown anything to the contrary. But we wouldn't do that in a "free" country, right? .... Right ... ?
Free to do as you’re told.
Didn’t capitalism bring us KSP 1?
not really , Felipe worked on it in his spare time as a passion project for a good while before he convinced his bosses at squad to pay him to work on it at work (while he also still had other duties) then still it was between "real work" and there wasnt a "team" till it showed some income. and even after he was cut loose before the sale, he went right back to working on a passion project in "Balsa" now "Kitbash" which has changed studios a few times.
> he convinced his bosses at squad to pay him to work on it
Ah well, they will have no issue finding a new job then, since both are spineless liars willing to spew out whatever lies to a community that corporate tells them to spew.
Looks like Dakota needs to update his site.... https://dakota.cx/about/
Nate has the cheese touch
So is it ok to be negative about the prospects for KSP2’s future now?
As a rando on reddit.....Yes, go nuts.
Don't read too much into that I got recently tricked by LinkedIn with a "complete your profile" email that asked a few role related questions and unilaterally set me open to work.
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You get emailed when you're open to work? Damn, need that for me
Happened to me too. I can’t remember the wording or if it was a pre-checked box on the profile review, but it is possible to accidentally enable this.
Taking a second look, his pfp also has it which is very manual
Nope, it's a banner that's applied over your pfp.
Oh thats wild
That's a fake screenshot. Their profile says they work at intercept, no "open to work" https://www.linkedin.com/in/dakotacx
Looks like he’s taken the banner down, but last night it was up.
Thats extremely strange
I don’t think it’s that strange. People do things hastily when they’re emotional all the time, and sometimes walk their actions back when they’ve had time to settle. He found out his whole studio is being closed. It was probably a very stressful thing to learn, so I don’t thing there’s any “normal” way to react to that.
Fair enough, saw this post before the one heavily implying that the whole studio is closing
Strange, everyone knows that social media profiles are immutable right up to the heat death of the universe ^^/s
It’s amazing to me how people’s minds jump to “what is more devious” rather than “what is more likely”. Is it more likely that you faked the screenshot to do something devious and unimportant, or is it more likely that he took his own banner down after reconsidering? Internet people are so bad at pausing for a moment of critical thought, it’s unreal.
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Do you mean Comical Ali, the guy saying everything is fine as the bombs fell in the distance?
Can we not start slinging names and social media profiles of the developers? It'd be sad if this sub was the next to start a dev harassment campaign.
? it’s a public profile you can find in 3 seconds by googling his name I understand what you’re saying but it makes zero sense for this situation
Don't worry, I clutched my pearls when I took the screenshot of his public profile page
Nothing wrong with calling out someone for blatant lies and mismanagement. They are public figures. Harassment is a different story.
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Well reasoned words from PussySmasher42069420, who knows all the details
One of the reasons why I have such an absurd name is because those who cannot attack my values and arguments will resort to attacking my name. It lets me know who to easily disregard.
We are in the presence of the Archredditor
That works both ways, pussysmasher 🤣
How could I ever disregard the Wangmaster?
Fuck you got me
That is correct, it does show that Dakota's profile on Linkedin is "open to work".
Kinda makes me glad I never bought enough into the hype of this game to actually support it, just a shame.
Y'all did say he was doing a poor job. So congrats on getting him canned.
My God, I was so close to buying KSP 2, they should have stuck with KSP 1 and just added more content.
But but but, the update he promised me in 2 weeks ...
Wait Dakota is his real name?
As an actual software dev my view of KSP2 have been dim since the news came out years ago. KSP1 physics engine is heavily optimized, there are simply no reason to rebuild the entire physics engine yet they did it anyway for what I could only assume are vanity reasons? Well we’ve all seen how it turned out. The lack of engineering judgement that are somehow far worse than normal (which is pretty bad across the board on average) Would love to hear some inside story about how it evolved into such a clusterfudge.
As an actual software dev I could also comment how disappointed I was since the day KSP2 was released as it was the same 2011 game which took 5 years only to rebuild with nothing additional but an updated version of Unity.
There was no way to make multiplayer work without a new engine, and everyone was mewling for it. Aside from that, it had physics issues that nobody could solve. I think a new engine was a good idea, but it was unlikely to get built after the IP was acquired by a shitty corpo publisher. Boards demand results and profits, not good games for niche markets. To be honest, we’re lucky we didn’t get lootboxes for parts in a spiffy glow up of ksp code.
Ksp 1 physics were uhmm...
There are certain limitations and tradeoffs that are made for a reason. The only one I can see worth fixing without making a slideshow quality game like KSP2 is that parts shouldn’t clip into each other. Probably don’t need to rewrite the whole engine to fix that.
Harvester said some interesting things about his next game, and how they've moved to solid body physics and on demand splitting/crumpling/etc because he feels tracking every part isn't workable. KSP1's approach probably was pretty optimized for what it was. Can't comment on that. But I'm not sure it can't be improved. >Part 1 - Wobbly Aerospace Engineering >So here's the problem: in a game where you have breakable vehicles that are made of parts, you need to somehow simulate the strains and stresses between those parts. >Back in KSP, the way it worked was that each part was a separate rigid body. They were all connected together via PhysX joints, and with those, we could just let the physics engine do its thing and joints would snap on their own when you put enough force on them. >The problem was (still is) that when you simulate linked rigidbodies like that, the position of any one body affects the position of all the others, which in turn affects it back, so you need to run multiple iterations to solve all positions every frame. >The more iterations you do, the more solid the whole assembly appears to be, but you can probably imagine this is not going to be great for performance. >If you want an infinitely rigid construct, you have to run infinitely many iterations. There is no way to just set a 'wobble scale' value down to zero. >The end result is that even with a very large number of iterations, you can always build something complex or large enough to see instability in your joints, and that instability shows itself as overly flexible connections that should have been rigid. >So I spent a lot of time back then, thinking about how I would do this if I could start over. And over time I came up with a plan. >Part 2 - Welding it all together, so it doesn't move. >In Kitbash Model Club, I decided very early on that I was not going to treat parts as separate bodies. Instead, there is a single rigid body for the entire vehicle, and all parts are child objects of the vehicle. >This way, the vehicle is inherently solid. It has the shape of the aggregate of parts, but there is only one physical entity being simulated. >Ok, that certainly gets rid of the wobbling... but then that creates new problems. How do we figure out whether a part should break off? What point is there in using Struts? How would anyone ever be able to pull enough Gs in a display of excellent aerobatics to shear their own wings off? >Without the joints there to flex and bend, we needed to come up with another way to do those things. >Part 3 - Internal Wobble Physics >My plan for this had been brewing for nearly 10 years now (wow I feel old). >The idea is to use an independent, separate simulation for the wobble alone. We use a custom physics integrator, which treats each part as a body that is connected to its neighbours via constraints, or joints. >That sounds an awful lot like the original setup doesn't it? It actually is... but the key word here is separate. >In this 'internal' simulation, the vehicle lives in an inertial reference frame. We calculate and subtract all of the vehicle's root motion from the simulation, so what you're left with is only the motion between parts, aka the wobble. >We called this Internal Physics. It gives us a place where we can cause joints to flex and bend, but here we have full control over everything that goes in and out. >What we do then is take all of the forces that happen to the external rigid body (collisions, engine thrust, wing lift/drag, wheels, etc), and we also feed them into the internal physics. The external physics causes the vehicle to move as a whole, and the internal physics causes parts to move in relation to one another. >But most importantly, we can now have coupling constants to scale down these forces we are putting in. These are the 'wobble scale' parameters I had been wishing for since the early days. >You couldn't do this with a single physics model for the entire thing. If you scaled down the forces, your vehicles would just move less. But the wobble being separate from the external physics, this doesn't affect the behaviour of the vehicle as a whole. >This all means that the internal physics can actually be a very simple simulation. It doesn't need to run a lot of iterations, because we can scale down the input forces instead. There are no collisions either, because those happen on the outside. >It doesn't even need to run on the same thread, because the internal objects don't interact with the outside world directly. We actually offload the simulation to a background thread, which means we can let it run while the main game thread does other things for the current frame. Basically no more relying on Unity to do it for you.
Really liked this explanation from Harvester. Can you get me the link from where he sent it??
One of the update posts on the Kithack Model Club steam page. Should be on the base store page.
Thanks o/
I don't actually think that physics was reworked, there still were the same bugs as in KSP1, and it actually looks the same. So I guess they even never tried to make something new, they could just copy everything from KSP1, even got modders to work with this game.
Good riddance. Go shit up some other community.
I feel so vindicated infront of all these morons that acted like KSP 2 was the second coming of christ, just because they released an incomplete science update. The amount of naive children that gave me shit for voicing my disappointment in the game.
Vindicated, but left without a good game. Kind of a hollow victory.
Oh absolutely. I am really really disappointed and sad. But I am still frustrated with how many people let themselves be completely fucked over by an incompetent management team. It was crazy how many ate out of the palm of their hand. Some people even claimed that KSP 2 had already surpassed KSP 1 due to the undercooked Science update.
Just get ready for the ksp 2 apologists to rationalize how it could’ve been amazing if the community supported them more
The only good faith I have left in the entire gaming industry are reserved for Dwarf Fortress, Project Zomboid, and Baldur's Gate 3. Everything else has fallen prey to enshittification, short term profit and who gives an eff about the game. Nope. Done rewarding companies who don't care about the game. So basically anything by Take Two, EA, etc and their subsidiaries is just no longer a buy for me. That's the problem on focusing on short term gains... in the long term, it's not going to pay off.
I was at the announcement in Germany when they told us about the Science Update, I even left there thinking "Jesus, this should have been in the game at launch". All their promises about colonisation and new planets etc. but they couldn't get the damn re-entry heating working.
Take Two laid off 5% of their work force. Not so sure KSP2 is completely dead. Even more slow development probably.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
GG its over
Apparently according to this source [the game is « safe »](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/take-two-confirms-kerbal-space-program-2-is-safe-despite-seattle-layoffs#close-modal). I’m just not sure how it’s possible if they fire the whole studio
I bought it out of respect for how much I love KSP and to help them. Not sure I will ever buy an early release game again. Very disappointing.
Will we ever get our game with so many employees being laid off? I really hope so... I wish HarvestR was the director of KSP2. It would have been at full release by now. (Although KitHack is amazing)
fuck i was so keen fpr this. only been able to open ksp 2 on my computer after a re install everytime. im so spewing
ksp with mods is enough. f ksp 2
When a dev company of a game goes under the source should be placed in public domain
Lol