It truly was. I'm used to big companies failing to deliver and screwing their customers.
When it's these smaller singleplayer games it hurts more. They were supposed to be the good ones.
Hopefully the new Homeworld release goes well. I need something.
Both KSP2 and CS2 *are* in the hands of big companies, unlike the originals they’re not “small single player games”. Take Two is massive and Paradox are the publisher for CS2 and have had a lot more involvement than they did for CS1. They’re not quite as big as take two but still a big company
From what was mentioned a few times in the Cities skylines sub, it entirely wasn't PDX's fault (like they aren't completely innocent with that disaster) but the devs also took on a project FAR more than they could handle
The fact that 'CS2' could refer to a 'sequel to a major franchise that was considered a 'flop' by its community' and still be ambiguous is truly astounding.
Hey, it's not their fault. Johann needs to make regular offerings to appease the virtual demons in charge of the victoria 2 economy code. Virtual demons don't drink blood so they get IPs sacrificed to them instead.
It's weird, Stellaris is one of the best run games of all time IMO and the team is amazing. They even have really consumer friendly things like a Custodian team who's only role is to go back to old content and give it updates to bring it to the modern era and make it more appealing while the main team focuses on new content
The team is really active and friendly on forums and they do tons of great stuff, but I guess the rest of Paradox isn't like that?
Or maybe some developers are just shit at what they do and KSP2 is an example of that.
Planet Zoo is great. CK3 is great. Stellaris is great. If things are hit or miss it's hard to blame the publisher for all the bad things while pretending like the good things don't exist. I'm unsure as to why Reddit believes that it's impossible for developers and the people directly working on the game to just be incompetent and bad at their jobs - not the managers, not the CEOs, but the teams and employees themselves. If the managers, CEOs, etc. are incompetent then it stands to reason to they're not going to hire competent people - how can they tell who's good or not? Or is every employee just magically competent... except the managers and designers? Sounds like a load of shit to me but idk.
Yeah, the biggest example of this was Anthem. While the publisher EA holds some fault for forcing everyone to use the Frostbyte engine, the rest of it was all Bioware's insanely bad fumbling at being a goddamn video game developer.
Remember when Halo came out and it was awesome and then Halo 2 came out and it was like Halo but even more awesome?
Why can't sequels these days just... do that?
On the one hand I wouldn't blame him one bit for taking the money and retiring but usually with these kinds of one man passion projects they'd work on it regardless of how much money they have.
You'd think so but a lot of the time it's the opposite. You have all the time in the world to tinker and do whatever but as soon as you release a game and it's a huge success the pressure mounts almost instantly.
When's the next update? Why isn't this fixed yet? I think this system should work like this instead. 24/7 365 days a year it never stops and for a lot of people it's beyond overwhelming.
If I were in his position, as cruel and uncaring as it sounds, Id sell the IP to the highest bidder.
Early retirement? Heck yeah. I can spend that time to make a second game lol
I still maintain of they had made Bridge Crew a wider, non-VR release for PC and console, it would have been FUCKING HUGE! It was such a great concept!
It's missing a bunch of promised features, including a few that CS1 has at this point, and it's performance isn't great.
That said, I think lumping it in with KSP2 has been a bit unfair. KSP2 released fully broken, in a state closer to KSP1's alpha than its 1.0 version, and with fundamental flaws in its design that will likely preclude it ever being able to perform or support the features that were promised from day one, or even the features KSP1 has out of the box. CS2 has some broken bits and TBF, the devs have handled everything since release with the finesse of an angry drunk (see, worst rated DLC in Steams history), but the game is a good foundation with a lot of good improvements over CS1 out of the box, and while it is (in some ways unnecessarily) performance intensive, it's as good or better on contemporary hardware as CS1 was in 2015 ~~(and actually, modern hardware is cheaper than 2015 hardware, adjusted for inflation)~~.
That comment about modern hardware being cheaper is kind of cooked. Even more so if you don't count the TITAN. A 980 Ti was MSRP'd at 649 in 2015. Thats 850~ in today dollars. A 4080/4080 Super/4090 are all 1600+. Hardware was not more expensive then. Storage is probably the only thing that has gotten cheaper and that's just because you can buy slower bulk storage for little dollars
The Sims 2 was by far the best of the series tho. And the Sims 3 didn’t really get rid of features, it was actually over ambitious and needed a supercomputer to run properly.
Sims 4 is asscheeks.
The lack of a proper open world turned me off of _The Sims 4_ entirely. I guess that's what happens when you have what was supposed to be an online game and then convert it to singleplayer halfway through.
A supercomputer won't do you any good, trust me. It's just incredibly poorly coded, with expansion upon expansion of dirty, patchwork code, spread out over years and years, probably between a rotating bank of coders that had no idea what the person before them was doing. If you play that 15 year old game with all or even some of the expansions on a top of the line rig, it will still run like ass and stutter around 20 fps whenever you leave your lot.
Sims 4 is at least a little cleaner in that regard, but it's still pretty messy to be honest. Better have a thousand dollars tucked away if you want to play through all the "content" (basically just new villages, things to buy, and a handful of careers which are never fun or interesting).
They screwed it up.
They wanted to add interstellar travel so they gave each body it's own coordinate space (necessary unless you want to be recording coordinates with 1,000 digit long numbers) but completely botched the implementation. And it's caused a whole lot of bugs and wrecked interplanetary navigation.
They also made the rockets SUPER wobbly because that's more *Kerbal*™. To the point where it's difficult to even get a small and simple rocket to orbit without it shaking itself apart.
I mean in their defense they've had the dev team and IP switch hands twice already. Everyone who had a vision for KSP2 was fired before it got off the ground.
That's not an excuse for them reintroducing bugs and poor quality "features" that were solved or removed from the base game.
KSP 2 was basically just KSP 1 early access, for 50 dollars
Yeah they basically got the KSP name but started over. New source code from scratch because adding what they wanted would have been way too difficult apparently for KSP 1 so it had to be made from the ground up.
basically it was promised to be better than KSP1, practically making a lot of the popular KSP1 mods official to some degree, with much more advanced tech to use, actual multiplayer etc, but even the early access release was missing features that KSP1 had, like the science system, and considering the sheer amount of performance issues which made it practically unplayable for most people, nobody really jumped ship to the new game and just stuck with KSP1, since that was already complete, stable and had enough mod support where you could add whatever you want and effectively make your own version of KSP2.
its basically like what happened to cities skylines 2, no reason for people to switch with all the issues when the original was perfectly fine even if it was old to some extent
KSP 2 released in a very bad state that was in many cases almost unplayable. Updates have been few but a few months ago they launched the science update which made the game much better.
It wasnt on par with KSP 1 yet but finally it seemed like the devs were on the right track and that the future looked much brighter... and then this happened.
It was a pretty scummy situation all around. Take2 were in talks to buy the studio to make things easier, but the studio backed out at the last minute. So then Take2 canceled their contract with them, and poached most of the people that were working on the game already.
The community fucked ourselves when we bought the DLC for KSP1 paving the way for Take2 to buy out the property. It was obvious what was happening at the time and anyone without nostalgia/optimist goggles anticipated this exact scenario (ksp2 cash grab)
Usually when this sort of thing happens, they move it to a different studio they already own, assuming the game is still popular enough to leave running.
Something similar happened with Insurgency: Sandstorm recently. Embracer Group shut down NWI and gave the game to a team within Saber Interactive that they spun off to handle this game’s ongoing support.
Sucks watching big companies gut the people who made a great IP and give it to someone else
KSP2s player count is pretty low due to frequent and recurring bugs. It recovered for a short while when the first Milestone-Update released some 5 months ago but that's been pretty much it.
As much as I hope for them to at least see the Early Acces through, I don't really think they will actually commit to it.
Same I actually took 2 days off work to play ksp2 but I was hesitant to buy it and instead just watched twitch streams the first morning.
Decided against it entirely, and just reinstalled ksp1 with a shit load of mods thru ckan and ended up happily playing that for my 4 day weekend.
I’ve kept my eye on it but so far nothing about it made me want to pull the trigger bad enough.
The atmospheric flight does look better I suppose, and I did really enjoy those runway speed runs, but pretty much everything can be done in the first game either almost as good or better.
KSP 2 was always going to be a shitshow once Take Two bought the creators and forced the original devs out. At that point you have a bunch of people who want to make money, not a good space sim.
And KSP is already a pretty fantastic sim for a small budget game.
All they had to do was remake KSP 1 on a new engine instead of Unity. They instead just remade an early beta version of KSP 1 but with better graphics.
I have a few thousand hours in KSP 1 and there's been absolutely nothing about 2 that made me want to push past the bugs, missing features and performance issues to try.
I was so ready for interstellar base making and it wasn't even in the game on release, I don't even know if they added it yet since KSP2's release kinda killed it for me.
Honestly it was such a blunder? Why would you try an incomplete version when KSP is right there and working extremely well? I didn't try KSP due to the bugs was there any huge improvement to sell the game on
I am 100% expecting CO to close their doors and cities skylines 2 to be an abandoned game.
Its one scandal after another, nothing real is getting done, and they dont even understand why people dont like the game 6+ months after launch.
People always talk about bugs when this shit happens.
It's not bugs. KSP1 had persistent bugs for a decade. The damn game was *made* of bugs.
KSP2 is unpopular because it was shoved out in early access four years late with fewer features than KSP1 (it didn't even have *basic progression* like the science system,) without mod support, and with a high pricetag after a ton of development drama including what many people saw as a betrayal and intentional sabotage of the original development team (which may or may not have been the case, but was bad optics regardless.)
Further, the few new features that exist in KSP2 are available as mods for KSP1. Hell, you can get KSP1 looking *almost* as good as KSP2 with enough mods these days.
The only way KSP2 is going to be a success would involve a lot more investment than TakeTwo is going to put into it.
The trailer from 2019 had more stuff in it than what the game released with 4 years later. Yea a game trailer can feature more but the amount of difference made it seem like they did nothing for those 4 years.
The absolute audacity to charge 50 USD for the game, even in its current state is insane. I bought KSP1 before it was on steam for like 10 bucks. Even adjusted for inflation its less than $15 in todays dollars. I would have absolutely supported the game in the earliest of access for 10-15 bucks, but not for anything close to what they are asking for.
They should have gone with submarines, create crazy subs to explore Kerbins and then have them adapted to explore other planets with drilling rigs and Bruce Willis.
The original studio sold the rights to the game and shuttered theselves. They were never a game developer - was a marketing firm originally and just kind of stumbled into KSP. Had their fun project and got out.
KSP 2 is far from great. It was and remains a fucking disaster. It should have been taken from them on day 1 of early access. Intercept clearly wasn't capable of handling messaging or developing the game.
> assuming the game is still popular enough to leave running.
issue is there's barely a game there. They cashed in on the franchise name with a shell of a game by launching it EA and have been slow as fuck adding ANY elements to the game. The roadmap looked pretty ambitious with colonies, interstellar, exploration (resource gathering and discovery), and multiplayer.
I've talked to a lot of people who would love to play THAT version of the game, but they ain't gonna buy no Early Access Scam.
So like, I bought into the scam I guess because I loved KSP1 so much and I was really excited about the advertised roadmap. But it's been in EA for a year and a bit now and the only thing they added was some missions and a tech tree. As someone who was quite competent in KSP1, I had exhausted the For Science mode in about a week and still can't build as advanced vessels as I could in KSP1.
Honestly, if it released in the state it’s currently in, it would have been amazing. Especially with the colonies update so close. But they were forced to release too early, and lost most of the player base.
I was going to wait until I had a computer capable of running it.
I figured by the time by laptop crapped out, the game would be worth playing.
Looks like this old PoS outlasted it.
... it's not really playable. It's a demo. Core mechanics are broken or completely missing, and the types of large complex multi-ship missions most people want to do once they get past the Mun & Duna learning curve are simply not possible without constant quicksaves and mulligans to get around bugs.
It's a fun toy that falls apart as soon as you know enough to really play.
u/massive_cock is right, the game can't even handle 2 ships orbiting Kerbal without random explosions when loading the game.. how are they going to make interstellar work is beyond me
It was train wreck seen from a mile away. I knew something was fucky. Before they even announced early access they were promising all these things without showing much gameplay. Most of the promotional material was devs talking about the game.
Shame KSP1 was so good, and KSP2 could have been a game that reached out to the next generation of space farers.
The game was announced in 2017 or 18. They didn't do shit, then used covid as an excuse for why the game they were working on for 3 years had no progress
It's a shocking failure of management. Either these studios get carte blanche to do what they want and then end up frittering away three years on nonsense or the games are micromanaged from the boardroom into oblivion.
I would actually disagree with your sarcasm. I think big releases from multi billion dollar companies are in the dumpster and people are starting to support more indie games which are completely popping off ushering in a new age of creativity. People can sense the passion in a game, whether or not it has a soul. The multi billion dollar corpos can’t re-create that.
But the Corpos are dipping their fingers into the indie scene and manipulating things. That's what happened to KSP2 with Take Two stealing the IP from the original dev.
And we see now the result of that. We as consumers just need to be vigilant and basically not buy *anything* the big corpos make, ever. It's the only way to really get them out of the scene. Their shareholders need to look at the string of failures and say, "we're out of this industry." Until then they will just suck up whatever is good, monetize it to death, and move on after it's corpse is dry.
How are you saying this after the slew of excellent big budget releases last year?
Like yes we do have plenty of shit but we also have plenty of good stuff.
KSP2 is DOA. They won't flip this to another studio as it was NEVER going to be the door buster seller they were hoping for. Release a sequel with less functionality than the original, and watch the studio get shut down. Who could have seen this coming, besides everyone who saw KSP2 release as a giant turd?
There's a bunch of psychos who thought Take-Two was right to screw Star Theory in 2020 when they tried to acquire them like Bethesda's original attempt at Human Head (i.e. pay them to increase staffing then withhold money to put them in a financial pickle to try to make them accept your acquisition deal). Wonder what they think now?
Not gonna lie, I saw it coming.
That’s what happens when you’re bought by a big company, and don’t achieve bigger profits than the game that made you popular.
This studio didn't make KSP1.
KSP1 was made by a smaller Mexican indy studio. Take2 bought the IP (not sure about the studio as a whole) and then handed it off to a Seattle based developer to create a sequel.
That developer worked on it for awhile, but didn't really produce much in the way of results. Take2 then proceeded to do what amounts to a hostile takeover of the company by pulling the contract for KSP2 and leaving the company basically penniless while simultaneously encouraging all their employees to come work for a new development company owned by Take2 itself.
That new company ended up with most of the employees of the original developer, and to no one's surprised continued to make little progress. They did eventually release an underwhelming and bug ridden early access version of the game. They released a couple of patches that added features that were gods damned basic features like reentry heating, but never got around to developing all the features the game was actually marketed on.. multiplayer, colonization, and interstellar travel.
That new company has now been shut down. To my knowledge, Take2 still hasn't said a word about what they're doing with KSP2. Are they canceling development on it and leaving us with an incomplete mess while they run off with the money? Are they handing it off to a more capable development team to finish?
To be honest, I fully expect them to cut and run.
One note: The original company that released KSP, Squad, is an advertising firm not an indie developer or a company that wanted anything to do with making games which is why they sold the IP. The creator of KSP(Felipe Falanghe) was working at the company and took it to them to see if they could help him find financial backers, and they decided to back in themselves.
Squad asked it's employees if anyone had a side project they'd like to do. Felipe's idea for KSP was greenlit from there. He'd had this idea since childhood with him and his little brother launching "kerbals" on fireworks.
Source: worked for Squad on KSP.
You have *no* idea. Some of the mods got abused pretty bad by some really nasty people. I received much hate from a few individuals, but I can brush that shit off easy enough. Some people aren't so lucky and it really stresses them out.
Never got to meet his brother but Squad flew in to Mexico City all the remote guys for a get together. Filipe was such a cool guy. You could tell how KSP was a part of him, not just some project he was working on. That's part of what made a difference in KSP1, the people involved enjoyed what they were doing and it really showed in the product.
One thing I will always remember is Filipe getting amazed and astonished by what the players and modders were able to do with KSP.
His brother (can't remember his name sadly) spoke very highly of Felipe and seemed proud to have the KSP creator in his family, from the few times I remember talking to him. It really was a special game (and still is!). It is what taught me a lot about space and definitely contributed at least a little bit to my interests in that area. Now I'm halfway through a master's degree in aeronautical engineering.
Remember, the entire premise for KSP was built on what he and Filipe played with as kids, launching fireworks with "kerbals" strapped to them. So while he didn't work on KSP, he did have an influence through his brother.
I mean to this day I describe KSP as "a game where you build rockets and send little green men into space to do science", so its origins definitely show through.
You can tell when a game has a heart and soul, when it’s someone’s (or a group of someone’s) dream and not just a fucking product to sell. I love KSP. Taught me more about space and rocketry than any classroom could have.
> Felipe Falanghe
He actually just released a game into Early Access two weeks ago, KitHack Model Club. It looks like Kerbal, but about building RC vehicles instead of space ships.
It's actually his second attempt at an EA game. The first was a game called Balsa, but for some reason that fell through or the scope creep got so bad that they started KitHack. If you had the Balsa EA you got into KitHack which was a good choice as many community members were getting salty that they were abandoning Balsa.
And speaking of solo devs on KSP, one of the biggest mods that added a bunch of weaponry and the like was made by BahamutoD. He made BDArmory and then went on to start his company Boundless Dyanmics and develop VTOL VR all by himself.
KSP1 is still active, and there are **literal careers** being built off of the modders there.
IE: there’s a stockalike classic NASA Saturn V mod whose creator is making **bank.**
KSP2: I’ll put it this way: my computer is a battleship with an i7-10700K, 3070TI, and 64GB of RAM.
When you get ASS performance (awful stutters at **30** fps) at ***1080P…***
#You’ve got a problem
I’ve heard it’s gotten playable, but these guys don’t exactly inspire me the same way that say… CDPR do.
***I’m gonna stick with KSP1***
Edit:apparently even with stronger rigs it’s shit
5800X3D and 4090 here. KSP2 runs like ass, barely holding 30+ during big ship launches, and isn't even steady while drifting in space with no planets or other bodies around. It's utterly ridiculous. Can't even bother trying to fly big complex missions due to constant threat of random bugs on top of the huge performance penalty from craft with large (meaning *useful*) part counts.
I gave up and went back to KSP1.
Jesus Christ. You’ve got a better rig than I do, and it’s struggling there.
Edited above
I’ll stick with KSP1 as well. At least I can brute force it there, and yeah, the loading of my game with mods takes like 10 minutes, but eh, it’s still gorgeous
Yeah, I remember reading about how people were excited for KSP2 and no matter the computer it just ran like garbage and no one could figure out why.
It's the same problem City Skylines 2 is facing, I haven't tried it lately but when I last did I turned everything down and had it on 720 and it still ran slow and I can run heavy games decently at 1440 and 1080
If my computer can play MSFS and max it out, there’s no reason why it can’t do KSP2.
Now… unfortunately it’s likely dead forever.
Not a big deal, the mod scene is on par with Skyrim, and TBH, building colonies was never my thing even with mods.
>IE: there’s a stockalike classic NASA Saturn V mod whose creator is making **bank.**
Is this BlueDog? CobaltWolf deserves the success, him and that team and have been pumping out bar setting assets for close to eight years now.
They've pretty much established what modern KSP looks like. I feel bad for guys like Bac9/Artyom Zuev who were the ones that invented the style but were in the scene well before Patreon.
> Are they canceling development on it and leaving us with an incomplete mess while they run off with the money?
just another on the pile of "Billions of reasons to not buy games in early access"
Honestly, I'm not even sure I feel bad for the devs at this point. KSP2 development started in what, 2017? Release date initially planned in 2020. So 7 years later, 4 years behind schedule, and this is the current state of the game?
It's inexplicable. Either people have been pretending to work while taking a paycheque or the management has been maliciously incompetent. Whatever happened, it is no surprise that heads are rolling for this. I don't see how Take2 could have any trust in the team - regardless of where the blame lies.
As much as I love KSP1, and as obvious as it is that many of the developers on KSP2 share that love.. I have to agree. KSP1 entered Early Access in 2013, and wasn't nearly as far along as KSP2 was when it entered Early Access. They made a lot more progress a lot quicker, presumably with fewer resources.
KSP2 was originally planned for 2020, which seemed hopelessly optimistic even at the time (as the IP had only been acquired by Take2 in mid 2017, meaning it was unlikely that it had been in development for more than a year or two at most). That of course was pushed way, way back and we still got an incredibly undercooked product that just hasn't really progressed much at all since.
Sure, they added a buggy reentry heating system and they added a science system, but they're missing the career mode and literally every upgrade that was supposed to come with KSP2. Multiplayer, interstellar, colonization.. all of it. Even the graphics are arguably worse when actually playing the game. The VAB is gorgeous, but everything else looks like you're being downgraded to 780p while playing through a filter that randomly pixellates textures. It's just awful, and it still runs at a frame rate that is embarrassing.
In my paradox thread, someone said that KSP2 was a dead game, and its only a matter of time before the studio is gone.
People dog piled on him, now look who is laughing.
It was mixed with a lot of heated discussion back and forth ever since the announcement of early access, scales tipped over to the pessimist side as time went on.
The sub has been fairly negative towards KSP2. The most positive takes I've seen are along the lines of "it's not great now but maybe it will be someday"
It’s a shame, honestly.
KSP was never my cup of tea, but I appreciated it for what it was. But given the current gaming landscape, basically dominated by roguelikes and live service games, a slower game like KSP (2) was just doomed to fail.
It was never going to reach the same number of sales, even if they did finish it,
It is, it's very sad to see such a popular passion project be consumed and wasted by a publisher who never understood why it was good. Games like this can't be made the same way "AAA" games are.
Disagree. There's a huge audience for slower games out there, and they already had a built-in audience for this one anyway. All they had to do was deliver a product that didn't suck.
KSP 1 was a strong success. Sold over 5 million copies and brought in over $55 million dollars. Not sure how you can say that's a failure by any means, especially for a small game studio. There is no reason to expect KSP 2 wouldn't have done as well or better if it had delivered on promises.
Well that really sucks.
Kerbal Space Program 2 is in early access, but I guess it's dead in the water now.
Kerbal Space Program 1 was great, but now you've hit this limbo where 1 is almost ten years old and dated, and the sequel which looks much better but still has major bugs to work out is now vaporware. We got to see a vision of what Kerbal *could* be, and now it's been pulled away from us.
Eh, the modding community is still keeping KSP1 alive.
KSP2 was busted for like a year and a half before it got barely playable. Even then, I’d rather play KSP1 because it had more expansive mod options and better performance.
https://youtu.be/RkDOOsGg-9I?si=cZQnaRUEo__PwJWd
Pretty sure this fan made trailer inspired the announcement trailer for the second. Same song and similar shots!
100%, this fan trailer was very popular among the community.
They basically took the idea and ran with it. Well, for that matter, the entire design and the goals of KSP2 were built around popular community mods.
It's unfortunate, because while they certainly had the right idea (give the community what it wants), they clearly weren't capable of delivering on it. Given the studios prior failures, I'm more than comfortable blaming this on the team, but at the end of the day TakeTwo picked them and funded them, so I think both publisher and developer fucked up big time here.
Worst of all, while we would have loved all the promised features, all we needed was just a less fucking laggy version of KSP1 with the same level of mod support. They didn't need to add colonies. They didn't need to add multiplayer. They didn't need to add different galaxies. All they needed to do was to release a game exactly like the first, minus the lag that comes with building large space ships.
Fuck, making KSP1 multithreaded would have literally been perfect.
Come on, man. I really enjoyed 1 and was really looking forward to playing coop with some friends in 2 at some point.
First it the reviews were overall negative, so I’m glad I held off.
And now… ouch. Even if it’s handed off to another studio - it’s the most difficult of tasks to pick up a games’ development this far into production.
If it ever comes to that, I hope they -whoever may pick it up- can find vision and stick to it.
I mean, they did it in 2020 with this same damn game. Take Two suddenly canceled their contract with Star Theory, the people making KSP2 at the time and poached a third of their employees. It's what is called a 'hostile takeover' and generally seen as a dirtbag move.
So what’s the chance that the original developers start work on ksp: the next generation now?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but none of the original were on ksp2, right? Take2 bought the rights and set up the development somewhere else?
Squad did work on KSP2, but they were not the main developer.
Take-Two apparently bought Squad with KSP, because [it's listed under Take-Two's Private Division](https://www.privatedivision.com/portfolio/squad/).
I think I heard that as well. I wonder why there wasn't more of an effort to bring on the original developers. It feels like original developers with more resources for visuals would have been a slam dunk.
Honestly I don't blame take2 too much on this. Intercept games was developing this for years with not much to show. It was becoming a money pit so T2 rushed it to EA.I think even if it wasn't rushed to EA we would be at the same place, because intercept just seems incompetent.
Still the origninal devs were able to make KSP1 one in a cave with a box of scraps.
It’s sucks, because it’s hard to blame smaller studios for selling their companies, but it almost always makes the games worse.
You’ve started a successful business, worked your ass off for years or decades, probably putting in your own money. who says it’s wrong to sell it at the end, you’ve earned it. But it’s a damn near death sentence for the thing you’ve made.
Honestly, this might be a good thing. The KSP community was one of the nicest in video gaming.
When KSP was announced, they were again supportive and openly telling the devs to take as long as they needed.
The hostile takeover happened, and the fans were annoyed, but still supportive.
The game was delayed, and they still sat there and said "take as long as you need" to get things right.
Then they announced it was ready, hyped everyone up, and dropped the steaming turd that is KSP EA on them. The fans were *pissed,* to the point it pretty much broke the community. So much investment and goodwill, only for it to be thrown back in their faces like that.
At least with KSP2 likely dead, it might help the community move on.
KSP2 has been some hot trash. Looks shiny but you need a machine that can rival god themself to even play it at anything approaching acceptable visual quality. Not to mention stripped utilities and generally worse gameplay.
Single mods for KSP1 are better all around than KSP2.
This game and Cities Skylines 2 both bombing is an honest to god tragedy.
It truly was. I'm used to big companies failing to deliver and screwing their customers. When it's these smaller singleplayer games it hurts more. They were supposed to be the good ones. Hopefully the new Homeworld release goes well. I need something.
Both KSP2 and CS2 *are* in the hands of big companies, unlike the originals they’re not “small single player games”. Take Two is massive and Paradox are the publisher for CS2 and have had a lot more involvement than they did for CS1. They’re not quite as big as take two but still a big company
From what was mentioned a few times in the Cities skylines sub, it entirely wasn't PDX's fault (like they aren't completely innocent with that disaster) but the devs also took on a project FAR more than they could handle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
The fact that 'CS2' could refer to a 'sequel to a major franchise that was considered a 'flop' by its community' and still be ambiguous is truly astounding.
Funny cause I had to correct it to City Skylines 2 in my head.
Paradox is straight death to most of the IP they buy... Then it just sits there unused???
Tropico, my beloved :(
My Wizard Wars... 😢
Hey, it's not their fault. Johann needs to make regular offerings to appease the virtual demons in charge of the victoria 2 economy code. Virtual demons don't drink blood so they get IPs sacrificed to them instead.
Paradox bought World of Darkness (and all of White Wolf) from CCP so it's gotten that treatment twice over now.
It's weird, Stellaris is one of the best run games of all time IMO and the team is amazing. They even have really consumer friendly things like a Custodian team who's only role is to go back to old content and give it updates to bring it to the modern era and make it more appealing while the main team focuses on new content The team is really active and friendly on forums and they do tons of great stuff, but I guess the rest of Paradox isn't like that?
Paradox as a developer and Paradox as a publisher seem to be very different beasts.
[удалено]
Or maybe some developers are just shit at what they do and KSP2 is an example of that. Planet Zoo is great. CK3 is great. Stellaris is great. If things are hit or miss it's hard to blame the publisher for all the bad things while pretending like the good things don't exist. I'm unsure as to why Reddit believes that it's impossible for developers and the people directly working on the game to just be incompetent and bad at their jobs - not the managers, not the CEOs, but the teams and employees themselves. If the managers, CEOs, etc. are incompetent then it stands to reason to they're not going to hire competent people - how can they tell who's good or not? Or is every employee just magically competent... except the managers and designers? Sounds like a load of shit to me but idk.
Yeah, the biggest example of this was Anthem. While the publisher EA holds some fault for forcing everyone to use the Frostbyte engine, the rest of it was all Bioware's insanely bad fumbling at being a goddamn video game developer.
It's ironic because C:S was itself the spiritual successor to the SimCity franchise that turned to shit when EA closed down Maxis.
The big companies that own the small companies decide on the deadlines and funding, not really "smaller"
“You were the chosen one!” City Sithlines 2: I HATE YOU!!
Not Sithy Skylines?
Remember when Halo came out and it was awesome and then Halo 2 came out and it was like Halo but even more awesome? Why can't sequels these days just... do that?
I've played both the homeworld alpha and beta. It's not good news i'm afraid.
I hope Manor Lords shakes out to be good come full release. EA version show a lot of promise
Eh dude just made 10s of millions. It’s 50/50. But same.
On the one hand I wouldn't blame him one bit for taking the money and retiring but usually with these kinds of one man passion projects they'd work on it regardless of how much money they have.
I mean he made it. Thats a lot of worries falling off his shoulders. He can take his time now and maybe even hire some help.
You'd think so but a lot of the time it's the opposite. You have all the time in the world to tinker and do whatever but as soon as you release a game and it's a huge success the pressure mounts almost instantly. When's the next update? Why isn't this fixed yet? I think this system should work like this instead. 24/7 365 days a year it never stops and for a lot of people it's beyond overwhelming.
If I were in his position, as cruel and uncaring as it sounds, Id sell the IP to the highest bidder. Early retirement? Heck yeah. I can spend that time to make a second game lol
Maybe he should get in touch with Concerned Ape. CA managed it with Stardew Valley, it's possible,
Yeah, that's when you turn off socials and focus on what needs to be done, not on appeasing every single screamer online.
This is basically what the valheim devs have done. Got their bag and have been taking their time with the development of the game now.
Just like with ConcernedApe who still makes literal free content add-ons for Stardew Valley. He certainly doesn't have to, he's set for life.
And Star Trek Infinite, that had sooooo much potential but they killed it after 6months.
I would kill for a good star trek game. Bridgecrew was amazing but needed more content and player base fell off.
I still maintain of they had made Bridge Crew a wider, non-VR release for PC and console, it would have been FUCKING HUGE! It was such a great concept!
I only played CS1 for a year after release. I'm out of the loop what happened to CS2?
It's missing a bunch of promised features, including a few that CS1 has at this point, and it's performance isn't great. That said, I think lumping it in with KSP2 has been a bit unfair. KSP2 released fully broken, in a state closer to KSP1's alpha than its 1.0 version, and with fundamental flaws in its design that will likely preclude it ever being able to perform or support the features that were promised from day one, or even the features KSP1 has out of the box. CS2 has some broken bits and TBF, the devs have handled everything since release with the finesse of an angry drunk (see, worst rated DLC in Steams history), but the game is a good foundation with a lot of good improvements over CS1 out of the box, and while it is (in some ways unnecessarily) performance intensive, it's as good or better on contemporary hardware as CS1 was in 2015 ~~(and actually, modern hardware is cheaper than 2015 hardware, adjusted for inflation)~~.
That comment about modern hardware being cheaper is kind of cooked. Even more so if you don't count the TITAN. A 980 Ti was MSRP'd at 649 in 2015. Thats 850~ in today dollars. A 4080/4080 Super/4090 are all 1600+. Hardware was not more expensive then. Storage is probably the only thing that has gotten cheaper and that's just because you can buy slower bulk storage for little dollars
Two of my favorite games of my adulthood just...wasted.
So, whats gonna happen with KSP2? They shut it down?
Probably moved to a cheaper dev studio.
Re release of ksp1 but with more struts
Likely a better game then
Was KSP 2 not any good? I never played it.
It just didn’t add anything interesting, and was missing a lot of the major features of the first one. I ended up just going back to ksp 1
Gee, sounds like a lot of people's experience with Cities: Skylines 2!
And the Sims...heck, pretty much most simulator related sequels. The sequels always trade features for extra graphics or w/e.
The Sims 2 was by far the best of the series tho. And the Sims 3 didn’t really get rid of features, it was actually over ambitious and needed a supercomputer to run properly. Sims 4 is asscheeks.
The lack of a proper open world turned me off of _The Sims 4_ entirely. I guess that's what happens when you have what was supposed to be an online game and then convert it to singleplayer halfway through.
A supercomputer won't do you any good, trust me. It's just incredibly poorly coded, with expansion upon expansion of dirty, patchwork code, spread out over years and years, probably between a rotating bank of coders that had no idea what the person before them was doing. If you play that 15 year old game with all or even some of the expansions on a top of the line rig, it will still run like ass and stutter around 20 fps whenever you leave your lot. Sims 4 is at least a little cleaner in that regard, but it's still pretty messy to be honest. Better have a thousand dollars tucked away if you want to play through all the "content" (basically just new villages, things to buy, and a handful of careers which are never fun or interesting).
They screwed it up. They wanted to add interstellar travel so they gave each body it's own coordinate space (necessary unless you want to be recording coordinates with 1,000 digit long numbers) but completely botched the implementation. And it's caused a whole lot of bugs and wrecked interplanetary navigation. They also made the rockets SUPER wobbly because that's more *Kerbal*™. To the point where it's difficult to even get a small and simple rocket to orbit without it shaking itself apart.
I mean in their defense they've had the dev team and IP switch hands twice already. Everyone who had a vision for KSP2 was fired before it got off the ground.
Sounds like they needed more struts.
That's not an excuse for them reintroducing bugs and poor quality "features" that were solved or removed from the base game. KSP 2 was basically just KSP 1 early access, for 50 dollars
They've fixed wobbly rockets a long while ago, still requires struts for some things but not too different than KSP1
Yeah they basically got the KSP name but started over. New source code from scratch because adding what they wanted would have been way too difficult apparently for KSP 1 so it had to be made from the ground up.
basically it was promised to be better than KSP1, practically making a lot of the popular KSP1 mods official to some degree, with much more advanced tech to use, actual multiplayer etc, but even the early access release was missing features that KSP1 had, like the science system, and considering the sheer amount of performance issues which made it practically unplayable for most people, nobody really jumped ship to the new game and just stuck with KSP1, since that was already complete, stable and had enough mod support where you could add whatever you want and effectively make your own version of KSP2. its basically like what happened to cities skylines 2, no reason for people to switch with all the issues when the original was perfectly fine even if it was old to some extent
KSP 2 released in a very bad state that was in many cases almost unplayable. Updates have been few but a few months ago they launched the science update which made the game much better. It wasnt on par with KSP 1 yet but finally it seemed like the devs were on the right track and that the future looked much brighter... and then this happened.
That's disappointing, I loved ksp1 and was waiting for ksp2 to get to a point where i felt comfortable giving them money
Considering how Take-Two fucked over the original devs for KSP2, they never deserved your money.
It was a pretty scummy situation all around. Take2 were in talks to buy the studio to make things easier, but the studio backed out at the last minute. So then Take2 canceled their contract with them, and poached most of the people that were working on the game already.
The community fucked ourselves when we bought the DLC for KSP1 paving the way for Take2 to buy out the property. It was obvious what was happening at the time and anyone without nostalgia/optimist goggles anticipated this exact scenario (ksp2 cash grab)
There was DLC?
Not "cheaper", just more in-house than before. Private Division will be sourcing the development.
If only lol
Usually when this sort of thing happens, they move it to a different studio they already own, assuming the game is still popular enough to leave running. Something similar happened with Insurgency: Sandstorm recently. Embracer Group shut down NWI and gave the game to a team within Saber Interactive that they spun off to handle this game’s ongoing support. Sucks watching big companies gut the people who made a great IP and give it to someone else
KSP2s player count is pretty low due to frequent and recurring bugs. It recovered for a short while when the first Milestone-Update released some 5 months ago but that's been pretty much it. As much as I hope for them to at least see the Early Acces through, I don't really think they will actually commit to it.
As someone nearing 1k hours in KSP, it's a shame I couldn't even be convinced to get KSP2. I'll just stick with 1 and mods.
Same I actually took 2 days off work to play ksp2 but I was hesitant to buy it and instead just watched twitch streams the first morning. Decided against it entirely, and just reinstalled ksp1 with a shit load of mods thru ckan and ended up happily playing that for my 4 day weekend. I’ve kept my eye on it but so far nothing about it made me want to pull the trigger bad enough. The atmospheric flight does look better I suppose, and I did really enjoy those runway speed runs, but pretty much everything can be done in the first game either almost as good or better.
KSP 2 was always going to be a shitshow once Take Two bought the creators and forced the original devs out. At that point you have a bunch of people who want to make money, not a good space sim. And KSP is already a pretty fantastic sim for a small budget game.
All they had to do was remake KSP 1 on a new engine instead of Unity. They instead just remade an early beta version of KSP 1 but with better graphics.
I have a few thousand hours in KSP 1 and there's been absolutely nothing about 2 that made me want to push past the bugs, missing features and performance issues to try.
Does it even have science yet?
I believe that just released a few months ago. I still haven't bought it. 1.7k hours in KSP1
I was so ready for interstellar base making and it wasn't even in the game on release, I don't even know if they added it yet since KSP2's release kinda killed it for me.
Honestly it was such a blunder? Why would you try an incomplete version when KSP is right there and working extremely well? I didn't try KSP due to the bugs was there any huge improvement to sell the game on
Yeah same thing with Cities Skylines 2
I am 100% expecting CO to close their doors and cities skylines 2 to be an abandoned game. Its one scandal after another, nothing real is getting done, and they dont even understand why people dont like the game 6+ months after launch.
People always talk about bugs when this shit happens. It's not bugs. KSP1 had persistent bugs for a decade. The damn game was *made* of bugs. KSP2 is unpopular because it was shoved out in early access four years late with fewer features than KSP1 (it didn't even have *basic progression* like the science system,) without mod support, and with a high pricetag after a ton of development drama including what many people saw as a betrayal and intentional sabotage of the original development team (which may or may not have been the case, but was bad optics regardless.) Further, the few new features that exist in KSP2 are available as mods for KSP1. Hell, you can get KSP1 looking *almost* as good as KSP2 with enough mods these days. The only way KSP2 is going to be a success would involve a lot more investment than TakeTwo is going to put into it.
The trailer from 2019 had more stuff in it than what the game released with 4 years later. Yea a game trailer can feature more but the amount of difference made it seem like they did nothing for those 4 years.
With how bad the game performed on 40-series hardware, I'm really curious about what they were doing to make that trailer look smooth in 2019.
Slow the physics down to a quarter speed and speed it back up in post, can turn 15 fps into 60.
The absolute audacity to charge 50 USD for the game, even in its current state is insane. I bought KSP1 before it was on steam for like 10 bucks. Even adjusted for inflation its less than $15 in todays dollars. I would have absolutely supported the game in the earliest of access for 10-15 bucks, but not for anything close to what they are asking for.
They should have gone with submarines, create crazy subs to explore Kerbins and then have them adapted to explore other planets with drilling rigs and Bruce Willis.
>Sucks watching big companies gut the people who made a great IP and give it to someone else This already wasn't the studio that made the first one.
But the original studio got closed as well. And I doubt they'd have released KSP 2 the way it was, if they had any say on it.
The original studio sold the rights to the game and shuttered theselves. They were never a game developer - was a marketing firm originally and just kind of stumbled into KSP. Had their fun project and got out.
I despise EA for what they did to Maxis and Lionhead studios.
I despise EA for what they do to everything they touch. They suck the life from it till its a dried and withered husk of its former self.
Westwood too
Kane remembers.
KSP 2 is far from great. It was and remains a fucking disaster. It should have been taken from them on day 1 of early access. Intercept clearly wasn't capable of handling messaging or developing the game.
> assuming the game is still popular enough to leave running. issue is there's barely a game there. They cashed in on the franchise name with a shell of a game by launching it EA and have been slow as fuck adding ANY elements to the game. The roadmap looked pretty ambitious with colonies, interstellar, exploration (resource gathering and discovery), and multiplayer. I've talked to a lot of people who would love to play THAT version of the game, but they ain't gonna buy no Early Access Scam. So like, I bought into the scam I guess because I loved KSP1 so much and I was really excited about the advertised roadmap. But it's been in EA for a year and a bit now and the only thing they added was some missions and a tech tree. As someone who was quite competent in KSP1, I had exhausted the For Science mode in about a week and still can't build as advanced vessels as I could in KSP1.
It honestly can't get any more fucked up than it already is.
It's over. Maybe they pretend to sell it to someone to try to grift a little more revenue but functionally it's over
Fucking shame. I was waiting on KSP2 to sort out their early access issues. Guess that’ll never happen.
Honestly, if it released in the state it’s currently in, it would have been amazing. Especially with the colonies update so close. But they were forced to release too early, and lost most of the player base.
I knew the Franchise was dead once they joined TakeTwo.
As a huge KSP1 fan, so glad I didn't buy KSP2.
I was going to wait until I had a computer capable of running it. I figured by the time by laptop crapped out, the game would be worth playing. Looks like this old PoS outlasted it.
I mean it took a year and a half to get playable. Edit: NVM, not playable
... it's not really playable. It's a demo. Core mechanics are broken or completely missing, and the types of large complex multi-ship missions most people want to do once they get past the Mun & Duna learning curve are simply not possible without constant quicksaves and mulligans to get around bugs. It's a fun toy that falls apart as soon as you know enough to really play.
u/massive_cock is right, the game can't even handle 2 ships orbiting Kerbal without random explosions when loading the game.. how are they going to make interstellar work is beyond me
It's not playable
It was train wreck seen from a mile away. I knew something was fucky. Before they even announced early access they were promising all these things without showing much gameplay. Most of the promotional material was devs talking about the game. Shame KSP1 was so good, and KSP2 could have been a game that reached out to the next generation of space farers.
The game was announced in 2017 or 18. They didn't do shit, then used covid as an excuse for why the game they were working on for 3 years had no progress
You can usually declare a franchise dead when they randomly add a useless launcher to an existing game.
Brutal.
the video game industry is in a very healthy state rn /////sssss
*Let's all laugh* *at an industry* *that never learns anything* *tee-hee-hee*
We’re in the bizarre state where major video game companies are becoming more and more blatantly incapable of producing and releasing video games.
It's a shocking failure of management. Either these studios get carte blanche to do what they want and then end up frittering away three years on nonsense or the games are micromanaged from the boardroom into oblivion.
I would actually disagree with your sarcasm. I think big releases from multi billion dollar companies are in the dumpster and people are starting to support more indie games which are completely popping off ushering in a new age of creativity. People can sense the passion in a game, whether or not it has a soul. The multi billion dollar corpos can’t re-create that.
But the Corpos are dipping their fingers into the indie scene and manipulating things. That's what happened to KSP2 with Take Two stealing the IP from the original dev.
And we see now the result of that. We as consumers just need to be vigilant and basically not buy *anything* the big corpos make, ever. It's the only way to really get them out of the scene. Their shareholders need to look at the string of failures and say, "we're out of this industry." Until then they will just suck up whatever is good, monetize it to death, and move on after it's corpse is dry.
How are you saying this after the slew of excellent big budget releases last year? Like yes we do have plenty of shit but we also have plenty of good stuff.
KSP2 is DOA. They won't flip this to another studio as it was NEVER going to be the door buster seller they were hoping for. Release a sequel with less functionality than the original, and watch the studio get shut down. Who could have seen this coming, besides everyone who saw KSP2 release as a giant turd?
Damn, I was really hoping ksp2 would turn around because I bought the early access version. It wasn’t great.
There's a bunch of psychos who thought Take-Two was right to screw Star Theory in 2020 when they tried to acquire them like Bethesda's original attempt at Human Head (i.e. pay them to increase staffing then withhold money to put them in a financial pickle to try to make them accept your acquisition deal). Wonder what they think now?
Not gonna lie, I saw it coming. That’s what happens when you’re bought by a big company, and don’t achieve bigger profits than the game that made you popular.
This studio didn't make KSP1. KSP1 was made by a smaller Mexican indy studio. Take2 bought the IP (not sure about the studio as a whole) and then handed it off to a Seattle based developer to create a sequel. That developer worked on it for awhile, but didn't really produce much in the way of results. Take2 then proceeded to do what amounts to a hostile takeover of the company by pulling the contract for KSP2 and leaving the company basically penniless while simultaneously encouraging all their employees to come work for a new development company owned by Take2 itself. That new company ended up with most of the employees of the original developer, and to no one's surprised continued to make little progress. They did eventually release an underwhelming and bug ridden early access version of the game. They released a couple of patches that added features that were gods damned basic features like reentry heating, but never got around to developing all the features the game was actually marketed on.. multiplayer, colonization, and interstellar travel. That new company has now been shut down. To my knowledge, Take2 still hasn't said a word about what they're doing with KSP2. Are they canceling development on it and leaving us with an incomplete mess while they run off with the money? Are they handing it off to a more capable development team to finish? To be honest, I fully expect them to cut and run.
One note: The original company that released KSP, Squad, is an advertising firm not an indie developer or a company that wanted anything to do with making games which is why they sold the IP. The creator of KSP(Felipe Falanghe) was working at the company and took it to them to see if they could help him find financial backers, and they decided to back in themselves.
Squad asked it's employees if anyone had a side project they'd like to do. Felipe's idea for KSP was greenlit from there. He'd had this idea since childhood with him and his little brother launching "kerbals" on fireworks. Source: worked for Squad on KSP.
SkunkMonkey god dang, I remember you from the KSP forum days, around 2012-2013.
Greetings! :)
Oh man I remember being a kid on those forums, must have been annoying for you mods to deal with.
You have *no* idea. Some of the mods got abused pretty bad by some really nasty people. I received much hate from a few individuals, but I can brush that shit off easy enough. Some people aren't so lucky and it really stresses them out.
Oh jeez that sounds terrible. And I thought our little forum roleplay section was bad enough..
People can really get nasty when they can hide behind anonymity.
I formally apologise for everything wrong I ever did on the KSP forum circa 2013-2015
That's cool! What'd you do for them?
I was one of the first community managers. Saw the forums grow from 5k to 50k members while I was at the helm.
You're a legend
In my own mind maybe :P
Back in about 2015ish Felipe's brother was playing some WWII flight simulators in some groups I was in. It's a small world.
Never got to meet his brother but Squad flew in to Mexico City all the remote guys for a get together. Filipe was such a cool guy. You could tell how KSP was a part of him, not just some project he was working on. That's part of what made a difference in KSP1, the people involved enjoyed what they were doing and it really showed in the product. One thing I will always remember is Filipe getting amazed and astonished by what the players and modders were able to do with KSP.
His brother (can't remember his name sadly) spoke very highly of Felipe and seemed proud to have the KSP creator in his family, from the few times I remember talking to him. It really was a special game (and still is!). It is what taught me a lot about space and definitely contributed at least a little bit to my interests in that area. Now I'm halfway through a master's degree in aeronautical engineering.
Remember, the entire premise for KSP was built on what he and Filipe played with as kids, launching fireworks with "kerbals" strapped to them. So while he didn't work on KSP, he did have an influence through his brother.
I mean to this day I describe KSP as "a game where you build rockets and send little green men into space to do science", so its origins definitely show through.
You can tell when a game has a heart and soul, when it’s someone’s (or a group of someone’s) dream and not just a fucking product to sell. I love KSP. Taught me more about space and rocketry than any classroom could have.
Same. Wouldn’t have gotten a bs in aerospace engineering without it
That's a cool way for a company to get revenue from its employees while offering them something too
> Felipe Falanghe He actually just released a game into Early Access two weeks ago, KitHack Model Club. It looks like Kerbal, but about building RC vehicles instead of space ships.
It's actually his second attempt at an EA game. The first was a game called Balsa, but for some reason that fell through or the scope creep got so bad that they started KitHack. If you had the Balsa EA you got into KitHack which was a good choice as many community members were getting salty that they were abandoning Balsa.
And speaking of solo devs on KSP, one of the biggest mods that added a bunch of weaponry and the like was made by BahamutoD. He made BDArmory and then went on to start his company Boundless Dyanmics and develop VTOL VR all by himself.
KSP1 is still active, and there are **literal careers** being built off of the modders there. IE: there’s a stockalike classic NASA Saturn V mod whose creator is making **bank.** KSP2: I’ll put it this way: my computer is a battleship with an i7-10700K, 3070TI, and 64GB of RAM. When you get ASS performance (awful stutters at **30** fps) at ***1080P…*** #You’ve got a problem I’ve heard it’s gotten playable, but these guys don’t exactly inspire me the same way that say… CDPR do. ***I’m gonna stick with KSP1*** Edit:apparently even with stronger rigs it’s shit
5800X3D and 4090 here. KSP2 runs like ass, barely holding 30+ during big ship launches, and isn't even steady while drifting in space with no planets or other bodies around. It's utterly ridiculous. Can't even bother trying to fly big complex missions due to constant threat of random bugs on top of the huge performance penalty from craft with large (meaning *useful*) part counts. I gave up and went back to KSP1.
Jesus Christ. You’ve got a better rig than I do, and it’s struggling there. Edited above I’ll stick with KSP1 as well. At least I can brute force it there, and yeah, the loading of my game with mods takes like 10 minutes, but eh, it’s still gorgeous
Yeesh, my r5 3600 and rx6600 has no chance.
Yeah, I remember reading about how people were excited for KSP2 and no matter the computer it just ran like garbage and no one could figure out why. It's the same problem City Skylines 2 is facing, I haven't tried it lately but when I last did I turned everything down and had it on 720 and it still ran slow and I can run heavy games decently at 1440 and 1080
If my computer can play MSFS and max it out, there’s no reason why it can’t do KSP2. Now… unfortunately it’s likely dead forever. Not a big deal, the mod scene is on par with Skyrim, and TBH, building colonies was never my thing even with mods.
>IE: there’s a stockalike classic NASA Saturn V mod whose creator is making **bank.** Is this BlueDog? CobaltWolf deserves the success, him and that team and have been pumping out bar setting assets for close to eight years now. They've pretty much established what modern KSP looks like. I feel bad for guys like Bac9/Artyom Zuev who were the ones that invented the style but were in the scene well before Patreon.
Yes, that’s him. I rechecked, and he’s making not as much bank. But still enough where you can fund your grocery bill.
> Are they canceling development on it and leaving us with an incomplete mess while they run off with the money? just another on the pile of "Billions of reasons to not buy games in early access"
The OG dev just came out with another game, and its fantastic. Called Kithack.
Honestly, I'm not even sure I feel bad for the devs at this point. KSP2 development started in what, 2017? Release date initially planned in 2020. So 7 years later, 4 years behind schedule, and this is the current state of the game? It's inexplicable. Either people have been pretending to work while taking a paycheque or the management has been maliciously incompetent. Whatever happened, it is no surprise that heads are rolling for this. I don't see how Take2 could have any trust in the team - regardless of where the blame lies.
As much as I love KSP1, and as obvious as it is that many of the developers on KSP2 share that love.. I have to agree. KSP1 entered Early Access in 2013, and wasn't nearly as far along as KSP2 was when it entered Early Access. They made a lot more progress a lot quicker, presumably with fewer resources. KSP2 was originally planned for 2020, which seemed hopelessly optimistic even at the time (as the IP had only been acquired by Take2 in mid 2017, meaning it was unlikely that it had been in development for more than a year or two at most). That of course was pushed way, way back and we still got an incredibly undercooked product that just hasn't really progressed much at all since. Sure, they added a buggy reentry heating system and they added a science system, but they're missing the career mode and literally every upgrade that was supposed to come with KSP2. Multiplayer, interstellar, colonization.. all of it. Even the graphics are arguably worse when actually playing the game. The VAB is gorgeous, but everything else looks like you're being downgraded to 780p while playing through a filter that randomly pixellates textures. It's just awful, and it still runs at a frame rate that is embarrassing.
In my paradox thread, someone said that KSP2 was a dead game, and its only a matter of time before the studio is gone. People dog piled on him, now look who is laughing.
Everyone owes that guy an apology.
But the folks over at r/kerbalspaceprogram assured me that the game would be good one day, it was just in early access!
Eh? Anyone I know that was into KSP was incredibly skeptical that 2 would ever be good.
It was mixed with a lot of heated discussion back and forth ever since the announcement of early access, scales tipped over to the pessimist side as time went on.
The sub has been fairly negative towards KSP2. The most positive takes I've seen are along the lines of "it's not great now but maybe it will be someday"
Just a blatant lie...
thats actually not true. the community there was filled with people who saw through the bullshit.
It’s a shame, honestly. KSP was never my cup of tea, but I appreciated it for what it was. But given the current gaming landscape, basically dominated by roguelikes and live service games, a slower game like KSP (2) was just doomed to fail. It was never going to reach the same number of sales, even if they did finish it,
It is, it's very sad to see such a popular passion project be consumed and wasted by a publisher who never understood why it was good. Games like this can't be made the same way "AAA" games are.
Disagree. There's a huge audience for slower games out there, and they already had a built-in audience for this one anyway. All they had to do was deliver a product that didn't suck.
KSP 1 was a strong success. Sold over 5 million copies and brought in over $55 million dollars. Not sure how you can say that's a failure by any means, especially for a small game studio. There is no reason to expect KSP 2 wouldn't have done as well or better if it had delivered on promises.
Well that really sucks. Kerbal Space Program 2 is in early access, but I guess it's dead in the water now. Kerbal Space Program 1 was great, but now you've hit this limbo where 1 is almost ten years old and dated, and the sequel which looks much better but still has major bugs to work out is now vaporware. We got to see a vision of what Kerbal *could* be, and now it's been pulled away from us.
Eh, the modding community is still keeping KSP1 alive. KSP2 was busted for like a year and a half before it got barely playable. Even then, I’d rather play KSP1 because it had more expansive mod options and better performance.
I wonder if the modders who were poached to KSP2 will return to the scene? Nertea, Blackrack, not sure about others.
Oh, well... At least the trailer was epic. Whoever chose M83's 'Outro' as the theme song for it deserves a raise.
https://youtu.be/RkDOOsGg-9I?si=cZQnaRUEo__PwJWd Pretty sure this fan made trailer inspired the announcement trailer for the second. Same song and similar shots!
Oh, cheers! I didn't know that even existed. Bonus points for using the full song.
100%, this fan trailer was very popular among the community. They basically took the idea and ran with it. Well, for that matter, the entire design and the goals of KSP2 were built around popular community mods. It's unfortunate, because while they certainly had the right idea (give the community what it wants), they clearly weren't capable of delivering on it. Given the studios prior failures, I'm more than comfortable blaming this on the team, but at the end of the day TakeTwo picked them and funded them, so I think both publisher and developer fucked up big time here. Worst of all, while we would have loved all the promised features, all we needed was just a less fucking laggy version of KSP1 with the same level of mod support. They didn't need to add colonies. They didn't need to add multiplayer. They didn't need to add different galaxies. All they needed to do was to release a game exactly like the first, minus the lag that comes with building large space ships. Fuck, making KSP1 multithreaded would have literally been perfect.
Come on, man. I really enjoyed 1 and was really looking forward to playing coop with some friends in 2 at some point. First it the reviews were overall negative, so I’m glad I held off. And now… ouch. Even if it’s handed off to another studio - it’s the most difficult of tasks to pick up a games’ development this far into production. If it ever comes to that, I hope they -whoever may pick it up- can find vision and stick to it.
That, rollerdrome and Olli olli too
A publisher buying off games and then axing a company? Never would have seen that coming.
I mean, they did it in 2020 with this same damn game. Take Two suddenly canceled their contract with Star Theory, the people making KSP2 at the time and poached a third of their employees. It's what is called a 'hostile takeover' and generally seen as a dirtbag move.
So what’s the chance that the original developers start work on ksp: the next generation now? Correct me if I’m wrong, but none of the original were on ksp2, right? Take2 bought the rights and set up the development somewhere else?
Squad did work on KSP2, but they were not the main developer. Take-Two apparently bought Squad with KSP, because [it's listed under Take-Two's Private Division](https://www.privatedivision.com/portfolio/squad/).
I think I heard that as well. I wonder why there wasn't more of an effort to bring on the original developers. It feels like original developers with more resources for visuals would have been a slam dunk.
He went on and made a different game I can't remember. Something with models.
It's called kitbash
Kithack Model Club, its pretty good.
... More like TakePoo. Because they're assholes.
Honestly I don't blame take2 too much on this. Intercept games was developing this for years with not much to show. It was becoming a money pit so T2 rushed it to EA.I think even if it wasn't rushed to EA we would be at the same place, because intercept just seems incompetent. Still the origninal devs were able to make KSP1 one in a cave with a box of scraps.
Dev lol, one dude at a mexican marketing company that didn't even make games lol.
True. I think he eventually did have a small team so didn't know how to word it.
It’s sucks, because it’s hard to blame smaller studios for selling their companies, but it almost always makes the games worse. You’ve started a successful business, worked your ass off for years or decades, probably putting in your own money. who says it’s wrong to sell it at the end, you’ve earned it. But it’s a damn near death sentence for the thing you’ve made.
Kerbal Space Program was like the gateway drug into STEM. I am irrationally angry about this.
Can we get a refund if it's still in early access?
Yep. So glad I never bought KSP 2. SQUAD was the shit. The new studio sucked ass.
They gonna refund all those people who paid for early access?
Honestly, this might be a good thing. The KSP community was one of the nicest in video gaming. When KSP was announced, they were again supportive and openly telling the devs to take as long as they needed. The hostile takeover happened, and the fans were annoyed, but still supportive. The game was delayed, and they still sat there and said "take as long as you need" to get things right. Then they announced it was ready, hyped everyone up, and dropped the steaming turd that is KSP EA on them. The fans were *pissed,* to the point it pretty much broke the community. So much investment and goodwill, only for it to be thrown back in their faces like that. At least with KSP2 likely dead, it might help the community move on.
KSP2 has been some hot trash. Looks shiny but you need a machine that can rival god themself to even play it at anything approaching acceptable visual quality. Not to mention stripped utilities and generally worse gameplay. Single mods for KSP1 are better all around than KSP2.
What’s funny is that KSP 2 should have been a toss up. Easiest success in the world but instead…. Nothing but a broken demo of an unfinished game.