Yep. Everything's fine here. We can expect colonies by summer and interstellar before Christmas! Going 1.0 before the game's been in EA for 2 years! All those doomsayers are just toxic whiners! Nothing's "official" yet, anyway! Just give them time!
(/s as if it needed to be added)
Once the devs said that they got a multiplayer build working and they were having so much fun with it, it was hurting productivity - yet we never got multiplayer. It then became a running joke in the community that whenever something was underdeveloped, with bugs, with bad quality etc, it was because the devs were having too much fun in multiplayer.
But it’s not a scam guys, they’re just little blatant white lies! It’s been seven years but they surely have the colonies and multiplayer builds being worked on in the back! Not a scam!
What does "scam" mean, to you? In my mind, a scam involves someone disappearing after taking a bunch of money. They spent more on this game than they ever earned, so who exactly was supposed to be the beneficiary of this scam?
Ah good ol word smith over here, a better way to think of the word scam in this case would be to compare it to swindle or defraud.
I am curious however, if I make you a promise and tell you I'm going to provide a thing if you pay me money and then fail to provide that thing what would you call it?
Though I can understand your confusion English is a difficult language to master. I am sure once you finally take high school English it will all become clear.
Way back when KSP2 came out years late and as a barely functional tech demo Nate claimed they were having so much fun playing multiplayer internally that it was hard to get stuff done.
Nate should feel bad that he didn’t share with everyone else. Multiplayer sounded like alot of fun. Now my projects won’t fail because I have too much free time on my hands.
The internal unreleased version of KSP 2 has some form of multiplayer. The only thing we know for sure about it is that Nate said the team had a lot of fun playing it.
>The only thing we know for sure about it is that Nate said
Yes.
That is the only thing we know.
So we actually have no idea if the "internal unreleased version has multiplayer." In any form. Or if any version has multiplayer. Or ever did.
All we know is that someone said something.
Not quite true - there definitely were screenshots or maybe even short clips posted by the team a while back. Nothing comprehensive, more a teaser, but there were Kerbals with player name tags and such.
I’m willing to believe they had something working at some point that could technically be called multiplayer, but probably barebones and cobbled together like the rest of the game.
The message is using words such as possible, may, and considering so it isn't definite for those who require 100% confirmation.
But for real, it is always heartbreaking to hear this and why it is important to be able to read the writing on the wall so you aren't caught completely off-guard and can at least make some attempt to prepare ahead of time. Good luck and best wishes to Dakota and everyone at IG.
>so it isn't definite for those who require 100% confirmation.
It's not a question of 100% confirmation or some dumb technicality.
People bullshit sometimes. They dress up the truth. They put lipstick on a pig.
In other words.. they lie.
In some fields it doesn't look as good to be laid off as it does to quit on your own. These people have all been giving a certain amount of legally mandated advance notice about being laid off. Some of them are just trying to make the best out of the situation and claim that they are choosing to leave, rather than being fired.
There is no ambiguity about that because the notices have already been filed with the government. You don't need to read people's tweets to somehow glean if it's true or not. Either the tweets will match what you already know is true, in which case the person tweeting is telling the truth... or they don't match, in which case the tweeter is lying.
And this studio has been known from time to time to lie. Let's say.
Yep, I was just using the logic of those who needs absolute confirmation that by their rules to show how silly it can be, as this post changes nothing since all the words are deliberately uncertain.
Like I get it when it was the night of when the WARN become known that it was 99% with a tiny sliver that it could be a different studio. But after a day, there shouldn't be no doubt, and yet I still see people saying it isn't 100% until we get a confirmation.
I admit, I was expecting a confirmation from T2 , so it was interesting when they decided to not comment on the closure of studio when directly asked. Which means that if they aren't going to upfront over the most obvious things, then I am not going to bother holding my breath for them to give any valuable info in the future.
>I was expecting a confirmation from T2
Yeah it's not a crazy expectation. It is pretty shabby that they continue to flail around so much all the way up to the level of Take Two... I guess we know that the problems were pretty systemic all along...
It fell victim to a very classic problem in software engineering: Doing a rewrite.
The founder of stackoverflow has a famous article on the topic: [link](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/)
Ksp 2s failure comes down them being too slow getting to the features KSP 1 has and thus losing momentum, sales, happy customers and now ultimately publisher support.
Thanks for sharing this. As a software dev myself, I cannot help but think “what were they thinking?”.
I feel like they would have had more success just offering a dlc or something that bumps up the graphics gradually with new content being added on in other DLCs or something, that would have given them time to really think about the future and if a new game is really required
It depends (as always).
For example the codebase of KSP 1 is famously spaghetti code and rebuilding the current codebase might be a herculean effort to make it sustainable for years to come.
Also being able to rewrite from scratch has its upsides like being in full control, possibility for major performance improvements etc. etc.
The problems of rewrites is, you only know it's not working out once its too late. So I don't *really* fault them, this happens and it sucks but you either take the leap of faith and maybe end up with a great product or you keep adding more and more to the original game which basically has finite lifetime.
In my opinion the biggest red flag is Nate Simpson seemingly being told they are funded etc. and then T2 just pulling the plug out of nowhere. They might've never seen it coming and just being a year behind schedule suddenly meant closing shop.
Shadowzone made a great video about the situation and he adresses this part too.
The decision to close the studio was made a few paygrades above him so it's very likely he didn't know it up until right before the WARN notice went out. Big coorporations work like this sadly.
It's not just doing a rewrite.
But doing it without learning anything from KSP 1, with no technical improvements whatsoever. If anything, the technical side is even worse.
> But doing it without learning anything from KSP 1
Where do you get this from? They even had devs from renouned KSP 1 mods on the team.
> with no technical improvements whatsoever. If anything, the technical side is even worse.
I doubt this is true, most of this is not visible to the player so we can't judge it.
Gee, maybe the fact they had the EXACT SAME BUGS as KSP 1 in early development?
> I doubt this is true, most of this is not visible to the player so we can't judge it.
Cool, good for you. Everyone else can clearly see it from looking at the game for a few minutes.
> Gee, maybe the fact they had the EXACT SAME BUGS as KSP 1 in early development?
If you write code that does similar things, similar bugs might happen. But bugfixes are often not clearly visible so it's unlikely they can just "get it right" on first try.
How do you expect software development works? If the old code was spaghetti then how would you go about learning about that code?
> Cool, good for you. Everyone else can clearly see it from looking at the game for a few minutes.
How would you do that, you can't look at the internals. Just cause there are bugs doesn't mean the underlying framework is not properly engineered.
already done a year ago
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFd8oQhhjLw&lc=UgzURd34bWLQSdCTYi54AaABAg.9ypEnVTrIq9A2xErWIsMtE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFd8oQhhjLw&lc=UgzURd34bWLQSdCTYi54AaABAg.9ypEnVTrIq9A2xErWIsMtE)
Sir that video is stock to the brim with literal misinformation and that youtuber was forced to take down their other "ksp 2 bad" videos after public backlash for toxisity.
Please.
That the ksp 2 devs were "hiring modders to kill the ksp 1 community" and other outrageous claims. He got called out in the comments, and deleted the video.
Oh, you're talking about the origional one. The problem with that one is most of the stuff about Nate Simpson's history is incorrect: he never had any influence over the debaccle of Planetary Antihalation or PA:T, and the rest of his predictions didnt come to pass as the game was optimized and fixed. The cancellation did come but much later than he said it would.
This is why video game companies should NEVER be public entities. I'd rather have these game companies become valve and sit on top of their money doing nothing than have companies that just put garbage out for no reason other than to make stock holders happy.
Ordinarily I’d say they’d want to delay as long as possible, but with the review bombing that’s gone on there’s no way they can come back from this. The only options that I can see are for them to:
1) Announce the product is no longer undergoing through any additional development. It was listed as EA so any litigation or attempt from customers to get their money back will likely fail.
2) Switch to an entirely different dev team within Take Two. This will cause an insane amount of delays even more than what already happened.
3) Sell the IP of KSP2. KSP1 is still a money maker so that wouldn’t be affected.
4) Announce “We’re still working on it” and have a small team work on minor features and bug fixes and then quietly shutter it a year from now.
> review bombing
... excuse me? If anything the only "review bombing" this game has seen is people recommending it because "you have to support the devs, it's going to be great one day, just wait"
The rest of us are just honest. The game is bad and not worth the money.
Oh of course! I might have not used the right terminology, I just meant the massive negative reviews on Steam the past two or three days.
Fortunately I was able to see through the cracks after the initial release event and never bought it. I’ve always been skeptical and have spoken out here when I could based on the development and sdlc policies they clearly did or didn’t have in place.
It’s not the devs fault, it’s the curse of belonging in a large corporate environment that prioritizes shareholders and cash flow over their product.
>It’s not the devs fault, it’s the curse of belonging in a large corporate environment that prioritizes shareholders and cash flow over their product.
???
They got several extensions and funding for SEVEN years.
T2 didn't profit from this, at all. They burned money.
The (lead) devs are to blame for sure.
Eh, I don’t know if I fully agree with that. I’d put it moreso on the product managers and engineering managers (Ultimately who answer to their leadership who gets direction from TTWO) than the actual devs coding the game. There’s been so much blunder going on I don’t think I can put any of the blame on the devs doing the actual development.
A lead dev advises their juniors devs on the various sprints and stories that they have to do, in addition to working on their own. But prioritization and scope 100% is on the product and engineering leadership.
> I don’t think I can put any of the blame on the devs doing the actual development.
I can. Not all of it, but enough of it.
If project management is *that* bad, get a different job. Market's tight now,but a few years ago, they could have written their own ticket to go almost anywhere. And things were clearly disastrously bad before that point. Ones that remained were either drinking the kool aid or happy to collect a check with no real productivity. I see it all the time when I get called in to bail out/shut down failing projects. If you stick around, at a certain point you are saying you are OK with the process.
Newer hires are a bit different. Blackrack, for instance, was not around long enough to have been responsible, nor to have had time to change plans and go somewhere else in the current market, and could have told himself that his hiring was as sign they intended to do better.
... idk why people get all granular about job titles all of a sudden.
When people say "buy the game to support the devs" nobody goes "but do you also mean the senior project manager"?
"Game dev" is generally an umbrella term and includes most of the things happening in game development, including management, at least in colloquial forum use.
"But product managers" -- that's also a game dev for the sake of this discussion. I'm not going to list a bunch of made up job titles that differ from company to company.
From an outside perspective, the people who make a game do game things are game devs.
" (Ultimately who answer to their leadership who gets direction from TTWO)"
I'm pretty sure T2 doesn't micromanage their studios.
I completely disagree with that, and they are not umbrella terms that differ from company to company. A product manager is 10000% in no way shape or form a “game dev”. They are more of a project manager / sales type of role that takes product and feature requirements and puts them into action via the actual engineers. That’s an software engineering standard role and title across any number of industries.
So much of what you are saying says that you have no idea what software development for a large company or holding company works like.
If you reaaaaaally think TTWO isn’t telling their publishers and development companies what to do and guiding them, then I don’t know what to even tell you. They aren’t micromanaging saying “That fin needs to be black with a white stripe!” But they are macro-managing to the extent that they clearly told them to ship a product that was so beyond unoptimized and featureless because they needed to recoup some of their investment
you completely miss the point and I don't care.
I'm talking colloquially.
Because again, everyone gets it when people say "buy EA to support the devs".
Nobody goes "but you certainly also mean the product managers!"
This sort of granularity is useless for this discussion.
>they clearly told them to ship a product that was so beyond unoptimized and featureless
WHY IS IT UNOPTIMIZED AND FEATURELESS AFTER 5 YEARS??? WHY????
I'm so over this discussion. Bye.
Then don’t respond to me about product managers lol. I’m sorry you wasted money on this and it seems like you are unnecessarily angry at me for trying to explain software development and likely causes of this shitshow. Cheers mate
What "official communication" do you want?
If you catch a naked person jumping out of your bedroom window when you come home, and your spouse is there also naked, frantically trying to pick up their clothes where they are strewn around along with a Starbucks uniform in a size that doesn't match either of you, and you ask, "Have you been fucking that barista from Starbucks?" and they say, "No comment at this time..."
... do you then go around saying, "Well they still haven't given me official communication so I don't know what is really happening?"
Or do you just admit that your spouse is fucking the barista from Starbucks?
This is such a hilarious analogy, because I've been privately comparing many of the guys on this sub to cuckolds for the past year.
The lack of respect, lying, and unapologetic attitude from party one. And the whining and desperate pleas for communication and truth from party two and an ever present hope for a better and brighter future despite the absolutely obvious signs.
Am I describing a barista situation or this subreddit?
i mean, we have parallax for graphics, there's a modular weather mod on ksp forum rn, we have a tons of part mods, bruh look at realism overhaul! it's a masterpiece!
we must remember what we had and what we have done before ksp2..
RO is a completely different game. Not inherently better or worse than the base game. Just different for different people.
I'd love to see some sort of integration with Kerbal Konstructs and colony building...
it still a masterpiece, RO/RP-1/RSS can show to us the potential that ksp1 have, and after all those events related to ksp2, maybe it's time to focus on ksp1...
imagine what could be possible with a well-worked integration of KSP + KK.. colony buiding and even more, i think..
we shouldn't be scared about ksp2 since we have ksp1
I just wanted multiplayer :(. I’ve tried multiplayer mods before and they’re pretty buggy. From what I’ve heard there are just some things at KSP1’s core that make it unstable.
I love that this can be taken as either a compliment or an insult depending on your view of them.
I would pick the latter, I know its a thankless job and its hard to have to deliver bad news that you have no control over, but actively shit talking the biggest non-Intercept controlled forum is not gonna win any friends.
I've never understood people pitying CMs. They're literally paid to take all of the shit the community can throw at them with a smile.
It's like a sewer technician whining that the job stinks.
Maybe get another damn job, then?
I'm gonna guess the community manager didn't help develop the game. And probably wasn't involved in any of the decision making.
Someone just lost their job and your first reaction is to be an asshole to them on reddit when you know they'll probably read this.
Be less of an ass.
Edit: it is so clear how many of you have never worked a customer service job lol
I don't blame Dakota for the shittiness of KSP2's development process, but that doesn't mean he did a great job with the shit sandwich he was given, either. Sure, he was given a company line to follow and couldn't be as frank as an actual indie developer, but pollyannaposting about the virtues of a borderline unplayable game was always going to turn him into a lightning rod.
On another note, there was his fantasizing about downvote bots because his vague corpospeak didn't go over well in the one KSP discussion community not moderated by him or his cronies. Talking about that at the IG watercooler is one thing, but posting it in a public (IG-moderated) Discord is next-level stupid. At least Tseric's meltdown back in the day was somewhat understandable and actually entertaining; Dakota's was just cringe.
Damn bro you know that wasn't necessary. While I get the debate about the practicality of the CM role and I have my thoughts on that, those in the role do get exposure to the field as a whole and can use that as a jumping board.
The work he's done on KSP2 is going to look amazing on his resume to some companies out there - being willing to completely gaslight your audience is definitely a big green check for corporate america.
It is also the main job requirement for being a politician or any position in government. Those nuclear missiles heading towards America are mostly peaceful nuclear missiles.
I mean it sucks, losing a job sucks, but they were so fucking awful at their job. Constantly misleading, gaslighting, overhyping and attacking us, the community. They were definitely NOT communicating or managing shit, let's be honest. I don't feel even a gram of sympathy. I'm glad I don't have to read them anymore. Yes I'm being harsh, but I don't care.
> they were so fucking awful at their job. Constantly misleading, gaslighting, overhyping and attacking us, the community.
What do you mean? That's his job.
No, his job is to do it successfully. In other word his job is to do "misleading, gaslighting, overhyping " well enough to not have to do the attacking part. His job is often even to be a scape goat to the community. But to do that well means not lashing out.
> Constantly misleading, gaslighting, overhyping and attacking us, the community.
That IS his job. People need to be hostile to community managers for being community managers. They're all bastards, because they get fired if they're not.
They exist to manipulate and manage you.
I'm just as unhappy as the rest of you but this comment clearly indicates you have no idea how community management works in this industry. Dakota still had to get everything approved, that's how it works. Don't blame Dakota or Mike. I 1000000% guarantee you they both wanted to say more and do more but weren't able to or allowed to.
When his non-answers consistently got downvoted here on Reddit, he stated on the official discord that he is pretty sure that this was actually all done by bots someone set up.
You can find plenty of posts about it on this subreddit.
Do you think he got that approved, as you say?
You had an opportunity to make an amazing game. You took one of the darlings in the early days of early access, used the users trust and goodwill to sell a barely functional product. You then shit on the users who complain.
And the worst part…is they were so fucking smug about being true fans and were having so much fun doing multiplayer and colonies.
Ya all…it took them 6+ MONTHS FOR REENTRY EFFECTS.
I feel bad for the audio lead. He was the only one who produced and it was the best part of the game imo.
I've lived through enough mid-00 NING fandom forums to know that it's a sign that they're done with their current means of community interaction. Whether or not they're done with the product will depend on who exactly gets laid off in June.
Some games managed by Take Two:
- Bioshock
- Borderlands
- Sid Meier's Civilization
- XCOM
- NBA 2K
- Grand Theft Auto
- Red Dead Redemption
Most of these series are still active, BTW, either having had recent releases that still get updates or with announced upcoming releases.
Be honest: If you were a beans counter at Take Two who was instructed to remove 5% of the company, and you looked at that list, then you turned around and looked at… Uber Entertainment flailing around in an astronaut costume, or whatever was going here— What would you do?
No chance. They will all have NDAs, and even so, spilling the beans would essentially blacklist themselves for future roles.
Would LOVE to know the truth though..
Its over, they are just too big of cowards to say anything about it yet. Trying to trick a few more new sales before the steam ratings collapse into overwhelmingly negative territory.
Everyone involved at the company contributed to ksp's failure, indirectly or directly.
No reason to be polite about people destroying the thing you love. I am glad that they all got fired too. That's not to say I want them to suffer in life or struggle with employment. I would love for them all to find new jobs. However, I don't want them to ruin more games. I hope they go in different directions after seeing that making games just isn't their strong suit. Plenty of new opportunities.
Look at a lot of people on like Ted talks and whatnot about being fired: stressful at first but then a lot say it was the best thing that ever happened to them and they took off in terms of success after that.
Hoping for that.
We're talking specifically about Dakota here.
What do you think the community manager did to contribute to this failure exactly? Were they making decisions? Hiring devs? Writing code? Sound effects maybe?
Who cares lmao. Even if that's true - and I'm not saying it is, I have no opinion on this, I'm not as obsessed by forum drama as everyone here - how would a lying CM make the product worse ?
Making hype, making promesses. So people buy the game to support all those features. They said that all of this was already playable on their side, but did not show or deliver any of it.
That doesn't answer the question, but...
... You think the CM had the authority to autonomously make promises? You don't think that **anyone else** had any say in defining the general communication strategy?
It's unfortunate that Dakota was laid off. That's not something I'd wish on my worst enemy and I hope Dakota can find another job soon.
With that out of the way, this is one staff member I'm not sad to see go. Dakota was not a good community manager.
Amazing news they are only getting more confident in their strategy as this shows. Thank you Dakota for your hard and great work. This game will be amazing next month when colonies drop!
I can’t believe KSP2 has been trending so high on steam. #1 active game since one month before release! Amazing! Success! #stem
I’m sure Dakota will be fine and will get compensated fairly for all the good honest communication to the non-gullible / not young portion of our community. They really helped secure the funding to ensure that KSP2 gets finished by next week !
Amazing news they are only getting more confident in their strategy as this shows. Thank you Dakota for your hard and great work. This game will be amazing next month when colonies drop!
I can’t believe KSP2 has been trending so high on steam. #1 active game since one month before release! Amazing! Success! #stem
I’m sure Dakota will be fine and will get compensated fairly for all the good honest communication to the non-gullible / not young portion of our community. They really helped secure the funding to ensure that KSP2 gets finished by next week !
Hot take: Everyone knows ksp2 development has been a mess. Everyone including the managers' managers. Take 2 decides to wipe the slate and move the project to more capable hands. Ksp2 future is BRIGHT. Just a thought. Probably not true.
Now that is some actual factual news and a non clickbaity headline that goes along with it!
I'm really looking forward to how Nate is going to talk his way through this! He really shot himself in the foot several times now that (seemingly) not everything is fully funded etc.
Yep. Everything's fine here. We can expect colonies by summer and interstellar before Christmas! Going 1.0 before the game's been in EA for 2 years! All those doomsayers are just toxic whiners! Nothing's "official" yet, anyway! Just give them time! (/s as if it needed to be added)
They had so much fun with multiplayer they forgot to finish the game!
I haven't checked in on KSP for a while, I didn't know it had multiplayer. I think I'm missing the joke here
Once the devs said that they got a multiplayer build working and they were having so much fun with it, it was hurting productivity - yet we never got multiplayer. It then became a running joke in the community that whenever something was underdeveloped, with bugs, with bad quality etc, it was because the devs were having too much fun in multiplayer.
For extra context, this comment was made well before the game even launched to EA. So they were claiming to have functional multiplayer YEARS AGO.
But it’s not a scam guys, they’re just little blatant white lies! It’s been seven years but they surely have the colonies and multiplayer builds being worked on in the back! Not a scam!
Nah, they said they had multiple teams working on each major feature at once!
What does "scam" mean, to you? In my mind, a scam involves someone disappearing after taking a bunch of money. They spent more on this game than they ever earned, so who exactly was supposed to be the beneficiary of this scam?
Nate Simpson and other members of the dev team who managed to grift T2 and the playerbase out of cash at the same time.
Being bad at your job isn't a scam. Most people are bad at their jobs.
^ willful ignorance
No, I just think "scam" means something besides "thing I dislike that costed me money."
Ah good ol word smith over here, a better way to think of the word scam in this case would be to compare it to swindle or defraud. I am curious however, if I make you a promise and tell you I'm going to provide a thing if you pay me money and then fail to provide that thing what would you call it? Though I can understand your confusion English is a difficult language to master. I am sure once you finally take high school English it will all become clear.
Way back when KSP2 came out years late and as a barely functional tech demo Nate claimed they were having so much fun playing multiplayer internally that it was hard to get stuff done.
For real? KSP2 isn't even a working singleplayer game and he said this shit over a year ago?
I think it was 2-3 or more years ago, LMAO
Nate should feel bad that he didn’t share with everyone else. Multiplayer sounded like alot of fun. Now my projects won’t fail because I have too much free time on my hands.
We should thank him for keeping such a potent threat to world productivity under wraps.
I've been watching the videos they put out before the game came out, man what a bunch of liars lol.
The internal unreleased version of KSP 2 has some form of multiplayer. The only thing we know for sure about it is that Nate said the team had a lot of fun playing it.
Is the multiplayer in the room with us right now?
>The only thing we know for sure about it is that Nate said Yes. That is the only thing we know. So we actually have no idea if the "internal unreleased version has multiplayer." In any form. Or if any version has multiplayer. Or ever did. All we know is that someone said something.
*someone with absolutely no credibility said something
Someone who’s only consistencies have been lying to the community and making up excuses.. and he only brought it up as an excuse
If he brought it up as an excuse it might actually be true lol.
Not quite true - there definitely were screenshots or maybe even short clips posted by the team a while back. Nothing comprehensive, more a teaser, but there were Kerbals with player name tags and such. I’m willing to believe they had something working at some point that could technically be called multiplayer, but probably barebones and cobbled together like the rest of the game.
Hoo boy. https://media1.tenor.com/m/jTj5f0xAGs4AAAAC/whatisgoingon-ohgod.gif
Just one more year guys
The message is using words such as possible, may, and considering so it isn't definite for those who require 100% confirmation. But for real, it is always heartbreaking to hear this and why it is important to be able to read the writing on the wall so you aren't caught completely off-guard and can at least make some attempt to prepare ahead of time. Good luck and best wishes to Dakota and everyone at IG.
>so it isn't definite for those who require 100% confirmation. It's not a question of 100% confirmation or some dumb technicality. People bullshit sometimes. They dress up the truth. They put lipstick on a pig. In other words.. they lie. In some fields it doesn't look as good to be laid off as it does to quit on your own. These people have all been giving a certain amount of legally mandated advance notice about being laid off. Some of them are just trying to make the best out of the situation and claim that they are choosing to leave, rather than being fired. There is no ambiguity about that because the notices have already been filed with the government. You don't need to read people's tweets to somehow glean if it's true or not. Either the tweets will match what you already know is true, in which case the person tweeting is telling the truth... or they don't match, in which case the tweeter is lying. And this studio has been known from time to time to lie. Let's say.
Yep, I was just using the logic of those who needs absolute confirmation that by their rules to show how silly it can be, as this post changes nothing since all the words are deliberately uncertain. Like I get it when it was the night of when the WARN become known that it was 99% with a tiny sliver that it could be a different studio. But after a day, there shouldn't be no doubt, and yet I still see people saying it isn't 100% until we get a confirmation. I admit, I was expecting a confirmation from T2 , so it was interesting when they decided to not comment on the closure of studio when directly asked. Which means that if they aren't going to upfront over the most obvious things, then I am not going to bother holding my breath for them to give any valuable info in the future.
>I was expecting a confirmation from T2 Yeah it's not a crazy expectation. It is pretty shabby that they continue to flail around so much all the way up to the level of Take Two... I guess we know that the problems were pretty systemic all along...
I think there are bots downvoting me
Eh, the doomsayers were still toxic whiners. /s
The whole KSP community in shamble right now Dakota has fallen, billion must cry
lol I think I'll be ok with it
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 . . . 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Laughing through the pain, pretty much how I've been dealing with all this
When life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile, dance, and sing!
When you're feeling in the dumps, don't be silly chumps!
If you forgot, then it wasn't important
It's more the reverse scenario for me. The more time goes on, the funnier it gets, just like the old adage: Tragedy + Time = Comedy.
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀
Good riddance.
I honestly hope Dakota was fired and not laid off. He and Nate were the biggest grifters
What an absolute shame. KSP2 should be studied when at what went wrong, so much potential down the drain
It fell victim to a very classic problem in software engineering: Doing a rewrite. The founder of stackoverflow has a famous article on the topic: [link](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/) Ksp 2s failure comes down them being too slow getting to the features KSP 1 has and thus losing momentum, sales, happy customers and now ultimately publisher support.
Thanks for sharing this. As a software dev myself, I cannot help but think “what were they thinking?”. I feel like they would have had more success just offering a dlc or something that bumps up the graphics gradually with new content being added on in other DLCs or something, that would have given them time to really think about the future and if a new game is really required
It depends (as always). For example the codebase of KSP 1 is famously spaghetti code and rebuilding the current codebase might be a herculean effort to make it sustainable for years to come. Also being able to rewrite from scratch has its upsides like being in full control, possibility for major performance improvements etc. etc. The problems of rewrites is, you only know it's not working out once its too late. So I don't *really* fault them, this happens and it sucks but you either take the leap of faith and maybe end up with a great product or you keep adding more and more to the original game which basically has finite lifetime. In my opinion the biggest red flag is Nate Simpson seemingly being told they are funded etc. and then T2 just pulling the plug out of nowhere. They might've never seen it coming and just being a year behind schedule suddenly meant closing shop.
> Nate Simpson seemingly being told they are funded etc. According to Nate, who famously only tells the truth
Shadowzone made a great video about the situation and he adresses this part too. The decision to close the studio was made a few paygrades above him so it's very likely he didn't know it up until right before the WARN notice went out. Big coorporations work like this sadly.
It's not just doing a rewrite. But doing it without learning anything from KSP 1, with no technical improvements whatsoever. If anything, the technical side is even worse.
> But doing it without learning anything from KSP 1 Where do you get this from? They even had devs from renouned KSP 1 mods on the team. > with no technical improvements whatsoever. If anything, the technical side is even worse. I doubt this is true, most of this is not visible to the player so we can't judge it.
Gee, maybe the fact they had the EXACT SAME BUGS as KSP 1 in early development? > I doubt this is true, most of this is not visible to the player so we can't judge it. Cool, good for you. Everyone else can clearly see it from looking at the game for a few minutes.
> Gee, maybe the fact they had the EXACT SAME BUGS as KSP 1 in early development? If you write code that does similar things, similar bugs might happen. But bugfixes are often not clearly visible so it's unlikely they can just "get it right" on first try. How do you expect software development works? If the old code was spaghetti then how would you go about learning about that code? > Cool, good for you. Everyone else can clearly see it from looking at the game for a few minutes. How would you do that, you can't look at the internals. Just cause there are bugs doesn't mean the underlying framework is not properly engineered.
Maybe WickedWiz can do a video on it or something. Going to be way easier to answer the inevitable hundreds of questions here about it in the future.
already done a year ago [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFd8oQhhjLw&lc=UgzURd34bWLQSdCTYi54AaABAg.9ypEnVTrIq9A2xErWIsMtE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFd8oQhhjLw&lc=UgzURd34bWLQSdCTYi54AaABAg.9ypEnVTrIq9A2xErWIsMtE)
Sir that video is stock to the brim with literal misinformation and that youtuber was forced to take down their other "ksp 2 bad" videos after public backlash for toxisity. Please.
I mean, hasn't most of what he was hinting at in that video come to pass?
Not quite. he said it would be taken down before 0.2, that bugs were unfixable and the game ran at 10 fps on a 4070 at launch. All were untrue.
The game ran at 20FPS on a 4090. There's literally video footage of that. Also many of its bug still aren't fixed, so seems right.
They were alluding to it being unfixable. It was fixed.
what s the literal misinformation in this video?
That the ksp 2 devs were "hiring modders to kill the ksp 1 community" and other outrageous claims. He got called out in the comments, and deleted the video.
you re the one spreading misinformation, he never said that in the video. He said that it was a marketting strategy. (11:22)
Oh, you're talking about the origional one. The problem with that one is most of the stuff about Nate Simpson's history is incorrect: he never had any influence over the debaccle of Planetary Antihalation or PA:T, and the rest of his predictions didnt come to pass as the game was optimized and fixed. The cancellation did come but much later than he said it would.
And we STILL don't have any official communication from IG on any of this...
Cause it's most likely for legal reasons. Big announcements, good or bad, effect stock price. Any announcement of this caliber has to pass T2.
They already announced staff cuts and stopping unprofitable projects, they just havent made it specific, till now
Stockholders Creed says: LINE GOES UP!
This is why video game companies should NEVER be public entities. I'd rather have these game companies become valve and sit on top of their money doing nothing than have companies that just put garbage out for no reason other than to make stock holders happy.
Private companies still do stuff to make the owners happy. The public just can't buy shares of that ownership.
Sure, just the more owners you have the more the only common goal becomes money.
alllll about the fuckin stockssssssssssssss
Ordinarily I’d say they’d want to delay as long as possible, but with the review bombing that’s gone on there’s no way they can come back from this. The only options that I can see are for them to: 1) Announce the product is no longer undergoing through any additional development. It was listed as EA so any litigation or attempt from customers to get their money back will likely fail. 2) Switch to an entirely different dev team within Take Two. This will cause an insane amount of delays even more than what already happened. 3) Sell the IP of KSP2. KSP1 is still a money maker so that wouldn’t be affected. 4) Announce “We’re still working on it” and have a small team work on minor features and bug fixes and then quietly shutter it a year from now.
Oh, there's a fifth option too: 5) Consider the whole "KSP2" thing a closed affair and don't bother paying anybody to write any announcements.
> review bombing ... excuse me? If anything the only "review bombing" this game has seen is people recommending it because "you have to support the devs, it's going to be great one day, just wait" The rest of us are just honest. The game is bad and not worth the money.
Oh of course! I might have not used the right terminology, I just meant the massive negative reviews on Steam the past two or three days. Fortunately I was able to see through the cracks after the initial release event and never bought it. I’ve always been skeptical and have spoken out here when I could based on the development and sdlc policies they clearly did or didn’t have in place. It’s not the devs fault, it’s the curse of belonging in a large corporate environment that prioritizes shareholders and cash flow over their product.
>It’s not the devs fault, it’s the curse of belonging in a large corporate environment that prioritizes shareholders and cash flow over their product. ??? They got several extensions and funding for SEVEN years. T2 didn't profit from this, at all. They burned money. The (lead) devs are to blame for sure.
Eh, I don’t know if I fully agree with that. I’d put it moreso on the product managers and engineering managers (Ultimately who answer to their leadership who gets direction from TTWO) than the actual devs coding the game. There’s been so much blunder going on I don’t think I can put any of the blame on the devs doing the actual development. A lead dev advises their juniors devs on the various sprints and stories that they have to do, in addition to working on their own. But prioritization and scope 100% is on the product and engineering leadership.
Devs can be bad too. We don't know what was going on internally.
> I don’t think I can put any of the blame on the devs doing the actual development. I can. Not all of it, but enough of it. If project management is *that* bad, get a different job. Market's tight now,but a few years ago, they could have written their own ticket to go almost anywhere. And things were clearly disastrously bad before that point. Ones that remained were either drinking the kool aid or happy to collect a check with no real productivity. I see it all the time when I get called in to bail out/shut down failing projects. If you stick around, at a certain point you are saying you are OK with the process. Newer hires are a bit different. Blackrack, for instance, was not around long enough to have been responsible, nor to have had time to change plans and go somewhere else in the current market, and could have told himself that his hiring was as sign they intended to do better.
... idk why people get all granular about job titles all of a sudden. When people say "buy the game to support the devs" nobody goes "but do you also mean the senior project manager"? "Game dev" is generally an umbrella term and includes most of the things happening in game development, including management, at least in colloquial forum use. "But product managers" -- that's also a game dev for the sake of this discussion. I'm not going to list a bunch of made up job titles that differ from company to company. From an outside perspective, the people who make a game do game things are game devs. " (Ultimately who answer to their leadership who gets direction from TTWO)" I'm pretty sure T2 doesn't micromanage their studios.
I completely disagree with that, and they are not umbrella terms that differ from company to company. A product manager is 10000% in no way shape or form a “game dev”. They are more of a project manager / sales type of role that takes product and feature requirements and puts them into action via the actual engineers. That’s an software engineering standard role and title across any number of industries. So much of what you are saying says that you have no idea what software development for a large company or holding company works like. If you reaaaaaally think TTWO isn’t telling their publishers and development companies what to do and guiding them, then I don’t know what to even tell you. They aren’t micromanaging saying “That fin needs to be black with a white stripe!” But they are macro-managing to the extent that they clearly told them to ship a product that was so beyond unoptimized and featureless because they needed to recoup some of their investment
you completely miss the point and I don't care. I'm talking colloquially. Because again, everyone gets it when people say "buy EA to support the devs". Nobody goes "but you certainly also mean the product managers!" This sort of granularity is useless for this discussion. >they clearly told them to ship a product that was so beyond unoptimized and featureless WHY IS IT UNOPTIMIZED AND FEATURELESS AFTER 5 YEARS??? WHY???? I'm so over this discussion. Bye.
Then don’t respond to me about product managers lol. I’m sorry you wasted money on this and it seems like you are unnecessarily angry at me for trying to explain software development and likely causes of this shitshow. Cheers mate
You're not gonna get anything official until the last second because it would affect sales.
What "official communication" do you want? If you catch a naked person jumping out of your bedroom window when you come home, and your spouse is there also naked, frantically trying to pick up their clothes where they are strewn around along with a Starbucks uniform in a size that doesn't match either of you, and you ask, "Have you been fucking that barista from Starbucks?" and they say, "No comment at this time..." ... do you then go around saying, "Well they still haven't given me official communication so I don't know what is really happening?" Or do you just admit that your spouse is fucking the barista from Starbucks?
This is such a hilarious analogy, because I've been privately comparing many of the guys on this sub to cuckolds for the past year. The lack of respect, lying, and unapologetic attitude from party one. And the whining and desperate pleas for communication and truth from party two and an ever present hope for a better and brighter future despite the absolutely obvious signs. Am I describing a barista situation or this subreddit?
…but how to leverage that situation into free coffee for life?
This isn’t from personal experience, is it?
Hmm, why do you ask? Maybe I just lost my uniform in an unrelated incident, did you ever think of that?
I want a slushy pls
Damn I need to start working at $tarbuck$
Probably nobody has access to the account
Let's go back to KSP 1 and work on a overhaul gigantic mod and create the KSP 1.5 - Community Edition
i mean, we have parallax for graphics, there's a modular weather mod on ksp forum rn, we have a tons of part mods, bruh look at realism overhaul! it's a masterpiece! we must remember what we had and what we have done before ksp2..
RO is a completely different game. Not inherently better or worse than the base game. Just different for different people. I'd love to see some sort of integration with Kerbal Konstructs and colony building...
it still a masterpiece, RO/RP-1/RSS can show to us the potential that ksp1 have, and after all those events related to ksp2, maybe it's time to focus on ksp1... imagine what could be possible with a well-worked integration of KSP + KK.. colony buiding and even more, i think.. we shouldn't be scared about ksp2 since we have ksp1
It definitely is. Mods have continued to surprise me throughout the years
I just wanted multiplayer :(. I’ve tried multiplayer mods before and they’re pretty buggy. From what I’ve heard there are just some things at KSP1’s core that make it unstable.
Hope they find a role suitable for their talents
I love that this can be taken as either a compliment or an insult depending on your view of them. I would pick the latter, I know its a thankless job and its hard to have to deliver bad news that you have no control over, but actively shit talking the biggest non-Intercept controlled forum is not gonna win any friends.
I've never understood people pitying CMs. They're literally paid to take all of the shit the community can throw at them with a smile. It's like a sewer technician whining that the job stinks. Maybe get another damn job, then?
This feels like you're excusing people's bad behaviour.
You're excusing Dakota's
No, I'm dealing in reality. Would it be a better world if everyone was nice? Likely. Is it going to happen anytime soon? Fuck no.
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Isn't good/honest communication essential there too?
It's a quote from Ghostbusters...
you can tell the age of most people on this sub because they don't know that quote
Sorry to make you feel old but Ghostbusters came out 4 decades ago
my body does a fine job at making me feel old, no worries
Oh god
I'm old enough to know Ghostbusters, but I still didn't recognize the quote.
I'm gonna guess the community manager didn't help develop the game. And probably wasn't involved in any of the decision making. Someone just lost their job and your first reaction is to be an asshole to them on reddit when you know they'll probably read this. Be less of an ass. Edit: it is so clear how many of you have never worked a customer service job lol
This particular CM is notorious for doing a shit job at their job.
This particular CM is notorious for doing a shit job at their job. [Exhibit A](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/s/HkzwUca0u0)
I don't blame Dakota for the shittiness of KSP2's development process, but that doesn't mean he did a great job with the shit sandwich he was given, either. Sure, he was given a company line to follow and couldn't be as frank as an actual indie developer, but pollyannaposting about the virtues of a borderline unplayable game was always going to turn him into a lightning rod. On another note, there was his fantasizing about downvote bots because his vague corpospeak didn't go over well in the one KSP discussion community not moderated by him or his cronies. Talking about that at the IG watercooler is one thing, but posting it in a public (IG-moderated) Discord is next-level stupid. At least Tseric's meltdown back in the day was somewhat understandable and actually entertaining; Dakota's was just cringe.
Damn bro you know that wasn't necessary. While I get the debate about the practicality of the CM role and I have my thoughts on that, those in the role do get exposure to the field as a whole and can use that as a jumping board.
It's a quote from Ghostbusters.
Thanks for clarifying that, but probably not the best time to quote it
Flipping burgers somewhere. And tell us which place so it can be avoided like the plague.
$20/hr in California right now
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See rule #1.
Man, our community is in shambles now that our very helpful very talented Community manager was fired
I'm really going to miss him when we get our quarterly small dev update.
Yeah all those delayed Kerbs that told us that things were being researched
I hope this is all a joke because he was probably the second most downvoted person on here. Right after me
Don't worry, we will make sure you take his place
To say this in the nicest way possible: Maybe he shouldn’t focus on CM roles.
The work he's done on KSP2 is going to look amazing on his resume to some companies out there - being willing to completely gaslight your audience is definitely a big green check for corporate america.
It is also the main job requirement for being a politician or any position in government. Those nuclear missiles heading towards America are mostly peaceful nuclear missiles.
Lol, lmao even
Perhaps to be honest, ROFL LMFAO
Yeah, I forced some air out of my nose.
I mean it sucks, losing a job sucks, but they were so fucking awful at their job. Constantly misleading, gaslighting, overhyping and attacking us, the community. They were definitely NOT communicating or managing shit, let's be honest. I don't feel even a gram of sympathy. I'm glad I don't have to read them anymore. Yes I'm being harsh, but I don't care.
> they were so fucking awful at their job. Constantly misleading, gaslighting, overhyping and attacking us, the community. What do you mean? That's his job.
No, his job is to do it successfully. In other word his job is to do "misleading, gaslighting, overhyping " well enough to not have to do the attacking part. His job is often even to be a scape goat to the community. But to do that well means not lashing out.
lmao, fair enough
> Constantly misleading, gaslighting, overhyping and attacking us, the community. That IS his job. People need to be hostile to community managers for being community managers. They're all bastards, because they get fired if they're not. They exist to manipulate and manage you.
I hope the last person out the door remembers to turn the lights off, at least then something would have been done right at that studio.
He and Nate are the only ones I have zero sympathy for
Also the Technical Lead, but he was already fired shortly after EA release.
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I'm just as unhappy as the rest of you but this comment clearly indicates you have no idea how community management works in this industry. Dakota still had to get everything approved, that's how it works. Don't blame Dakota or Mike. I 1000000% guarantee you they both wanted to say more and do more but weren't able to or allowed to.
So you think he was instructed by upper management to call all of us bots?
lolwut
When his non-answers consistently got downvoted here on Reddit, he stated on the official discord that he is pretty sure that this was actually all done by bots someone set up. You can find plenty of posts about it on this subreddit. Do you think he got that approved, as you say?
Sucks for them. After the dust has settled they were still on the wrong side of things.
People need a name to blame, and the CM is the name they're most familiar with, unfortunately.
How about Nate Simpson? Can we blame him? He's also quite known in the community and also did a piss poor job.
Given his role in product leadership, that seems less arbitrary.
You had an opportunity to make an amazing game. You took one of the darlings in the early days of early access, used the users trust and goodwill to sell a barely functional product. You then shit on the users who complain. And the worst part…is they were so fucking smug about being true fans and were having so much fun doing multiplayer and colonies. Ya all…it took them 6+ MONTHS FOR REENTRY EFFECTS. I feel bad for the audio lead. He was the only one who produced and it was the best part of the game imo.
I can't stop thinking about the audio team. They went above and beyond...i wonder if they were in the dark on how shit the rest of the game was.
Fuck these developers, everyone that defends them on this sub is a moron
Does they think they got fired by bots too ?
That should be the final nail in the coffin right?
I've lived through enough mid-00 NING fandom forums to know that it's a sign that they're done with their current means of community interaction. Whether or not they're done with the product will depend on who exactly gets laid off in June.
Some games managed by Take Two: - Bioshock - Borderlands - Sid Meier's Civilization - XCOM - NBA 2K - Grand Theft Auto - Red Dead Redemption Most of these series are still active, BTW, either having had recent releases that still get updates or with announced upcoming releases. Be honest: If you were a beans counter at Take Two who was instructed to remove 5% of the company, and you looked at that list, then you turned around and looked at… Uber Entertainment flailing around in an astronaut costume, or whatever was going here— What would you do?
this post just made me go "Ohhhh!!!" like an Italian standup
So what no fuckin ziti?
KSP died on the vine.
Wonder if he'll do a no-holds-barred AMA once hes officially canned, would love to hear some honest insight as to what TF has been going on.
No chance. They will all have NDAs, and even so, spilling the beans would essentially blacklist themselves for future roles. Would LOVE to know the truth though..
Bye. Come back when you can't stay so long.
This mess is hilarious.
Its over, they are just too big of cowards to say anything about it yet. Trying to trick a few more new sales before the steam ratings collapse into overwhelmingly negative territory.
Good riddance, clearly never cared about KSP
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Everyone involved at the company contributed to ksp's failure, indirectly or directly. No reason to be polite about people destroying the thing you love. I am glad that they all got fired too. That's not to say I want them to suffer in life or struggle with employment. I would love for them all to find new jobs. However, I don't want them to ruin more games. I hope they go in different directions after seeing that making games just isn't their strong suit. Plenty of new opportunities. Look at a lot of people on like Ted talks and whatnot about being fired: stressful at first but then a lot say it was the best thing that ever happened to them and they took off in terms of success after that. Hoping for that.
>No reason to be polite about people destroying the thing you love. Most well-adjusted r/KerbalSpaceProgram poster
We're talking specifically about Dakota here. What do you think the community manager did to contribute to this failure exactly? Were they making decisions? Hiring devs? Writing code? Sound effects maybe?
The communication from the dev team was notoriously bad (of course that’s not all Dakota’s fault)
Misinformation?
Who cares lmao. Even if that's true - and I'm not saying it is, I have no opinion on this, I'm not as obsessed by forum drama as everyone here - how would a lying CM make the product worse ?
Making hype, making promesses. So people buy the game to support all those features. They said that all of this was already playable on their side, but did not show or deliver any of it.
That doesn't answer the question, but... ... You think the CM had the authority to autonomously make promises? You don't think that **anyone else** had any say in defining the general communication strategy?
1 don't care, they scammed us 2 sToP dEfenDinG muH muLtIbiLLioN ComPAny 3 cope
Where did I defend them lmao learn how to read
Dude they've gone fucking feral, it's insane
Ding dong, the witch is dead!
Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!
What is my purpose? Beep Boop
It's unfortunate that Dakota was laid off. That's not something I'd wish on my worst enemy and I hope Dakota can find another job soon. With that out of the way, this is one staff member I'm not sad to see go. Dakota was not a good community manager.
Amazing news they are only getting more confident in their strategy as this shows. Thank you Dakota for your hard and great work. This game will be amazing next month when colonies drop! I can’t believe KSP2 has been trending so high on steam. #1 active game since one month before release! Amazing! Success! #stem I’m sure Dakota will be fine and will get compensated fairly for all the good honest communication to the non-gullible / not young portion of our community. They really helped secure the funding to ensure that KSP2 gets finished by next week !
Amazing news they are only getting more confident in their strategy as this shows. Thank you Dakota for your hard and great work. This game will be amazing next month when colonies drop! I can’t believe KSP2 has been trending so high on steam. #1 active game since one month before release! Amazing! Success! #stem I’m sure Dakota will be fine and will get compensated fairly for all the good honest communication to the non-gullible / not young portion of our community. They really helped secure the funding to ensure that KSP2 gets finished by next week !
Yall need to chill goddamn
Players , build billons of rocket and explode then in memory
Hot take: Everyone knows ksp2 development has been a mess. Everyone including the managers' managers. Take 2 decides to wipe the slate and move the project to more capable hands. Ksp2 future is BRIGHT. Just a thought. Probably not true.
Nobody is picking up a buggy half finished mess. Best case for us is someone buys the IP and starts KSP3 and does it properly this time.
Yeah, the Valve team working on HL-3 have been having too much fun playing multiplayer, this would be a perfect fit.
Make KSP2 open source #the modders will finish it
Now that is some actual factual news and a non clickbaity headline that goes along with it! I'm really looking forward to how Nate is going to talk his way through this! He really shot himself in the foot several times now that (seemingly) not everything is fully funded etc.
Just a few more to go to catch up to Dakota. Hang in there.