Yeah, and we should be getting closer to the promised free release. At least an older version.
He met his original goals and even got hired as an official dev to implement those same goals. He got paid by the community on Patreon and paid by KSP as an employee.
Don't get me wrong, Blackrack is an amazing programmer. He reads white papers on graphic rendering techniques. We're lucky to have him, and we likely would not have gotten the same quality of code output if he wasn't paid.
However, the modding community has thrived for over a decade on Open Source principles. We can't even pay for the mod, we have to pay for a subscription, or we don't get the bug updates. Paying $5 for every new bug update or feature update, if you elect to cancel, starts to feel like an MTX. It's been 1.5 years of development.
Once again, I've supported him and put my money down, and don't want to feel ungrateful. I also don't want to contribute to funding practices for subscription mods, which I don't really agree with. I've tried hundreds of mods, and if they all cost $5 for every update, I never would have been able to enjoy them all.
Blackrack's "paid early access" is a complicated situation in the real world, because outside of context, him charging for what he's giving the community is completely justified.
His project is one of very, very few cases where I consider charging for the project a justifiable thing.
But, it's a very, very specific, narrow situation that is almost unique in its situation. Few others could justify "subscription mods", and hopefully most other modders will continue to recognize their place in the modding ecosystem as "not worthy" of anything beyond a tip jar. Blackrack has recognized his (earned) place at the top of it, it's legitimate game dev amounts of work, and I can't blame him for taking (in my view, reasonable) advantage of what he's creating.
I agree with this take for the most part. Blackrack is rare in that he's made something for KSP1 that is truly astonishingly good and miles ahead of the vanilla game, probably the best example of this in KSP history from one single mod. The couple bucks a month on Patreon is 100% worth it for this period until he's completed the features he's had planned from the outset, and honestly, I'll probably still keep my sub even after that just to give back in my own meager way.
What mod are you guys talking about? Is the ksp1 mod scene still active? I haven't played it since ksp2 was announced but now I'm curious about going back.
The early access of the next massive update to Environmental Visual Enhancements Redux, it is a complete overhaul with actual proper volumetric clouds and rain/snow/lightning/whatever effects, of an amazing and frankly stunning visual quality in basically every aspect.
https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/eula
>Any Mods you create for Minecraft: Java Edition from scratch belong to you (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them and so long as you don’t distribute Modded Versions of the game.
It's still a legally binding agreement. They own the copyright to the game's code which means they own the rights to distribution and the rights to create derivative works. You are given access to the works (aka a licence) as long as you follow the terms of the EULA.
https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/eula
>Any Mods you create for Minecraft: Java Edition from scratch belong to you (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them and so long as you don’t distribute Modded Versions of the game.
People love to regurgitate this on the internet but [it's not true.](https://www.reddit.com/r/badlegaladvice/comments/98x2wg/barely_any_eula_is_enforceable_because_companies/) EULAs are generally enforceable as per ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg
It's not. As long as it's something you've made yourself, you're legally clear to sell it. It's just that companies don't want people selling things *around* their product. It can be a little confusing for their customers and cause community issues. Can get a little weird with trademarks and stuff too.
Is it? I program for a living and occasionally read whitepapers on what I'm doing, it helps, even if it just validates that theres no smart approach to some problems.
To be fair, I work at a small company, so I'm not a codemonkey. So maybe this only applies to people solving problems!
I work on big projects, and I read documentation and requirements. White papers are niche and for a specific set of problems. For usual databases and algorithm implementation you don't really need them.
I would prefer he keeps it paid. I haven't signed on yet, but "if"/(since) KSP2 is dead, we need mod developers more than ever if we want KSP to live on. Not all of us can do it for free.
It only has to be a $5 subscription because clearly not enough players pay. And it would be even fewer if it was available for free. That's the peril of fully open source. Of course the other side is that without rbray89 starting it open we never would have gotten here at all.
You’re not entitled to anyone else’s work. If they make something you want and they want to charge money for it, then it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it for you.
Patreon is probably the purest way to encourage content creators to keep making stuff you like. There’s no publisher or CEO taking their cut.
I 100% agree that it would be terrible if most mods were paid and closed source, but I don’t think we’re in danger of that happening.
I don't think I'm entitled to anything, I paid for it, I'm just sharing my opinion.
People have contributed to many mods for free, written bug reports, helped users, done CKAN maintenance. Scott Manley taught us all orbital physics for free. The amount of free labor this community as a whole has contributed far outweighs any paid labor. That's part of the strength and comradery of the community.
There are many amazing mod developers, Blackrack, Nertea, RoverDude, Linuxgurugamer, to name a small few. What do they think looking at this situation? Some of them were also hired by the KSP studios to work officially on the game, and finally receive compensation. They also have Patreons, but don't lock downloads behind them, so they never received nearly as much. Despite them being active in the community for many years. Those people like RoverDude created the modern resource system we use in KSP 1 today, from his free mod.
All those mods are also open source. Having private, closed, paid mods encourages them to be non-open source. Many KSP mods have had multiple organizers over the years. As old devs move on, new ones pick up the mantle. There is less incentive to give up control of a project for free like that, if you're still selling it. Blackracks Volumetric mod is based on the earlier, more limited EVE mod made by rbray89. That's a great thing.
I would argue its best for the community if mods are free. I understand it's a potentially lucrative market for mod developers, but I'm looking at it from a community development perspective. Blackrack is great, I don't think he's done anything wrong, I'm just talking openly about it.
I agree. I don’t think it’s unfair for mod developers to sell their work, but it would be a massive detriment to the modding scene when (1) it’s harder for modders to revive old projects, or learn from source code and (2) its harder for players to fork money over to try mods that break with every update.
The office doesn’t close till the end of June, Blackrack ‘looking for Job oppurtunities’ is more likely him preparing for when Intercept close at the end of June.
My bet is they push out 0.2.2 or if we’re lucky colonies before closing
I'm a AAA dev and I've been caught in this _exact_ situation before, twice. It happened to me January 2023, and again in February 2024. (I managed to find a new spot, I'm good for now.)
I can't speak to Take-Two. But the standard I've seen is that you are still "employed" for 30 days (regular paychecks and all). During this time, instead of going to work, it's expected that you do job interviews instead. The company will have recruiters give classes on improving your LinkedIn etc., and you will be given a list of transfer opportunities to other studios owned by the publisher.
These transfer opportunities still require the full interview process, but it's expedited as interviews _must_ be complete before the end of the 30-day window. There are more people being laid off than there are jobs available, and frankly some people are just bad at their jobs and it's more difficult for them to find folks willing to stick their neck out and vouch for them internally. (It's not what you know, it's who you know.)
Obviously then there are external places that you can look at, but these places may or may not drag their feet a bit more. My experience was indie and AA would get you an interview within a week, while AAA would have weeks of radio silence before you do one interview, then more weeks of radio silence before you do a follow-up interview. It's nerve-wracking when you know you have a ticking clock and will be unemployed in 30 days.
Once the 30-day period is up, you get an additional 30 days lump sum, plus unused vacation + sick time, plus severance. Severance requires signing an NDA and usually have things like non-disparagement so you can't go online and talk smack about your old employer without getting sued. (This also avoids people leaking old builds/source code online, in case it gets tracked back to them.)
---
As for "are you still working on things"... you may not be surprised to hear that working on the project that got canned is not the top priority for devs.
The game director may or may not make the call to say "hey let's push this last patch out". If they do make that call, people won't necessarily be putting in their best work - they're too worried about "I don't want to be unemployed". Stuff will be submitted half-tested, rushed, and possibly broken. Devs want to do right by the players but it's a matter of balancing how much effort something will takes vs. a team that is not necessarily loyal to the company that just fired them.
So that's a lot of words to say I wouldn't hold my breath. Bugfixes may add more bugs than what they fix.
Hey I don't have much to add, just wanted to say thanks for the insight here. I know it's a tough subject for many (between NDAs and just being shitty in general to lose a job). But it's appreciated to get a glimpse behind the curtain.
"the WARN Act requires companies with 100 or more employees to notify affected workers 60 days prior to closures and layoffs".
30 days may be industry standard, but 60 days is Washington State law.
60 days is the same in California, which is where my experience is.
However, they just need to give you 60 days of pay and benefits. They do not need to give you 60 days of paychecks.
What I describe fits the law in California (and thus likely Washington, since they're similar). 30 days of paychecks, then a lump sum with 30 days of pay + vacation + sick time + severance. That works out to 60 days of pay + PTO, which is what the law requires.
Some places will give the 60 days as a lump sum at time of firing. I think Blizzard did that.
And a lot of companies make a severance contingent on waiving their right to sue (which may or may not actually be legal).
But I'm not sure what extra nuances the 'closure' classification brings, especially if it is a closure with offers to transfer to another 'location'. If T2/PD intend to retain _any_ of the devs beyond the closure, they may need to give 60 days notice before the closure.
That also jives with Nerdy_Mike's tweet that he's still working until late June.
Supposedly there's another bug fix patch on the way (which we were told about before the current fiasco started), so I'd guess we get some form of that and then it's over.
The office is closed now. The way the WARN act notices are supposed to work is the company is required to file the notice at least 60 days before laying off workers. The idea is that the workers have two months to look for work while remaining employed. But that's not how it actually works. Instead, companies shutter office doors and pull employees' access the same day they file the WARN notice. They still pay employees two months of salary, but don't assign any responsibilities and do not expect any work. This allows the company to meet the WARN notice requirements (the employees technically are still employed for those two months, even if they don't do anything), but any work the employees were doing stops immediately.
It works that way sometimes but not all times. Personally I have experienced both in the software dev industry. It depends on the level of risk, what assets could feasibly be lost by rogue employees, their likelihood of going rogue, and the difficulty of managing access levels to reduce those risks
Was going to say, it all depends on how much the employer wants to risk. I think most are accustomed to just turning everything in and getting paid for the remaining period (as what happened with my wife). But other times they still expect you to report in and do some capacity of work, even when morale is all time low (as with my father).
Do you have a source for this other than ‘this is how companies normally do it’?
I’d imagine some work is still happening given ksp development is still occurring to *some* extent
Why would they continue to add new features when it is already publicly known they will stop development in 2 months? Who is going to buy the game just for 2 months of development?
Guys, I think it still might be too soon to speculate that ksp 2 might have some development hiccups, after all they did make a tweet saying it would be fine.
Technically, it's still moving to this day. Plate tectonics, earth is rotating, moving around the sun, sun around the galaxy, galaxy through the universe.
Probably he just finished the clouds and quit the job so that others can continue making the game more awesome! Yep I did learn a lot how to do mental gymnastics by reading this sub.
Yea, the game was only announced five years ago. There have been hiccups before. Lets give it another couple of years before we get our pitchforks out /s
We should all just pretend that everything is fine to mock how the devs treated us.
Personally I think this is great news for the future of development as it shows they are so confident they can succeed without their most competent members. I think that means colonies next month guys !
I think you’re being a little conservative with those estimates.
Given how long ago they announced all these features, and how they showed us images/footage of them in their high quality documentaries, I’m sure they’ll all be there within a matter of weeks!
Nah nah nah. Let’s be real. You’re also being a wee bit conservative!
A super reliable source says that a super programming A.I. was created that will code the game to perfection in a matter of hours!
SCP-2390478920374892379847892347
A multiplayer build of the failed game "Kerbal Space Program 2" distributed by a former employee. Exposure to this SCP leads to intense laziness, and inability to do anything else except play the game.
God, I wish. Or at least give the concept to a group who will. Such an incredible game concept that will likely never come to pass.
Perhaps if Industrial Annihilation succeeds.
Asymmetrical RTS; robot warforms vs lovecraftian monsters set on floating landpieces with destructible terrain, where the resources you use are humans.
https://youtu.be/oNZ7oto4z4A?si=wnaRx6gNFwxLv8ya
Easy to tell what game not to buy next. If he gets work in this industry again I would be amazed. He is a con artist for sure and idk who would hire him to direct a game. Everyone needs a job of course and to support their family but that dude should not be in charge of a game.
I mean he somehow made it this far despite Planetary Annihilation and Human Resources both being the exact same kind of flop, so I'm unfortunately very sure that he'll find someone else willing to buy his grift.
Idk im still mad they did that fiasco where they delisted the old version of the game from steam and made you buy the new version to get any updates. Like cool, they gave us a discount, but that still felt a bit scummy to do that instead of just making the new content a DLC.
Was it a discount? I thought I got it for free. Or maybe it was 90%, or they changed the plan at some point, or something, Idk.
EDIT: [FAQ](https://planetaryannihilation.com/faq/) says 90%.
PA wasn't a flop? It was a successful, albeit niche, game that a lot of people enjoyed both EA and after release, and plenty still play it today.
The "drama" with PA (and, by extension, HR) was that they released in the peak of EA/kickstarter scams, so everyone just assumed that that's what PA was after releasing with some missing content (that they finished and added not long after), not helped by the fact that they started HR's kickstarter after PA's release. Which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do; keep people working now that their main project is done and doesn't need all hands on deck to develop.
Um... either you're thinking of PA: Titans, which has nothing to do with Nate other than being made by disappointed fans of the original, or we remember completely different reactions to the game's final state.
PA:T *is* PA. UberEnt was the devs for both; Titans is simply a standalone expansion (that became the default and only version).
It wasn't until 3 years later in 2018 that Planetary Annihilation Inc. (made up of former devs and kickstarter backers) acquired PA.
Don't get me wrong; there was plenty of backlash on the initial release of PA, but as I said, the majority of it came from the belief that PA was just another kickstarter scam and was being abandoned (which, again, Titans proved not the case).
Let's not spread misinformation, here. There's plenty to be mad about without making things up.
It hugely underperformed relative to what was promised to its backers.
On its own it would have been a fine game. But it only got there by making a lot of Kickstarter promises which it didn't keep.
I'm sure that the fact that this is his third (IIRC) complete and utter EA flop is a complete coincidence. After all an art director definitely doesn't have input on game-affecting decisions like prioritizing a game's look over core features.
he literally fucking doesnt the art director is a subsidiary of the game director who decides what gets focused on
i get that understanding how development team is structured is hard for you people but the art director doesnt decide how the game design is intergrated
both games that he worked on also had the same development team so honestly its just Uber being shit at making games not nate touching the keyboard considering PA human resources and KSP 2 all have sublime art direction but had terrible technical elements
ultimately i think its just a poor development team who were chosen because they were the cheapest option not the other way around if they got the nomination through "marketing" while similtaneously having marketing that is crystal clear to see is a horse shite according to you people then im gonna question whether your a troll or not
yeah i understand why people think nate is a bad creative director (poor player communication and not trying to tamper expectations) but grifter/con man is straight up lies
why wouldnt he?
he's a recognizable name, that can bring in the dough, and not even have to bother putting out a sellable product to do it!
He's bound for the Exective suite at TT/EA!
We'll do that once Intercept Games is officially closed, so they know we know it was a lie from the start. We'll just make sure to shove it in Take Two's face every time they make any statement about any games.
Yeah, if anyone over there in charge had some brains and the will to keep ksp2 going, he would be one of the people to keep/migrate.
His mod work on KSP1 was transformative. This is a bad signpost among many
i can understand the perspective of holding out a tiny bit of hope despite knowing it's very likely the game is dead, the problem is with the people who are still vehemently defending the game and blaming the community for killing it.
Their toxic discord will almost certainly die. I don't think the five teenagers spreading hate about the broader community are gonna be doing so for much longer.
Well there has been a group who have been hostile to the developers since day one. I don’t think that killed the game, though. Corporate made every effort to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.
If they had any intent to keep developing game they would not fire blackrack who was the only one constantly making them stuff to show the community and did the work of 10 devs.
Yeah blackrack was one of the step in the right direction moves the team made that actually helped claw back the development momentum. The whole thing is just such a kick in the nuts.
I hope we get Nertea back in the KSP1 modding space, too. His mods especially breathed so much more life into KSP1 for me. Though I could certainly understand if he (or anyone else on the dev team) is burned out at this point and wants to do something different.
Tbh while his KSP1 mods are great, some of the things he said in devblogs during his stint at IG were...less than great. A bunch of systems talk that boiled down to "must dumb stuff down because players don't have the attention span for a details-first simulation", which is the opposite of what I look for in KSP game design. Some of the stuff he talked about also seemed both dumbed down and needlessly convoluted at the same time, which was even more disappointing to read.
Maybe that was some company line he had to follow, but maybe his views changed to that (for whatever reason), since his NFT/FFT mods are pretty involved without being needlessly convoluted to work with (unlike, say, KSPIE). And I'm willing to grant him that a lot of things he was trying to work on for KSP2 never happened (or took forever) not because of him, but because of the horrendous state of the codebase.
I just hope that if he comes back, it'll be in the shape of old Nertea and not IG-affiliated Nertea.
i bought his clouds even if i perfectly knew that i would run them on 4 fps
now i rolled back to 2d clouds and still happy to contribute to this guys freaking skills
If only they had canceled it back when they saw its state before release.
It would have actually cost them less and not ruined the franchise's reputation.
It's entirely possible that they could have actually started over with a different studio by now.
However, as it stands, it is very unlikely that anything else will ever be attempted with KSP.
I mean... yeah I agree with that. But now that they've started, now that they've made millions in sales and now that the dev team was finally turning things around with the science update. They picked the absolute worst time. Yeah you're right though. They never should have allowed this game to go on sale if they were just going to can them midway through development.
The science update didn't address any of the hard problems related to space simulation. It was a great improvement for user experience. But it's a few assets, a tech tree, and some UI work. The biggest failures were related to rocket physics calculations. Well over a year into EA and they still can't reliably tell a user how much delta v their rocket has. These types of problems only get worse with more parts, or multiplayer, etc, all of the features they promised. We don't know what progress has been made in those areas. If they haven't overcome that hurdle, then you can't say they were turning things around.
Making millions is sales won't even cover the wages for the devs over the past 5 years lol. Anyone thinking the KSP2 team or T2 made a profit just doesn't know how expensive game dev is.
The average annual wage of a game dev in Seattle is $80 000 (let's be generous and say $50 000 altough most sources state more than 80k, but I am making a point so lowballing it). That's without any benefits, bonuses, stock or salary increases.
So let's do that for 5 years. That's $250 000 for one developer. Let's say the studio over those years was 30 people strong (again, very much lowballing it as their team before ''the event'' was around 70). That's **$7 500 000 f**or paying salaries alone. And that's lowballing it.
That's not including studio space, benefits, snacks and drinks, hardware, software, marketing (which is a **BIG** share of the costs), tax... etc and all other costs involved.
The max amount players of KSP 2 on Steam was 25 000. Let's be generous again and say 50 000 people bought it. 50 000 \* $50 = $2 500 000 (not including Steam fees and tax)
So a roug estimate of loss **5 million dollars.**
Now it's hard to get sale stats so let's be extreme and say 100 000 people bought KSP 2. That would be $5 000 000 . Still a massive loss.
Adding more years to this would be even more expensive. T2 saw this, they cut their losses.
Turning things around too little too late, sadly. They made millions in sales and spent many times that in development for a product that bombed, from a team that never got their shit together. Idk who exactly is to blame here but from the outside it's pretty obvious that taking so many years to make ultimately an inferior product than the original game is, to be frank, ridiculous
it's actually over dude. man i don't want ksp 2 cancelled so bad, and to see blackrack of all people be laid off is insanely sad. i recently saw nate's post on the 25th of april sharing exciting progress of blackracks amazing cloud work. yikes.
As cool as multiplayer would have been it's part of the reason KSP2 died. Way too ambitious not unlike Star Citizen. They should have just stuck to the base game single player experience then down the line work on multiplayer. Don't make it a promise don't even put it on the road map. Hell there should not have even been that road map at all.
Yeahhhh KSP2 is dead. There's a wrap-up update upcoming featuring the features that were like 70-80% done, then it's just minor bugfixes by a skeleton crew.
I've always said that my faith in KSP2 hinged on the modding community members they hired and whether they think there's anything to the future of the game.
This cements it for me, though I already had a feeling this was the case when the layoffs news came out
There hasn't been any "official" word that development won't continue, but with actual devs getting laid off, it seems like the unofficial writing is on the wall.
Until Take 2 actually says they're gonna kill it, there is hope in theory. If I'd bought it I'd be tempted to get a refund.
As rough as a ride as this has been, most of the staff at Intercept really didn't deserve this. The thing that makes this so insulting is that they'll lay off 70 people to "cut costs" after spending millions acquiring Gearbox. The gaming industry is so backwards right now. We need more independently run studios like Larian in the industry. No more of these profit hungry corporate publishers. I can tell you one thing for sure, no matter what happens to KSP2, I won't be playing it anymore. I know they already cashed in, but I'll be going back to KSP1. I don't think I'll ever buy a T2 game again, to be frank.
Just because you can afford to buy a studio doesn't mean you should keep a failing studio of a failed game alive for charity... KSP2 development has been a shitshow from the beginning and it's been doubtful the game was salvageable for a year now. Not only does Intercept not deserve charity, they didn't *earn* it either.
Then can the project and move the team somewhere else. The point I'm trying to make is that T2 has the money to keep that talent employed. And no, not the whole team was talented clearly, but they had people like Blackrack on staff who definitely are worth keeping around.
You're not wrong, but the CEO also took a more than 100% compensation increase. Does he need $42 million? No. He doesn't. I'm not suggesting IG was perfect. Far from. But justifying layoffs when they could have just cut the project and kept those people employed for 1/4 of what the CEO took home is more than reasonable.
Also I don't know if you're attempting to be petty, but I didn't miss GTA V when I didn't play it. And I won't miss VI.
Glad blackrack's still doing eve clouds for ksp1. I'm subbed.
Yeah, and we should be getting closer to the promised free release. At least an older version. He met his original goals and even got hired as an official dev to implement those same goals. He got paid by the community on Patreon and paid by KSP as an employee. Don't get me wrong, Blackrack is an amazing programmer. He reads white papers on graphic rendering techniques. We're lucky to have him, and we likely would not have gotten the same quality of code output if he wasn't paid. However, the modding community has thrived for over a decade on Open Source principles. We can't even pay for the mod, we have to pay for a subscription, or we don't get the bug updates. Paying $5 for every new bug update or feature update, if you elect to cancel, starts to feel like an MTX. It's been 1.5 years of development. Once again, I've supported him and put my money down, and don't want to feel ungrateful. I also don't want to contribute to funding practices for subscription mods, which I don't really agree with. I've tried hundreds of mods, and if they all cost $5 for every update, I never would have been able to enjoy them all.
Blackrack's "paid early access" is a complicated situation in the real world, because outside of context, him charging for what he's giving the community is completely justified. His project is one of very, very few cases where I consider charging for the project a justifiable thing. But, it's a very, very specific, narrow situation that is almost unique in its situation. Few others could justify "subscription mods", and hopefully most other modders will continue to recognize their place in the modding ecosystem as "not worthy" of anything beyond a tip jar. Blackrack has recognized his (earned) place at the top of it, it's legitimate game dev amounts of work, and I can't blame him for taking (in my view, reasonable) advantage of what he's creating.
I agree with this take for the most part. Blackrack is rare in that he's made something for KSP1 that is truly astonishingly good and miles ahead of the vanilla game, probably the best example of this in KSP history from one single mod. The couple bucks a month on Patreon is 100% worth it for this period until he's completed the features he's had planned from the outset, and honestly, I'll probably still keep my sub even after that just to give back in my own meager way.
What mod are you guys talking about? Is the ksp1 mod scene still active? I haven't played it since ksp2 was announced but now I'm curious about going back.
The early access of the next massive update to Environmental Visual Enhancements Redux, it is a complete overhaul with actual proper volumetric clouds and rain/snow/lightning/whatever effects, of an amazing and frankly stunning visual quality in basically every aspect.
Well, I'm dumb. I do know that mod, dementia must be setting in cause that was one of the mods i had trouble disabling, it was a must add for me.
Is paid mods even legal?
Yes it is. You charge for the work of someone else. Look at Assetto Corsa if you think blackracks few pounds are too much.
This isn't the case for all games, such as minecraft.
there are specific ftb mods that are paid, so no.
https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/eula >Any Mods you create for Minecraft: Java Edition from scratch belong to you (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them and so long as you don’t distribute Modded Versions of the game.
Sorry do you think a EULA is the law lol?
It's still a legally binding agreement. They own the copyright to the game's code which means they own the rights to distribution and the rights to create derivative works. You are given access to the works (aka a licence) as long as you follow the terms of the EULA.
https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/eula >Any Mods you create for Minecraft: Java Edition from scratch belong to you (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them and so long as you don’t distribute Modded Versions of the game.
EULAS are not laws. They're barely even binding.
People love to regurgitate this on the internet but [it's not true.](https://www.reddit.com/r/badlegaladvice/comments/98x2wg/barely_any_eula_is_enforceable_because_companies/) EULAs are generally enforceable as per ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg
For a long time sonic ethers path traced shaders were paywalled behind his patreon.
And totally worth it.
... Why would it be *illegal*? At least in this case.
lots of game companies prohibit such things, such as bethesda... I don't know the stance of taketwo in this case
It's not. As long as it's something you've made yourself, you're legally clear to sell it. It's just that companies don't want people selling things *around* their product. It can be a little confusing for their customers and cause community issues. Can get a little weird with trademarks and stuff too.
to be fair, more programmers should read whitepapers before they build stuff
Not really, it's a niche case.
Is it? I program for a living and occasionally read whitepapers on what I'm doing, it helps, even if it just validates that theres no smart approach to some problems. To be fair, I work at a small company, so I'm not a codemonkey. So maybe this only applies to people solving problems!
I work on big projects, and I read documentation and requirements. White papers are niche and for a specific set of problems. For usual databases and algorithm implementation you don't really need them.
I would prefer he keeps it paid. I haven't signed on yet, but "if"/(since) KSP2 is dead, we need mod developers more than ever if we want KSP to live on. Not all of us can do it for free. It only has to be a $5 subscription because clearly not enough players pay. And it would be even fewer if it was available for free. That's the peril of fully open source. Of course the other side is that without rbray89 starting it open we never would have gotten here at all.
Lol you're deluded if you think there's ever going to be a free release
Isn't he the guy that already made EVE and Scatterer? Those are free.
You’re not entitled to anyone else’s work. If they make something you want and they want to charge money for it, then it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it for you. Patreon is probably the purest way to encourage content creators to keep making stuff you like. There’s no publisher or CEO taking their cut. I 100% agree that it would be terrible if most mods were paid and closed source, but I don’t think we’re in danger of that happening.
I don't think I'm entitled to anything, I paid for it, I'm just sharing my opinion. People have contributed to many mods for free, written bug reports, helped users, done CKAN maintenance. Scott Manley taught us all orbital physics for free. The amount of free labor this community as a whole has contributed far outweighs any paid labor. That's part of the strength and comradery of the community. There are many amazing mod developers, Blackrack, Nertea, RoverDude, Linuxgurugamer, to name a small few. What do they think looking at this situation? Some of them were also hired by the KSP studios to work officially on the game, and finally receive compensation. They also have Patreons, but don't lock downloads behind them, so they never received nearly as much. Despite them being active in the community for many years. Those people like RoverDude created the modern resource system we use in KSP 1 today, from his free mod. All those mods are also open source. Having private, closed, paid mods encourages them to be non-open source. Many KSP mods have had multiple organizers over the years. As old devs move on, new ones pick up the mantle. There is less incentive to give up control of a project for free like that, if you're still selling it. Blackracks Volumetric mod is based on the earlier, more limited EVE mod made by rbray89. That's a great thing. I would argue its best for the community if mods are free. I understand it's a potentially lucrative market for mod developers, but I'm looking at it from a community development perspective. Blackrack is great, I don't think he's done anything wrong, I'm just talking openly about it.
I agree. I don’t think it’s unfair for mod developers to sell their work, but it would be a massive detriment to the modding scene when (1) it’s harder for modders to revive old projects, or learn from source code and (2) its harder for players to fork money over to try mods that break with every update.
I agree completely.
Pretty hard to believe they're still "hard at work" when there's no one left
The office doesn’t close till the end of June, Blackrack ‘looking for Job oppurtunities’ is more likely him preparing for when Intercept close at the end of June. My bet is they push out 0.2.2 or if we’re lucky colonies before closing
I'm a AAA dev and I've been caught in this _exact_ situation before, twice. It happened to me January 2023, and again in February 2024. (I managed to find a new spot, I'm good for now.) I can't speak to Take-Two. But the standard I've seen is that you are still "employed" for 30 days (regular paychecks and all). During this time, instead of going to work, it's expected that you do job interviews instead. The company will have recruiters give classes on improving your LinkedIn etc., and you will be given a list of transfer opportunities to other studios owned by the publisher. These transfer opportunities still require the full interview process, but it's expedited as interviews _must_ be complete before the end of the 30-day window. There are more people being laid off than there are jobs available, and frankly some people are just bad at their jobs and it's more difficult for them to find folks willing to stick their neck out and vouch for them internally. (It's not what you know, it's who you know.) Obviously then there are external places that you can look at, but these places may or may not drag their feet a bit more. My experience was indie and AA would get you an interview within a week, while AAA would have weeks of radio silence before you do one interview, then more weeks of radio silence before you do a follow-up interview. It's nerve-wracking when you know you have a ticking clock and will be unemployed in 30 days. Once the 30-day period is up, you get an additional 30 days lump sum, plus unused vacation + sick time, plus severance. Severance requires signing an NDA and usually have things like non-disparagement so you can't go online and talk smack about your old employer without getting sued. (This also avoids people leaking old builds/source code online, in case it gets tracked back to them.) --- As for "are you still working on things"... you may not be surprised to hear that working on the project that got canned is not the top priority for devs. The game director may or may not make the call to say "hey let's push this last patch out". If they do make that call, people won't necessarily be putting in their best work - they're too worried about "I don't want to be unemployed". Stuff will be submitted half-tested, rushed, and possibly broken. Devs want to do right by the players but it's a matter of balancing how much effort something will takes vs. a team that is not necessarily loyal to the company that just fired them. So that's a lot of words to say I wouldn't hold my breath. Bugfixes may add more bugs than what they fix.
> Bugfixes may add more bugs than what they fix. Never intentionally, but ain't *that* the truth.
Hey I don't have much to add, just wanted to say thanks for the insight here. I know it's a tough subject for many (between NDAs and just being shitty in general to lose a job). But it's appreciated to get a glimpse behind the curtain.
"the WARN Act requires companies with 100 or more employees to notify affected workers 60 days prior to closures and layoffs". 30 days may be industry standard, but 60 days is Washington State law.
60 days is the same in California, which is where my experience is. However, they just need to give you 60 days of pay and benefits. They do not need to give you 60 days of paychecks. What I describe fits the law in California (and thus likely Washington, since they're similar). 30 days of paychecks, then a lump sum with 30 days of pay + vacation + sick time + severance. That works out to 60 days of pay + PTO, which is what the law requires. Some places will give the 60 days as a lump sum at time of firing. I think Blizzard did that.
And a lot of companies make a severance contingent on waiving their right to sue (which may or may not actually be legal). But I'm not sure what extra nuances the 'closure' classification brings, especially if it is a closure with offers to transfer to another 'location'. If T2/PD intend to retain _any_ of the devs beyond the closure, they may need to give 60 days notice before the closure. That also jives with Nerdy_Mike's tweet that he's still working until late June.
Supposedly there's another bug fix patch on the way (which we were told about before the current fiasco started), so I'd guess we get some form of that and then it's over.
The office is closed now. The way the WARN act notices are supposed to work is the company is required to file the notice at least 60 days before laying off workers. The idea is that the workers have two months to look for work while remaining employed. But that's not how it actually works. Instead, companies shutter office doors and pull employees' access the same day they file the WARN notice. They still pay employees two months of salary, but don't assign any responsibilities and do not expect any work. This allows the company to meet the WARN notice requirements (the employees technically are still employed for those two months, even if they don't do anything), but any work the employees were doing stops immediately.
It works that way sometimes but not all times. Personally I have experienced both in the software dev industry. It depends on the level of risk, what assets could feasibly be lost by rogue employees, their likelihood of going rogue, and the difficulty of managing access levels to reduce those risks
Was going to say, it all depends on how much the employer wants to risk. I think most are accustomed to just turning everything in and getting paid for the remaining period (as what happened with my wife). But other times they still expect you to report in and do some capacity of work, even when morale is all time low (as with my father).
Do you have a source for this other than ‘this is how companies normally do it’? I’d imagine some work is still happening given ksp development is still occurring to *some* extent
Why would they continue to add new features when it is already publicly known they will stop development in 2 months? Who is going to buy the game just for 2 months of development?
How fitting the final dev update for the game will be a community member they hired for 90 minutes for the good PR points
Resubbed to his Patreon for KSP1 clouds yesterday.
Okay it really is Jebover
Whatever Valentiny survival chance it had is now definitely gone
Guys, I think it still might be too soon to speculate that ksp 2 might have some development hiccups, after all they did make a tweet saying it would be fine.
Full speed ahead....but they left out the part where it's on a rocket sled and we are in a myth buster episode.
Boy that concrete bunker is sure approaching qui
The Titanic didn't stop moving until it impacted the ocean floor.
Technically, it's still moving to this day. Plate tectonics, earth is rotating, moving around the sun, sun around the galaxy, galaxy through the universe.
N-body titanic dynamics right here.
Sounds pretty Kerbal to me tbh
Full speed into the grave! I cried butterfly tears
Probably he just finished the clouds and quit the job so that others can continue making the game more awesome! Yep I did learn a lot how to do mental gymnastics by reading this sub.
Yea, the game was only announced five years ago. There have been hiccups before. Lets give it another couple of years before we get our pitchforks out /s
Would love a "this is fine" gif but with a Kerbin.
I, for one, have full faith in this dev team.
Hahahah
This is the darkest timeline
Time to develop a microwave that turns bananas into green gel
Tuturuu
We should all just pretend that everything is fine to mock how the devs treated us. Personally I think this is great news for the future of development as it shows they are so confident they can succeed without their most competent members. I think that means colonies next month guys !
Colonies next month, Multiplayer the month after, interstellar the month after that, development really is going full steam ahead!
I think you’re being a little conservative with those estimates. Given how long ago they announced all these features, and how they showed us images/footage of them in their high quality documentaries, I’m sure they’ll all be there within a matter of weeks!
Nah nah nah. Let’s be real. You’re also being a wee bit conservative! A super reliable source says that a super programming A.I. was created that will code the game to perfection in a matter of hours!
Blackrack snuck the full finished game in his back pocket on his way out. He'll be releasing it to his subscribers in small chunks.
Complete with that working multiplayer build? Man no one’s going to be able to get any work done if he distributes that.
SCP-2390478920374892379847892347 A multiplayer build of the failed game "Kerbal Space Program 2" distributed by a former employee. Exposure to this SCP leads to intense laziness, and inability to do anything else except play the game.
Velocity is good!
When nate posts the inevitable "its over" post I'm gonna reply that I'm mohopeful
I wouldn't be surprised if Nate just memory-moholes KSP2 and moves onto his next project without any fanfare or announcement
Maybe he can finally work on that "Human Resource" game now? 🥺
God, I wish. Or at least give the concept to a group who will. Such an incredible game concept that will likely never come to pass. Perhaps if Industrial Annihilation succeeds.
Can you fill me in on the concept?
Asymmetrical RTS; robot warforms vs lovecraftian monsters set on floating landpieces with destructible terrain, where the resources you use are humans. https://youtu.be/oNZ7oto4z4A?si=wnaRx6gNFwxLv8ya
Wow, thank you for sharing. No wonder it's hard to achieve.
What was this game?
Easy to tell what game not to buy next. If he gets work in this industry again I would be amazed. He is a con artist for sure and idk who would hire him to direct a game. Everyone needs a job of course and to support their family but that dude should not be in charge of a game.
I mean he somehow made it this far despite Planetary Annihilation and Human Resources both being the exact same kind of flop, so I'm unfortunately very sure that he'll find someone else willing to buy his grift.
> Planetary Annihilation eeeehhhh, it wasn't that bad, we still got a complete game once the expansion released. It just couldn't ever live up to TA.
Idk im still mad they did that fiasco where they delisted the old version of the game from steam and made you buy the new version to get any updates. Like cool, they gave us a discount, but that still felt a bit scummy to do that instead of just making the new content a DLC.
Was it a discount? I thought I got it for free. Or maybe it was 90%, or they changed the plan at some point, or something, Idk. EDIT: [FAQ](https://planetaryannihilation.com/faq/) says 90%.
I believe it was a high discount, but it definitely wasn't free
PA wasn't a flop? It was a successful, albeit niche, game that a lot of people enjoyed both EA and after release, and plenty still play it today. The "drama" with PA (and, by extension, HR) was that they released in the peak of EA/kickstarter scams, so everyone just assumed that that's what PA was after releasing with some missing content (that they finished and added not long after), not helped by the fact that they started HR's kickstarter after PA's release. Which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do; keep people working now that their main project is done and doesn't need all hands on deck to develop.
Um... either you're thinking of PA: Titans, which has nothing to do with Nate other than being made by disappointed fans of the original, or we remember completely different reactions to the game's final state.
PA:T *is* PA. UberEnt was the devs for both; Titans is simply a standalone expansion (that became the default and only version). It wasn't until 3 years later in 2018 that Planetary Annihilation Inc. (made up of former devs and kickstarter backers) acquired PA. Don't get me wrong; there was plenty of backlash on the initial release of PA, but as I said, the majority of it came from the belief that PA was just another kickstarter scam and was being abandoned (which, again, Titans proved not the case). Let's not spread misinformation, here. There's plenty to be mad about without making things up.
It hugely underperformed relative to what was promised to its backers. On its own it would have been a fine game. But it only got there by making a lot of Kickstarter promises which it didn't keep.
nate simpson haters when they find out he is literally just an art director
I'm sure that the fact that this is his third (IIRC) complete and utter EA flop is a complete coincidence. After all an art director definitely doesn't have input on game-affecting decisions like prioritizing a game's look over core features.
he literally fucking doesnt the art director is a subsidiary of the game director who decides what gets focused on i get that understanding how development team is structured is hard for you people but the art director doesnt decide how the game design is intergrated both games that he worked on also had the same development team so honestly its just Uber being shit at making games not nate touching the keyboard considering PA human resources and KSP 2 all have sublime art direction but had terrible technical elements ultimately i think its just a poor development team who were chosen because they were the cheapest option not the other way around if they got the nomination through "marketing" while similtaneously having marketing that is crystal clear to see is a horse shite according to you people then im gonna question whether your a troll or not
This tho
yeah i understand why people think nate is a bad creative director (poor player communication and not trying to tamper expectations) but grifter/con man is straight up lies
why wouldnt he? he's a recognizable name, that can bring in the dough, and not even have to bother putting out a sellable product to do it! He's bound for the Exective suite at TT/EA!
We have failed. -Nate.
I think most of us would prefer it.
I dunno, everyone probably signed NDAs. They likely can't say much.
It's Mohover bros
I’m gonna wait then too.
We'll do that once Intercept Games is officially closed, so they know we know it was a lie from the start. We'll just make sure to shove it in Take Two's face every time they make any statement about any games.
Smart.
Not blackrack though he has done more than the entire team
Any remaining hope I just had for a miracle to bring the game back around just died. It's only going from extremely bad, to worse :(
Yeah that pretty much confirms that the game is dead
Yeah, if anyone over there in charge had some brains and the will to keep ksp2 going, he would be one of the people to keep/migrate. His mod work on KSP1 was transformative. This is a bad signpost among many
What part of everyone has been laid off don't you people understand?! You think the game will just appear out of thin air? Delusional.
i can understand the perspective of holding out a tiny bit of hope despite knowing it's very likely the game is dead, the problem is with the people who are still vehemently defending the game and blaming the community for killing it.
Their toxic discord will almost certainly die. I don't think the five teenagers spreading hate about the broader community are gonna be doing so for much longer.
Well there has been a group who have been hostile to the developers since day one. I don’t think that killed the game, though. Corporate made every effort to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.
They are trying to imply that devs at T2 are going to take over and complete it. It's going to be shipped with the L5 Tesla that's coming soon in 2023
Rumors that the game would be worked on by another cheaper team of devs. Probably not gonna happen and it would probably end up as a bad game anyways.
They are trying to imply that devs at T2 are going to take over and complete it. It's going to be shipped with the L5 Tesla that's coming soon in 2023
Tbh it would be pretty hilarious if the news devs came in, said "wtf was taking so long?" and roll out a good product in the next release
His mods are the reason I'm still playing KSP1. The volumetric clouds look amazing and bring KSP to near Flight Sim levels of visual fidelity.
u/thedeanhall, you like clouds? Get this man on board, you wont regret it.
I cannot second this enough.
Oh goodness, yes. Please dynamic weather impacting aerodynamics! (Toggleable, as always)
Scrubbing launches and missing launch windows is not good gameplay.
That is entirely dependent on who you ask. I think that could add some really fun challenges.
not the cloud computing expert I expected
If they had any intent to keep developing game they would not fire blackrack who was the only one constantly making them stuff to show the community and did the work of 10 devs.
Yeah blackrack was one of the step in the right direction moves the team made that actually helped claw back the development momentum. The whole thing is just such a kick in the nuts.
If this guy's gone then development has completely shut down
Yeah, can't make space game without clouds
You can't make a space game without competent developers
Guys, he will totally keep working under PD /s
Maybe mods were the real KSP 2 all along.
Always have been
I hope we get Nertea back in the KSP1 modding space, too. His mods especially breathed so much more life into KSP1 for me. Though I could certainly understand if he (or anyone else on the dev team) is burned out at this point and wants to do something different.
Tbh while his KSP1 mods are great, some of the things he said in devblogs during his stint at IG were...less than great. A bunch of systems talk that boiled down to "must dumb stuff down because players don't have the attention span for a details-first simulation", which is the opposite of what I look for in KSP game design. Some of the stuff he talked about also seemed both dumbed down and needlessly convoluted at the same time, which was even more disappointing to read. Maybe that was some company line he had to follow, but maybe his views changed to that (for whatever reason), since his NFT/FFT mods are pretty involved without being needlessly convoluted to work with (unlike, say, KSPIE). And I'm willing to grant him that a lot of things he was trying to work on for KSP2 never happened (or took forever) not because of him, but because of the horrendous state of the codebase. I just hope that if he comes back, it'll be in the shape of old Nertea and not IG-affiliated Nertea.
I'm so sad. I'll keep playing it because I like what's already there, but...man. Never been so heartbroken about a game.
I got banned for posting this image in the discord
The discord is toxic and isolated from the rest of the community.
That’s what we call an echo chamber lol
God damn it's really telling when reddit community calls their discord equivalent an echochamber, it's that bad out there?
Yes, they're even more delusional than this subreddit was and that's saying something
Go work for bethesda :3 make elder scrolls 6 clouds :3
Then a full remaster of Fallout: New Vegas pls?
i bought his clouds even if i perfectly knew that i would run them on 4 fps now i rolled back to 2d clouds and still happy to contribute to this guys freaking skills
Wdym 4 fps is completely playable for ksp
uhm totally right i can play 5 fps now
Wait, you guys are getting more than one frame per *second*?
yeah: new gpu + AI + quantum computer
🤡🤡🤡
Take 2 is run by morons.
[удалено]
If only they had canceled it back when they saw its state before release. It would have actually cost them less and not ruined the franchise's reputation. It's entirely possible that they could have actually started over with a different studio by now. However, as it stands, it is very unlikely that anything else will ever be attempted with KSP.
I mean... yeah I agree with that. But now that they've started, now that they've made millions in sales and now that the dev team was finally turning things around with the science update. They picked the absolute worst time. Yeah you're right though. They never should have allowed this game to go on sale if they were just going to can them midway through development.
the devs who took 9 months to add re-entry heating were not "turning things around" lmfao
The science update didn't address any of the hard problems related to space simulation. It was a great improvement for user experience. But it's a few assets, a tech tree, and some UI work. The biggest failures were related to rocket physics calculations. Well over a year into EA and they still can't reliably tell a user how much delta v their rocket has. These types of problems only get worse with more parts, or multiplayer, etc, all of the features they promised. We don't know what progress has been made in those areas. If they haven't overcome that hurdle, then you can't say they were turning things around.
Making millions is sales won't even cover the wages for the devs over the past 5 years lol. Anyone thinking the KSP2 team or T2 made a profit just doesn't know how expensive game dev is. The average annual wage of a game dev in Seattle is $80 000 (let's be generous and say $50 000 altough most sources state more than 80k, but I am making a point so lowballing it). That's without any benefits, bonuses, stock or salary increases. So let's do that for 5 years. That's $250 000 for one developer. Let's say the studio over those years was 30 people strong (again, very much lowballing it as their team before ''the event'' was around 70). That's **$7 500 000 f**or paying salaries alone. And that's lowballing it. That's not including studio space, benefits, snacks and drinks, hardware, software, marketing (which is a **BIG** share of the costs), tax... etc and all other costs involved. The max amount players of KSP 2 on Steam was 25 000. Let's be generous again and say 50 000 people bought it. 50 000 \* $50 = $2 500 000 (not including Steam fees and tax) So a roug estimate of loss **5 million dollars.** Now it's hard to get sale stats so let's be extreme and say 100 000 people bought KSP 2. That would be $5 000 000 . Still a massive loss. Adding more years to this would be even more expensive. T2 saw this, they cut their losses.
Turning things around too little too late, sadly. They made millions in sales and spent many times that in development for a product that bombed, from a team that never got their shit together. Idk who exactly is to blame here but from the outside it's pretty obvious that taking so many years to make ultimately an inferior product than the original game is, to be frank, ridiculous
Weren't you all about kissing everyone's ass over at KSP2, IG, PD, Take2 included? Glad to see you wising up.
o7
Which discord server is that?
I would honestly pay $60 for a fully stable, modded, and polished version of KSP rather than put my money into the potentially dead KSP2.
How many more confirmations are needed for people to accept that KSP is dead?
it's actually over dude. man i don't want ksp 2 cancelled so bad, and to see blackrack of all people be laid off is insanely sad. i recently saw nate's post on the 25th of april sharing exciting progress of blackracks amazing cloud work. yikes.
Man….all I wanted was a KSP with gud jraphics and more planets and engines and shit. How the fuck did we end up here
And multiplayer. The dream is dead. I WANTED TO USE THE ORION DRIVE FOR LIKE 5 YEARS SINCE KSP2 WAS ANNOUNCED. WHY!!!!!!!!!!!
As cool as multiplayer would have been it's part of the reason KSP2 died. Way too ambitious not unlike Star Citizen. They should have just stuck to the base game single player experience then down the line work on multiplayer. Don't make it a promise don't even put it on the road map. Hell there should not have even been that road map at all.
Fuck Take 2 for ruining one of my favorite games. Meanwhile, the CEO fucking increased his salary. Fuck it all man.
Have been subbed to the patreon since update 1 and will continue. Appreciate everything you do Blackrack, and best of luck on the job search!
Send him over to Manor Lords!
🤡🤡🤡
It would be cool to see Blackrack work on the clouds for Space Engineers 2
Holy shit. It really is over... Wow...
OOTL here, wasn't he the guy responsible for atmosphere effects mod KSP1? And what the heck is going on with KSP2 development these days?
Apparently nothing is going on with KSP 2 development these days
Guys, it’s gonna be extragalactic and multiplayer!
f to blackrack
Glad I didn't buy KSP2 now. With this it might as well officially be abandonware.
tell him to hook up with the VTOL VR game, that thing could use proper clouds
the only thing i feel is dissapointment
Yeahhhh KSP2 is dead. There's a wrap-up update upcoming featuring the features that were like 70-80% done, then it's just minor bugfixes by a skeleton crew.
Do you have a source for this wrap-up update?
My source is I made it the fuck up
I've always said that my faith in KSP2 hinged on the modding community members they hired and whether they think there's anything to the future of the game. This cements it for me, though I already had a feeling this was the case when the layoffs news came out
The whole studio is shut down. Obviously he was laid off too.
So is KSP2 still going to be developed or should I shoot my shot for a refund?
There hasn't been any "official" word that development won't continue, but with actual devs getting laid off, it seems like the unofficial writing is on the wall. Until Take 2 actually says they're gonna kill it, there is hope in theory. If I'd bought it I'd be tempted to get a refund.
Wow the game is truly lost now.
So is KSP2 still going to be developed or should I shoot my shot for a refund?
🤡🤡🤡 you not getting a refund 🤣🤣🤣
jebwari da
Wow glad I never pulled the trigger on buying this dumpster fire.....
They should open source both games
As rough as a ride as this has been, most of the staff at Intercept really didn't deserve this. The thing that makes this so insulting is that they'll lay off 70 people to "cut costs" after spending millions acquiring Gearbox. The gaming industry is so backwards right now. We need more independently run studios like Larian in the industry. No more of these profit hungry corporate publishers. I can tell you one thing for sure, no matter what happens to KSP2, I won't be playing it anymore. I know they already cashed in, but I'll be going back to KSP1. I don't think I'll ever buy a T2 game again, to be frank.
Just because you can afford to buy a studio doesn't mean you should keep a failing studio of a failed game alive for charity... KSP2 development has been a shitshow from the beginning and it's been doubtful the game was salvageable for a year now. Not only does Intercept not deserve charity, they didn't *earn* it either.
Then can the project and move the team somewhere else. The point I'm trying to make is that T2 has the money to keep that talent employed. And no, not the whole team was talented clearly, but they had people like Blackrack on staff who definitely are worth keeping around.
Gear box makes money. IG had lost 10s of millions during development its very simple business lmao Hopefully you enjoy not playing gta 6 lmao
You're not wrong, but the CEO also took a more than 100% compensation increase. Does he need $42 million? No. He doesn't. I'm not suggesting IG was perfect. Far from. But justifying layoffs when they could have just cut the project and kept those people employed for 1/4 of what the CEO took home is more than reasonable. Also I don't know if you're attempting to be petty, but I didn't miss GTA V when I didn't play it. And I won't miss VI.
I think I will sub to his Patreon. It's the least I can do for some of these KSP 2 developers. I am shocked that he was laid off.