"Doomed from the start" - KSP2 Development History FINALLY Revealed

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0:00 Strap yourselves in!
1:13 Digging up the truth
3:48 PRE-PRODUCTION - "Doomed from the start"
7:26 EARLY PRODUCTION - "This stays away from Scott!"
17:13 HOSTILE TAKEOVER - "We don't need you"
19:53 BUMPY ROAD TO EARLY ACCESS - "We'll solve that out later"
30:25 EARLY ACCESS - "We shipped the wrong product"
34:28 STUDIO CLOSURE - "We'll talk more when we can"
35:49 CONCLUSION - "Not with Take-Two!"
40:11 We need to talk about Nate Simpson
44:54 Could modders save KSP2?
#ksp2 #kerbalspaceprogram2 #investigations
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[@ShadowZone]

Huge thanks to Scott Manley, Matt Lowne and Linuxgurugamer for sharing their expertise and opinion to make this video happen! KSP2's future might be uncertain, but the community remains strong. 💚

[@chillbruh333]

Thanks for the video Shadow!!!❤❤

[@andreaslusti4018]

Well done! This was really great information. Professionally researched and delivered. We need more of this.

[@Alfred-Neuman]

I don't know why people are angry, the game is almost exactly like in the trailer they showed years ago, minus a few things here and there... :P

[@johnburr9463]

Well balanced and objective as ever. You are good at keeping me grounded in reality.

[@f4lenwarrior]

I just feel so damn justified in saying this. "I TOLD YOU SO" Moment this jenky mess got released at full price in early access I knew it was a bust. Hell the moment TakeTwo took over I knew to avoid this turd of a game... Before they even finished the first game!!!!!!! And to think you bought in and rode that Hypetrain and helped push that crap onto the community. You kept telling everyone that "It's going to be great" and "Wait and see" Well we waited and saw and it isnt great and never will be. Nice vid but honestly you should have been more harsher on this entire game from the outset!. People have the right and are justified to say this game was a heap of junk and you can't say they wont be validated here. You are not the community. Nor are you your entire comments section. Not when this entire vid calls KSP2 a shit show indirectly. You helped push this garbage into the community by playing along with the hype to keep up your developer contacts intact to keep up your own viewership numbers. You even stopped producing KSP1 content on your channel to focus on advertising a bucket of buggy shite..... KSP2 is DEAD!!!!!!!, No great loss. Long Live KSP1!

[@SqueakyBe]

The irony. KSP1: A company whose primary product was marketing and advertising makes a great game. KSP2: A company whose primary product was games makes nothing but marketing.

[@Infernal_Elf]

Thats so totally spot on!

[@daviniusb6798]

The moment they hired the scatterer guy (no shame, I LOVE his work!) I knew what was to come. They were in hot water over the whole wobbly rockets are part of KSP interview, and then they made a big thing out of making the planets look better. Timing is important lol

[@charlieiskandar1597]

damn what a bullseye

[@shawa666]

Felipe Falanghe makes a great game

[@SqueakyBe]

@@shawa666 exactly. Squad was pretty hands off as I understand it. Leaving the developer to have a clear vision of what they wanted to accomplish, in a way they saw fit.

[@linuxgurugamer]

It was an honor and pleasure to be asked for my opinions.

[@ShadowZone]

Thank you for taking the time, your insights were valuable!

[@grapeape7284]

Subscribed!

[@jaquelinecolibet]

thank you for your input!

[@darknote7579]

@linuxgurugamer! I love you! Subbed!

[@basila33]

Whose opinion if not yours should be asked? You're living legend!

[@notapplicable7292]

Fucking up KSP2 is such a tragedy for the next generation of scientists and engineers.

[@adamredwine774]

And yet somewhat reminiscent of the "better, faster, cheaper" days of NASA where they kept crashing multi-billion dollar space craft.

[@bustabusts]

No it's not we have scientists and engineers pouring over the border..

[@livethefuture2492]

Eh no worries we still have the original for that, certainly what got me into it.

[@CCountZero]

Honestly though, they can go grab RP-1 off of CKAN, easy-peasy install; if they really want a better understanding. And then they can progress to the (very old) MIT-license Orbiter simulator if they wanna get proper serious about orbital dynamics.

[@Kanakotka]

Nah. It was always going to fail, you could see it from get go before any game footage was seen from dev interviews talking about how they want to expand the lore of kerbals and the story instead of, i don't know, focusing on the game. Juno: New Origins is the real KSP 2.

[@tiefensucht]

You never hear that managers that mess up at this scale lose their jobs. No, they fire the people that actually work.

[@doltBmB]

Because it wasn't the managers, didn't you pay attention?

[@tiefensucht]

​@@doltBmB This is clearly failed project management. Take-Two is a huge software company, they should know how things work.

[@doltBmB]

@@tiefensucht It was clearly incompetent devs, take-two just gave them too much leeway.

[@tiefensucht]

​@@doltBmB This is what management is for: Hiring the right people, doing quality assurance, setting and controlling goals and budgets. You can't blame workers for the end result. They just do their job.

[@doltBmB]

@@tiefensucht You absolutely can blame them. First people cry about studio interference, then they cry about not enough interference, never prepared to blame the actual culprits.

[@daviddickey9832]

The moment I heard 2 years and $10M, my first thought is someone non-technical is expecting 9 women to give birth to 1 baby in a month.

[@ShadowZone]

Experienced people I interviewed said it would have been possible with those parameters if they had just done a refresh of KSP. Better graphics, polish code, add a few parts and planets, done. Would have worked.

[@notfeedynotlazy]

@@ShadowZone Hilariously, that was all that was needed. Integrate the "must have" mods in the base game. That includes planets: want a start that isn't "orbiting Kerbol like many Kopernikus player-made stars are? Give it a million years orbital period and hide its orbit path. Colonies? FTL? Procedural wings? Already in the "must-have mods". And so on. It was doable, it was easy(sih), it was what we expected, and it was a sure bet. But naaaaah... 😞

[@arieldario3849]

​@@notfeedynotlazy Absolutely NO. Thats exactly what great companies has been doing with sports games the last 10 years: they have been offering the SAME GAME year after year at a higher price with a few minor features on it. Why i would pay 50 bucks for a game that offers the SAME THINGS that KSP1 offers with 50 mods? I'm OKEY with the fact that the team tried to expand the game beyond the original one, but someone with BALLS should have say from the very beggining that 10 millions and 2 years would never be enough. I would have preferred the game not be developed at all, before what ended up happening now, at least that way the option of develop KSP2 from the scratch it would be on the table for more capable studios...

[@HeadCannonPrime]

@@arieldario3849 because, lets face it, KSP 1 was never more than a beta game. The mod community basically fixed the game for free and made it complete. Incorporating the greatest mods, fixing the wobble, and upgrading the graphics and code WOULD have been enough for a successful game.

[@pierrotA]

​@@ShadowZone Sometime taking existing code that evolve for years is even more difficult that writting the code from start. KSP code is a mess, and it was made on an old version of Unity. It's not that simple to make heavy modifications while keeping an optimized and stable code. Was it "possible" ? Yeah sure, everything is possible... Was it realistic ? No.

[@MattLowne]

KSP's absolutely shambolic development is a fascinating story. Great job on the investigation and video, glad I was able to be a part of it! I can verify that all my anonymous conversations with devs and former staff match the video's script.

[@ShadowZone]

Thanks for being the cool dude you are!

[@MattLowne]

@@ShadowZone right back at ya 😎😎😎

[@Infernal_Elf]

Great to see such a close knit community of content creators :D and thanks for calling out the developers also Mattlowne

[@darksars3622]

Intercept right now: EVERYTHING IS FINE EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OK (explotion)

[@tiagodagostini]

Well most people that worked in game industry warned publicly that it smelled like a bomb. But we were all shut down and called very bad names for daring to warn of the clear truth.

[@KnightDaylight]

In Aviation, the #1 rule that everyone must abide by is “If you don’t know, ASK” The fact Take Two’s studios were not allowed to contact each other for input was a massive mistake, and the greed they have shows in the final product. The indecisiveness of the developers for the “vision” made a huge problem worse. KSP2 was screwed out of success because of ignorance and greed, and we were caught holding the bag as players.

[@mprojekt72]

It is as if the Take Two execs were watching the publicly available news of Boeing's issues and failures with the 737 Max, while high AF on meth and cocaine, and thought to themselves, "We can be just like Boeing but our mistakes and idiocy won't get people killed, so no one will get mad and the Feds won't come after us. Amirite bois? Gimme the pipe, intern-person."

[@murasaki848]

And blocking out Scott Manley in specific is baffling as well. A huge fan, an astrophysicist, a coder, a pilot, someone who helped put KSP1 on the map, someone who's not looking to jump ship from his current job or probably even any compensation if you don't push him too hard like asking him to actually write code, and someone who despite being a KZbinr very much understands and will conform with an NDA. What that rattles around in my head as is FREE TECHNICAL AND FAN EXPERT ADVICE WITHOUT HAVING TO NECESSARILY FOLLOW IT. I mean, seriously? "This stays away from Scott"???

[@mocko69]

The first requirrement for hiring people for KSP2 should have been ''have you played the original KSP?''

[@CJSHM]

The moment the release disaster happened my first response was "did none of these idiots ever even play KSP1?" I was ridiculed for supposing such a thing. Vindicated.

[@kjgoebel7098]

"Do you have over 1000 hours in KSP?" "That XKCD where it's 'knowledge of orbital mechanics' as a function of time, that was pretty funny, huh?" "What is your favorite sci-fi movie, and why is it The Martian?" "Do you even lithobrake, bro?"

[@p_serdiuk]

Tbh considering a lot of gamedev involves coding that's not necessarily specific, having decent hours in Factorio should also qualify

[@jonc2914]

​@@CJSHMnot to mention SHADOW kissed KSP2's a$$ up until now... he supported a game he knew was junk.

[@cybisz2883]

Reminds me of what Netflix did with their Witcher series. The execs didn't give a damn about the original works - they just wanted to milk a beloved franchise. It's the same story with Take Two.

[@MiniEnder]

The whole situation of higher-ups refusing to let anyone rewrite the code base reminds me of a situation with the development of Mother 2, known in the English speaking world as Earthbound, where they were over budget and behind schedule and the, at the time, future CEO of Nintendo was brought on as a consultant and told the people at Ape essentially, "We can either keep what you have here and be done in 2 years, or we can rewrite the code and be done in 6 months." Sometimes you need to take several steps back before you can step forward.

[@ShadowZone]

Also, the sunk cost fallacy comes into play. "We already invested so much time into this code, we can't just throw it away!" Time and time again...

[@chrishoppner150]

As a software engineer with 30 years of experience, refactoring and tidying existing code, as well as aggressively throwing out "bad" code (by whatever definition is appropriate in the context) is easily the most important foundation of my trade. I always get pushback from managerial types because they think of programming as a simple money per line of code type of transaction, when it's actually a much more complicated process that they very infrequently make any real effort to understand. They can't help but see any code you delete as "wasted money", since they paid someone to write the code you are now deleting. That this is wrong is obvious to anyone in software, but is very hard to explain to the average MBA type obsessed with cutting costs.

[@ShadowZone]

@@chrishoppner150 Ugh. 90% of software development happens inside the brain of the developer. The code is just the result of hours of hard work, losing yourself in a problem, trying to find solutions etc. If I read "money per line of code" it makes my hair stand up. And I basically have an MBA haha Thanks for keeping it real and trimming the code that has no business being in there!

[@dosmastrify]

​@@ShadowZone This is funny because I know anytime a military project goes long and over budget. It's typically because the mission requirements change and the services want more features added late, And it's only when they freeze it early and don't let people add requirements that it gets done on time and not too far over budget, That sounds like in this case that certainly wasn't Right Way Forward

[@thygrrr]

(narrator voice) They were, in fact, not done in 6 months.

[@MarcusHouse]

Gosh. What a ridiculous bloody mess. Thanks for doing all the research around this one mate.

[@ShadowZone]

You're very welcome, my friend! I sure makes IFT1 look like smooth sailing compared to KSP2 development.

[@RayneAngelus]

@@ShadowZone IFT1?

[@ShadowZone]

@@RayneAngelus Integrated Flight Test 1 for Starship. The one where it cartwheeled out of control and made Das from NasaSpaceflight cry out "did it just do a Kerbal?".

[@danieldorn9989]

Squad was able to build KSP1 in cave with a box of scraps

[@livethefuture2492]

😂 That's so ironically true! There's another comment here that went something along the lines... "Squad a marketing company, went all on producing a fantastic game And take-two a game production co. went all in on producing marketing..."

[@brendanrockwood6535]

“I’m sorry Mr TakeTwo Games, I’m not Squad.”

[@quality9299]

which took 10 years lol

[@Cptn.Viridian]

Probably one of the most consistent themes in this story is the frequent intervention of the "Higher Ups" making things worse. If the higher ups had allowed an earlier release date sooner, Nate Simpsons ambitions would be easier to realize If the higher ups hadn't mandated absolute secrecy, the team could have hired much more seasoned and relevant developers. If the higher ups hadn't enforced the use of old code, while preventing the team from contacting the squad employees that breathed it, development would have gone smoother. And this is just what I have seen in the first ten minutes!

[@HuntingTarg]

The rest is devolvement and fallout. I have a personal policy of not commenting until I've watched the whole video, but you picked up the gist.

[@Private-GtngxNMBKvYzXyPq]

Who hasn’t worked in an organization where the “higher ups” have ultimately screwed everything up and everyone over? All too common unfortunately.

[@Robbadobbsoldier]

It is important with management. Had they have a few more middle bosses it would have worked out

[@bobbyjeffsupremelordofcraz3532]

Ultimately, they claimed they could slay the Kraken, and they were punished for their hubris.

[@eekee6034]

I'm torn between replying, "Indeed they were!" or "It could have been done if they were actually good." It's hubris either way.

[@birbeyboop]

the kraken does not take kindly to challengers. they're lucky to be alive.

[@OGPatriot03]

The chance to do it, was when they considered starting from scratch on a new engine. Once they decided to stick with the original code/engine I think it was doomed.

[@5Andysalive]

well they thought building the Kraken in was a good idea for a while.

[@connycontainer9459]

@@5Andysalivethe kraken always finds a way - Jeff Goldblum

[@game_critic]

"We're fully funded." Famous last words.

[@Infernal_Elf]

Famous last lie!

[@Fred-rv2tu]

Yea that set off alarm bells for me. I don’t want to bully the guy but it seems like Nate has a surprising amount of responsibility for this. Usually it’s just a greedy studio.

[@Ph33NIXx]

@@Fred-rv2tu I am not sure how you got that impression from seeing this movie.. the guy loved the project, he had both hands tied at his back and just wanted it to succeed. Maybe he hoped that if he could somehow satisfy or put the community at ease.. he could keep it going until the game was "ready"... and sale would start going

[@Fred-rv2tu]

@@Ph33NIXx what I took away from the video was he was the driving force that pushed it beyond an achievable scope. I wasn’t say he bears sole responsibility. Just I’m surprised that it’s probably not a trivial amount. Also by the time he said we’re fully funded he would have know. It was doomed.

[@Ph33NIXx]

@@Fred-rv2tu yeah.. from his perspective they probably was. As far as i know.. the reason they still work on it is because of law. Not because Take Two is being nice. And well, there is some truth in him making scope creep.. but the original 10mill 2 year plan seemed bad as well.

[@Archris17]

God, just hearing how KSP2 was all but smothered in its crib and then we were thrown the carcass just makes me want to cry. It's heart-breaking to see how every single step went wrong.

[@fractalelf7760]

Sadly apt metaphors… 😢

[@kelly4187]

I swear, if they had just turned the source code over to modders we would have have a significantly better product, in a fraction of the time.

[@kushnkanopy8940]

i wanna live in a world where the publishers doesn’t think that an unfinished game should be $79.99

[@kelly4187]

Especially when all they've done is work on the graphics with no real gameplay. Basically Ksp2 offered nothing we didnt already have in KSP1 with free mods.

[@xabhax]

Early access is a cancer. People need to stop buying early access games from major studios. An indie game with 2 people is different. But a corporation should not be doing early access

[@theyellow432]

Kinda reminds me of vic3, except that the game isnt dead

[@juann268]

If they can get away with it, they will. It's their sacred right in a free market society.

[@XentorAntarix]

@@xabhax That is not correct. It is not Early Acess itselfe, it is how you use and do it. See Baldurs Gate 3. One part of it`s sucess was the integration of the Communety. Ah and see this other Game ehm... how was the name.. ehm kkkkerbal sssspace programm (1).... ah yes. Well how long was this in Early Acess? but the differenct was: It had too an early Acess Price at this time.

[@Stratzenblitz75]

Thank you for making this. In a sad way, its nice to have closure on what went wrong with development and why we received such a broken game on release after being promised so much more. Just... what a tragedy. Before it released, I was so excited about my future ideas for KSP projects but after the first few days of playing it my enthusiasm was killed. Seeing everyone else's excitement about the game fade really snuffed out the remaining enthusiasm I had for making content as well. Its really sad to hear how out of touch management was on software development. I'm not super experienced with writing software, but in my time developing I've come to realize how important refactoring is and how horrible things can become if you defer maintenance on your code. Sometimes, it really is better to throw something out completely rather than waste time trying to band-aid it into a working solution. Also, about reusing the old code... I KNEW it. When I was playing, I was under the assumption that we were getting a new engine for the game and felt crazy running across the same bugs that I had experienced in KPS1.

[@welshcorgi4652]

I remember watching one of your streams where you were convinced it was the same spaghetti code after getting the grounded state bug

[@Stratzenblitz75]

@@welshcorgi4652 Yes, I was literally screaming inside. It HAD to be same code!

[@dandula3378]

The fifty dollar stream was absolutely iconic, I can't believe you almost landed on the VAB in that mess

[@AsliceOFtea413]

I was so excited to see your ksp2 interstellar shenanigans:'

[@ryanspence5831]

@@Stratzenblitz75 50 DOLLARS FOR LANDED STATE

[@Fred-rv2tu]

Not the first time I’ve been done wrong by game. But this has to be the most hurtful. KSP 1 is so wholesome and beloved. I knew it wasn’t squad anymore but that never really clicked until after I bought it and saw the results. To be clear it’s not the money I’m upset about. It’s the murder of something so beloved.

[@thewonkysauces2002]

same here dude, I'm lucky enough to be able to afford the original and this game, just upset about how they killed this game plus the fact the science update made me believe - like REALLY BELIEVE - that this game had a future and now this..... its the hope that always kills you

[@Yaivenov]

"Look how they massacred my boy." 😢

[@dangercopperfield]

Yes, all of this, 100% this. I decided to hold the line, root for the dev team and wait for the game to improve. For Science was a good start but the closing of the studio has left me with a sense of betrayal and thoughts of what might have been.

[@thewonkysauces2002]

@@Yaivenov fr fr

[@only1thatmakessense]

The worst part is that they continued to try to blag it after as well , shows ABSOLUTE contempt

[@P1XeLIsNotALittleSquare]

Chuck Noble leaving the project is the most healthy thing he could do. When management start to tell you how to do your job - you show a middle finger and leave.

[@eskandare1968]

Hello, Eskandare here (Kerbal Konstructs, Kerbinside Remastered, Eskadare Aerospace) I appreciate your shedding some light on what happened with development. I seriously hope that this someday gets rebooted fresh with a solid structured code base. Since Take 2 is a business they are more likely to go and invest in a new money making fad then what they misperceived as the next Minecraft. I think what will likely happen is a similar game may be developed with racoons instead of kerbals, who knows.

[@HuntingTarg]

Yet still hold on to the IP just so noone else can make a profit (and possibly a good reputation) from it and thus show them up.

[@thebluehat6814]

"we want this to be the next Minecraft!" >10 Million USD budget >2 years development time ??? what the fuсk were they thinking???

[@offendersofficial]

the modern games industry is so cooked.

[@edheadgaming8411]

yup

[@kaidenrodriguez8285]

Pretty much.

[@sciencecompliance235]

It's not just the game industry. This arrogance from management types exists in many different industries.

[@thesolitaryowl]

Not the indie scene!

[@user-kl1yi6vo6s]

​@thesolitaryowl Indie scene is thriving, and some of the games made by indie developers are better then that of a AAA studio. I'm actually working on an indie game rn lol

[@Georgesspierre]

A stable ksp game with thousands of parts in crafts would be incredible. So much potential thrown right in the bin.

[@calluxdoaron1903]

*cough* Juno: New Origins *cough*

[@Dan-yk6sy]

I just wanted new star systems and interstellar travel, maybe some resource mining / refueling.

[@oberonpanopticon]

@@Dan-yk6sycough Mods cough

[@alexsiemers7898]

@@calluxdoaron1903the problem with JNO is that you end up using those thousands of parts just trying to give your ships the same amount of visual depth as KSP’s stock parts. If you try building in JNO like you do in KSP you end up with very flat looking ships

[@davescott7680]

​@@Dan-yk6syI just wanted a less janky KSP1 with optimisations and all the core QOL mods baked in. Insitu resource extraction, colonies and orbital construction would have been nice. The ability to create automated systems to launch and refuel depots and land reusable rockets, would have been incredible. Interstellar could have been a stretch goal expansion much later down the route. As interstellar would need all those systems in working properly to really work.

[@electrifiedspam]

I can't believe that an IP as valuable as KSP will be left to rot.

[@RpattoYT]

Matt's interview with HarvestR pretty much puts the kybosh on the idea that the KSP1 dev team could have helped a great deal with the code. Most of the experienced KSP1 dev's left the team prior to the acquisition by Take2.

[@merinsan]

I work in software development, and any time I mention refactoring, management gets scared. So I don't mention it any more, and just do it. They wanted better error messages, I refactored the import function that was generating them!

[@tiberius8390]

I don't really understand how they can be scared or maybe it's the communication part. In technical design the design engineers do exactly the same. If they come up with a better design they "throw away" the old one. It's not like you literally throw it away, but it is digitally stored anyway, so in case somebody wants it it can be recovered. Also higher ups in the management who have no technical insight should not have a decision in those refactoring processes anyway. If it does not change the "cutomer requirements" or whatever you want to call it in game development but potentially improves things it should not be their concern. That's the decision of a lead engineer. Someone who really understands the design/code/... on a technical level and has the ability to decide what the better solution is.

[@thygrrr]

It's YOUR responsibility to do it. Just do it. All the time. Don't tell anyone that it's different from business as usual. It is business as usual.

[@mga149]

We see the same in IT. As soon as we even hint at rebuilding something now that we've learned from out mistakes, it instantly becomes impossible to get approvals. Endless meeting on justifying why. Usually ending with; we'll get to is sometime. Which is always after the problem or band-aid solution we wanted to rebuild correctly causes a major outage. Then we get blamed for never fixing it. It's like they want to keep the crappiest version of the system that they can. I think some of it comes from not wanting to waste resources on something that doesn't directly generate revenue. Other times it because an exec remember that one huge problem that was caused by an engineer wanting to refactor something, therefor ALL refactoring MUST be bad.

[@Ikbeneengeit]

Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission!

[@Innero]

That’s just normal. Don’t mention it, just do your work. Who cares what you are writing, it’s the code, it will work on the demo.

[@pattschetter]

Not having the KSP1 guys involved till so late is absolutely insane to me, as a mechanical engineer whose career has mostly been midcycle product improvements and new-product development. I learned so very much from the older guys who could look at what had been put on the test stand, see how it failed, and say just from instinct "why don't you take what you've got and do (this / that / other thing)", or remembered ideas from before my time that maybe we young guys were re-inventing and remembered why those ideas didn't go forward.

[@zaclegoattack]

In my field of systems engineering there is an old adage: The biggest mistakes are always made on day 1

[@fluxxi5289]

An article frome The Hard Drive I saw yesterday was titled “Gaming exec makes first positive impact to company by passing away” and that feels fitting with this video

[@Yaivenov]

"Let modders save the game" is a very Bethesda development strategy.

[@carl8703]

See, the difference there is that Bethesda baked modding into their game ever since the days of Morrowind. KSP started as an agile experiment that was struggling with doing something that no one ever did before, to do that while also supporting mods would have been the death of the project.

[@erkinalp]

@@carl8703CKAN supports KSP2 as well, it lets you use BepInEx with KSP

[@manvslife271]

And just like how Betdesda acted with Starfield, trying to cut corners with the hope of "Modders will fix it" to have modders basically be unpaid workers will only make said modders step away from the game entirely.

[@Brixxter]

For modders to save a game the game needs to have potential to begin with. Some high profile mods for Starfield have already been cancelled, and that game was technically functional unlike KSP2

[@croustibat682]

colossal order is doing the same with cities skylines 2 unfortunately.

[@FrederickKoehlmann]

LOL, as a retired developer, I can honestly say that nothing fucks up code more than bad management decisions!

[@martinn.6082]

Those hiring decisions were also crazy. A team of pure juniors won't produce anything great without a few seniors by their side.

[@williamruiz26]

It's always management.

[@fractalelf7760]

Always. Management by its nature is arrogant - in a position of ordering people they often presume a sovereign right to rule - and ignore inputs and then can scapegoat people for their failures.

[@user-burner]

It's also always money

[@FearlessSon]

Earlier this year, I was in the pipeline to interview for a position at Intercept Games. After getting through the Take Two vetting process I was ready for the Intercept interviews. Then I got a call from a Take Two recruiter saying that they were pausing hiring for the moment, "pending financial review". I heard nothing further from them until a few weeks ago when I got an email saying that the position had been eliminated, thank you for your interest, etc.

[@jonmoore176]

Interesting insight, thanks!

[@phutureproof]

Crazy, I was too but I got sidetracked selling my cure for cancer to bill gates who did take me on to rewrite windows 3.1 using a mixture of Rust and GoLang with a hint of braille thrown in.

[@legolegs87]

Wow, the HR actually contacting to deliver a denial message instead of remaining silent? Fascinating.

[@elliotgillum]

😂 that's insane me too.​@@phutureproof

[@adamredwine774]

When I was finishing my Master's my top pick employer was a big electric utility. I did three rounds of interviews all with positive responses and then they just fell off the map; stopped returning emails, no sign of life at all. I found work elsewhere and about a year later the company announced they were selling a huge part of their business and had been on a worldwide hiring freeze for a full year. I was disappointed not to get the job I hoped for, but it's probably better than getting that job and then getting fired a few months later in downsizing.

[@skoll6098]

He wanted wobbly rockets?! Perhaps they should have let potential buyers vote on it. Those responsible at the top of the decision-making chain really made a spectacular effort to drive the thing into the wall.

[@ShadowZone]

Wobbly rockets aside: ALWAYS verify your assumptions about user experience when designing software.

[@daveballard8673]

@@ShadowZone I see you don't live anywhere near Redmond.

[@durbeshpatel3047]

They didnt see it as a serious game, they thought kerbals and their rockets should be goofy and silly

[@kaidenrodriguez8285]

Also, I wished the game had a more realistic art style, the current one is too cartoony for me.

[@TheAechBomb]

while I'm not a massive fan of wobbly rockets, I think they do belong in KSP by default

[@trivalentclan-mizar9591]

“Game Publisher Cancels Contact With Developer, Then Tries to Poach Its Entire Team”. Bloomberg June 3, 2020.

[@HHHamiller]

Sounds like the management had absolutely no idea about software development projects: - If you have have a long running software product, you need a clean rewrite of the code base every few years, because the old code base becomes unmaintainable and is based on obsolote technologies. If you do a sequel for a game, that is exactly the time to do so. It's debatable whether you can at least mine the old codebase for code snippets and problem solutions, but that code parts should also be updated to current coding practices. - You will repeat all mistakes of the developers of the old product if you start with fresh developers. - And if you simply couldn't do some features with the old version, because the architecture didn't support it without massive changes, than that is one more reason for a rewrite. I think Squad would have loved to add colonies and multi-player in expansions, if the KSP 1 code base had allowed it.

[@martinvranovsky7085]

It always amazes me how these huge multi-billion companies can screw up basic project management. I see it often enough in my own line of work and I just don't get it. It's not rocket science.

[@rainbowkrampus]

When you get a business degree, it comes with a mandatory lobotomy.

[@OGPatriot03]

The whole corporate video game industry is just intellectually rotten and lacking passion, I suppose that's what happens when non-gamers join the industry purely as a means to make a living.

[@fleetadmiralj]

@@rainbowkrampus I mean, not really, but this is kind of the problem, though, right? When you have business people doing project management, the priorities are not longer making sure the *project* is *managed* well (as the job description would lead you to believe) but to minimize costs. And if there is a choice between cutting costs and managing a project well, guess which one gets picked?

[@rainbowkrampus]

@@fleetadmiralj In this case as in countless others, the penny pinching resulted in a ballooning budget and massive delays and the eventual failure of the project. This has been a running trend in media production for decades now. I'm pretty sure it's because of the whole business schools producing brain dead morons thing.

[@martinvranovsky7085]

@@fleetadmiralj Not quite, though. I have some experience in project management and 'managing the budget' (i. e. maximizing the gross margin, really) *is* one of the responsibilities of a PM. The problem is when people who are above the PMs see gross margin as the only relevant metric.

[@TemporalWolf]

This is like watching an NTSB report on a trainwreck... just walking through all of the minor and major contributing factors that lead to the derailment. Sad the outcome, but thanks for insight: confirming a lot of things people suspected, and shedding new light on a lot of things that help explain how things went so wrong.

[@andrasbiro3007]

Except NTSB reports don't have things like trains running on rails that don't exist, having square wheels, being shot at by fighter jets, and getting nuked at the end.

[@LeeSpork]

It's so heartbreaking that they weren't allowed to rewrite the game anew. Even when I was doing creative writing in high-school, I knew that sometimes the best way forward was to just start from a fresh canvas and "cannibalise" pieces from the old version, rather than to uselessly tinker continuously with something that's fundamentally just not working.

[@williammanning5066]

It's such a big deal that there's a whole design methodology in software of writing it once, throwing it out, and then writing it again.

[@Argosh]

"What were they doing for 7 years?" Enjoying a close view of an industry standard management failure that then gets projected onto the folks that never had any choice or input...

[@HuntingTarg]

Yet still took FOREVER to produce something salable. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fYDOnGyhiNilj80feature=shared

[@fiveoneecho]

I wish there was some legal framework for reclaiming IP from companies that royally fucked it up like this. I wish HarvestR could get his Kerbals back for his big idea for a sequel space game… Edit: I guess there is and it’s called a contract, but that requires foresight lol I’m saying I wish he could specifically get it back for free since he has talked about how personal Kerbals are to his childhood and how it’s so much more than just the little green guys we know and love today. He has publicly talked about how he wants to make a spiritual successor to KSP with everything KSP2 said it was going to have, but with the announcement of KSP2, it was never more than just something unrealistic he had thought about. Now that KSP2 is pretty dead, he said he would like to make something like it, but planned out better, and it’s sad that he can’t use his Kerbals.

[@arieldario3849]

Dont forget the "few millions" for it!

[@Helperbot-2000]

yes waiter! one IP reclamation for the Fallout series please!

[@throwback19841]

they can't patent space and much as I love the little green bastards I don't need em. you can make an excellent accessible space sim without kerbals

[@rustyshaklford9557]

Open-source versions of games like XCom, Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, Doom, and some others simply pull assets from a user-provided directory of the original game, so that's one option.

[@danilooliveira6580]

they can claim the owner of the IP is not doing anything with it. that is why a lot of companies release shit games with the name of dead franchises, remakes, rereleases, or even completely unrelated games with the same name. it's a way to protect their property. though I'm not sure if they can straight up LOSE the ownership of the IP or if they can't complain if someone copies that IP.

[@piggyinthemiddle]

Such a bummer guys. I'm part of the gang. I have 5k hours in KSP. I've modded it to have all the features KSP2 promised, so when they released an unfinished game there were features promised that I was prepared to wait for. Now it seems I'll never play KSP2. If you said that 2 years ago I wouldn't have believed you. On another note, I never imagined "that weird guy who keeps making Massive space ships" would become the public voice of KSP2. Well played ShadowZone old chap!

[@laffontmaxime3588]

Hello, do you have some tips to install a lot of mods because i feel that after reaching lot of skills in ksp the limits is the bug or errors bringed by lot of mods. Sorry my english is bad

[@piggyinthemiddle]

@@laffontmaxime3588 Its a difficult one. but i can give you one tip. you can install a lot of mods, but its better if they're by the same author, that way they're usually optimised to work together. Usually its not the number of mods but the number of different modmakers that is your problem

[@IstasPumaNevada]

So the TL:DR is that it's Take Two's fault. Because even if there were also problems with the intermediary people... those people were entirely chosen by, monetarily-limited by, controlled by, directed by, and constrained by Take Two.

[@franciscoexmachina]

Corporate is where creativity goes to die. When decisions are made around profits, what else could one expect?

[@HuntingTarg]

To eat and pay the hired talent, both technical and creative, cost and profit are unavoidable considerations. But they're not the ONLY considerations. 'If all executives were tomorrow replaced with angels, they would still be constrained to think and act with the financial well-being of the company in the forefront of their minds, for profit is the lifeblood of a company; and profit is properly understood to be the result of serving consumers.' -F.A. Hayek (paraphrase)

[@sciencecompliance235]

I can't believe they thought they had a successor to Minecraft on their hands. It's like the people who thought this had never played Minecraft or KSP, at least not for much time. KSP was always going to be more niche than Minecraft, for multiple reasons.

[@elitecereal]

Comparing KSP to Minecraft is like comparing GTA to Tetris. It doesn't make sense. They're both completely different games and the only notable similarity between the two is that they're both sandboxish games.

[@Niosus]

It explains why Take Two bought the IP. That never made sense to me. They didn't make games like this. And well, currently, they still don't. I hope they'll get rid of the IP so another publisher can pick it up. I was hoping for a scenario like IO Interactive where the devs bought the Hitman IP from the original publisher and went independent. But given that the devs for KSP were barely even invested in the product... Maybe it's better if some other team gets a stab at it...

[@adora_was_taken]

@@Niosus realistically they'll just own the IP indefinitely and occasionally release a bit of merch or tiny anniversary content

[@carl8703]

I disagree, I think it's wholly possible to franchise the hell out of the game, I just fear what happens if ever some greedy investor was to do that.

[@Niosus]

@@adora_was_taken Ehhh it depends. KSP is pretty much dead now. They alienated the fans, and nobody else has heard about it. If someone makes them a decent offer, anything can happen. I hope a worthy successor gets made, whatever its name ends up being. After all, the game itself and the community around it is what matters. A few good writers can figure out another great setting with fun characters.

[@Debilitator47]

I started playing KSP 1 after a couple years of watching Scott Manley and Matt Lowne. I got into and was enjoying myself early on. The irony, to me, is I never took a physics course. When I first achieved orbit, it was actually a triumph. Then for forEVER achieving a rendezvous between two separate launches became a huge hurdle. When, after watching videos, trying and failing, and trying, and failing, try fail try fail...finally, FINALLY I achieved a rendezvous and docking. It was a major triumph. I landed on the Mun and Duna and MInmus and crashed into Eve before I achieved that successful docking (and yes, I accidentally one launched my way through most of the inner planets, including returns, before I finally docked two ships). I literally stood up and jumped for joy and was laughing and it was a MOMENT. I was very much looking forward to more of those moments in KSP2. I bought it when it became available. I held on, through doubt and 'it just needs more time to cook, they're making progress...' Then the layoffs. And now this excellent expose. It feels BAD, to have reached my age, and have a game/tool that I enjoyed LEARNING from, that made learning fun and feel actually like an accomplishment, and then that game's sequel just falls apart like this, mis-handled from the start. It's left me feeling upended. Sad to see the way KSP2 has turned out.

[@JD96893]

This comment makes me want to riot in front of T2 headquarters for their colossal blunder. I mean if you think about this from your perspective of learning and inspiring, like we all did in Ksp1, it is such a loss. Ksp2 could have inspired a new generation of engineers and astronauts. Or inspired kids to study astrophysics or astronomy. Not to mention teaching people about orbital mechanics, something completely alien to the average person.

[@bvenable78]

@Debilitator47 ^^^ so much this ^^^

[@timmy3822]

I remember making my first orbital docking, that eureka moment was a hell of a drug. I remember watching Scott’s Interstellar series and it scares to em think that’s like well over a decade ago now.

[@timmy3822]

I remember making my first orbital docking, that eureka moment was a hell of a drug. I remember watching Scott’s Interstellar series and it scares to em think that’s like well over a decade ago now.

[@piggyinthemiddle]

you're not alone mate

[@AeVinxce]

As a professional dev, I realized It was bound to death at the moment they talked about multiplayer being added vary late in the roadmap... This kind of feature MUST be added from the ground up, extensively tested through all the development phases to be provide an smooth game experience. One cannot simply make a game then add multiplayer on top of it like adding sprinkle on cupcakes. I have a profound hatred for Take-Two that killed a very promising sequel for my favorite game... I'd love to see the KSP2 Unity project sources opened to the community, where passionate game devs - like myself - could share a bit of their time to build brick by brick the game we all dream of... How ingenuous of me...

[@nt78stonewobble]

In general one of the biggest problems of humanity, is a lack of communications. It goes from the level of individuals over organizations to country and world level. No, we don't have to blabber out everything to everyone, but on eg. a company level, there needs to be the trust to engage in open and honest communication. Us humans can't solve any problem, if the person knowing about the problem doesn't speak up out of fear, the person with a solution doesn't hear about it or themselves don't speak up. Ultimately, this is the responsibility of management, to create a culture of open and honest discussion and to show the way forward, by listening... actually listening to the problems and challenges of the people doing the work. It doesn't matter if you're coding games, building rockets, cars, childrens play sets etc. The sooner you know about a problem or challenge, the more time you have to fix it and the less stuff you have to fix.

[@ShadowZone]

Very well put! Humans can only succeed if they collaborate. And without open communication that's just not going to work.

[@bobsemple9341]

No, the problem was managers. As it always is

[@AtilaElari]

I am astounded to realize just how much devs were barred from any sort of communication with anyone. This is just... most un-Kerbal thing that could be done. An open development cycle would get them scores of highly qualified people in love with the game who would probably be fine working for below-average salary because it is Kerbal. Instead they had to hire low-tiers who knew nothing of the game. And for what? What did they gain from it? This is maddening. Not because it is greedy or corpo-bulshit, but because it is plain stupid and had no redeeming sides to it. It was just bad on all accounts. And this hurts my soul. Maybe someone someday will liberate the IP from TakeTwo and do it justice. Until then... well, KSP1 is as good as it ever was.

[@bartolomeothesatyr]

KSP1 is arguably better now than it has ever been before.

[@Crayonberry1212]

This is like when a book is made into a movie...and NONE of the actors, director, producer, editors, anybody is familiar with the original.

[@HuntingTarg]

Hear hear. Running the project development in a manner completely opposite the way that worked for the first title (open- vs. closed-comms) and shutting out all the original talent was a formula for failure. It's probably easier to see in hindsight, but the buck has to stop somewhere, and the first people to identify project problems are in the best position to either play hot potato or Harry Truman.

[@thebluehat6814]

yeah, no, take 2 will never let go of an IP they themselves ran into the ground lol. They'll be catching flak from the investors

[@HuntingTarg]

@@thebluehat6814 The investors stand to gain more from recovering some of their losses by selling the IP rather than holding onto it and hoping that 'this will all blow over' and starting over in 2-10 years. Holding on at this point is out of stupidity, or stubbornness, or both.

[@andrewhofmann5453]

In 2003, I went through the same thing with a game studio I co-owned in Austin, TX. Our investors kept changing our direction, ran up cost and eventually shut us down. We couldn't tell the community what was going on, we couldn't do anything to save the game, sometimes I wonder if it was intentional. I wont go back into the game business, too cut throat.

[@MasterLPG]

Must've been for the Intellectual Property of your studio, as no company who buys a company strictly for it's IP will want to keep it's staff around. *The 'failure' that 'forced' them to 'regrettably' shut down their newly-purchased studio is all for show to prevent getting into legal trouble for terminating a viable business intentionally in certain countries where they have legislation to protect it's labour from such actions.* *That's the short and gist of it anyhow.*

[@andrasbiro3007]

That sucks. I've been on a project that got killed at the last minute because the company went bankrupt. It hurt because it was a super fun game, and had a feature I still haven't seen in other games after almost 20 years. It was an RTS/FPS hybrid, you could switch between the two modes seamlessly, and could control your units in both. And there was no compromise in functionality or graphics in either mode. And it had a physics engine that was like 5-10 years ahead of it's time. And it had a super efficient graphics engine too, which allowed it to run on affordable PCs.

[@BrokenToe]

What games did you make?

[@cslpchr]

What was the company called?

[@HuntingTarg]

​@@MasterLPGUnfortunately, we're in the time of 'IP milking', where executives and investors are seeking to 'mine' rather than 'build' products with a loyal following and brand recognition. In consumer markets, building comes BEFORE mining, not after.

[@justinb2824]

Lead Dev: Okay, we've got 10 million, how should we allocate this? CEO: Marketing. Lead Dev: What do you mean? How much for marketing? CEO: ALL OF IT.

[@DamianE-2007]

As a Senior Engineer, I heard a lot of the same problems that plague most projects I've been on. But the lack of senior or experienced engineers was the worst mistake. People don't understand that a junior engineer is so much less efficient than a senior engineer. Further, junior engineers learn from seniors and tech leads. Good engineers will "figure it out", but just because you don't drown when you're tossed in a pool doesn't mean you're a good swimmer. This project needed good engineering, so sad.

[@pebegou]

"DID IT JUST DO A KERBAL?!"

[@Richi_Boi]

If Nate Simpson was a software engineer he would have just killed the wobble to improve performance.

[@michagrill9432]

Just like simplerockets 2/juno does

[@TheAechBomb]

killing the wobble for performance makes some sense, but then you can't have rockets fold and break in half from aero shear

[@clayel1]

@@TheAechBombyou can, you just dont need them to move until they break (which is more realistic)

[@RAFMnBgaming]

@@clayel1 Given it was (IIRC) based on unity joints you'd have to pull the whole thing out and rewrite the shear code. Which might have been a good idea.

[@Richi_Boi]

@@TheAechBomb Yes. If you partweld them they cant. Some people would choose to sacrifice that for fps

[@doxviper7576]

Not having open communication with a community has and continues to kill many games in the industry. The developers who have realized this have gone on to make very successful games while those who haven't will end up in the unemployment line.

[@FireDragonDoL]

Thank you for the video. I'm in line with Scott Manley here, replacing planets and graphic improvement mods were core, although having played Juno, they could have taken some of the ideas to improve the UX. A big deal was the "integrated" autopilot mod. It makes a lot more sense to control the spaceship by setting a parameter than by holding that S letter forever. My dream is still interstellar travel. Dyson Sphere Program scratched that itch and I was really hoping to see that in Kerbal Space Program. I think there has been an overlook of things that make the game actually fun. For example, it seems like they went full in on the "inner physics" of a spaceship (forgive my layman terms) and that caused enormous performance problems (8 engines would cause 2 FPS) and the result were spaceships that could easily crumble on themselves. I have yet to hear a person that says "it's fun to keep adding struts to your spaceship". By comparison, Juno has no inner physics, but the game is fun and apparently can run on mobile! (I never actually tried on mobile). Now, KSP is more realistic, so it is desirable, but not at the cost of making the game less fun. And finally, why can't we have dynamic fuel tanks: it is a feature in Juno, it was done by mods in KSP, it should be the default, instead no: we have an editor where 90% of the parts are fuel tanks of different size. I'm so frustrated I can't get a refund because I played 16 hours (of frustration), all of this because I wanted to give the game a good attempt before giving up

[@WwZa7]

I don't understand, why the secrecy? Why was it so important that they couldn't even contact original KSP1 devs...

[@olegshkurenko-0448]

To sell more dlc for ksp1 i guess

[@fleetadmiralj]

@@olegshkurenko-0448 I mean, as far as secrecy with the public, that part kind of makes sense to a degree. The no contact with KSP1 people, however, does not. I mean, I guess management was like "we don't want to make them distracted" but like dude. They're the ones who can actually answer the questions!

[@t_z1030]

There is a certain kind of manager whose highest priority is maintaining their authority and control, and this smells like that to me. Veterans from the original project would be an authority by default, and that threatens the control freak. This is purely speculative of course, but why else would you shoot yourself in both feet with a 12 gauge like that except for stupid personal reasons.

[@exalosm]

Isn't it understandable that some managers wanted to make all the dumbest development mistakes they could? It's strange that they didn't call Sweet Bay Inc.

[@DeanRockne]

I'm guessing part of it was wanting to keep KSP2 from poaching devs from KSP1 DLC. If you were a KSP1 dev working on a DLC and you found out KSP2 was coming in less than 2 years, you'd probably want to jump ship to that team because there wasn't going to be more KSP1 work soon and KSP2 offered better long term opportunities.

[@andrewcyrbag]

The fact that the fanbase/playerbase is relying on ShadowZone for any form of communication is very telling. T2 refuses to comment, Intercept probably got NDA'ed to all hell and back and very likely will never chime in. As much as I also want KSP2 to succeed, I think LinuxGuruGamer's "not with Take Two" comment is the sad reality. EDIT: I can tell you worked really hard on this video and I'm sure much of the community appreciates it. You're doing more to clean up this mess than the actual PR/Marketing team.

[@Thoringer]

Not a software developer here, but a data scientist. When I heard the "solving multiplayer later" part, I had to chuckle. That's like me creating the dashboard before starting to code the data query, or even looking what data I can get and how clean it is. That's just hilarious.

[@SB-cz9vo]

Frankensteining the core code was the initial fatal error. One of KSP's biggest drawbacks was its lack of multicore support. As far as I know, this is still the case in KSP2. These crosscoads are so deep in the game engine that you have no real chance to fix it afterwards and need a revamp of the engine and the game. Well that revamp was KSP2 and that is out there while multithreading is still lying around in the VAB. Gunning for nice graphics at a point when solid code at the core was the most critical thing for a successful change. I won't go into other neck-breakers like Timewarp vs multiplayer. Sadly, it is one of many cases where management min-maxed the project into a state where it kept many of KSP's old ailments. Now they see it failing, with no cheap fix in sight, and losing interest. Do I want a proper sequel to KSP? Yes, I do. Do I see the current KSP2 having any chance of taking that place? Absolutely not. Maybe one day some other lonely dev will start a space game, removing all the constraints that bind KSP to make something stronger.

[@SpainSpace]

Not going to every buy anything not just tied to, but related to Take Two Interactive ever again. Hell, I might not even pirate them out of spite. KSP is more than a videogame for me.

[@STRIDER_503]

I think Take 2 already had a bad name well before the KSP2 scandal was a thing...

[@spiritoffire7432]

Scroll, one dong... Key, two dongs... Sword, uh, uhh..... t-three dongs..?

[@DinnyOrSomething]

This is a really good summary of years of stonewalling and silence, but... damn, man. It's shocking just how badly these high level managers, who are probably paid 6-7 figure salaries, can be SO BAD at their main job. And it's so sad that they destroy games that people love in the process

[@TheBelrick]

Dont think for a second that the devs were any better. Clearly weren't up to the task.

[@HuntingTarg]

​@@TheBelrickIt's bern pointed out elsewhere that hiring inept developers was a result of management constraints, and led to inept product development.

[@HuntingTarg]

It's been pointed out in the world of finance that many money managers are paid based on the scope of their responsibility (the value of whatever they're mansging), and not on the results they get (revenue). If their financial success was tied to the success of their projects or assets, they would think and behave VERY differently. That's why I believe in profit-sharing over yuge salaries.

[@TheBelrick]

@@HuntingTarg Probably DEI hires. And the mass exodus into "learn to code" from people unfit to use logic and the utter trash state of universities.

[@thebluehat6814]

it's funny, I have never heard about the people who are paid 6 figures getting fired my whole life.

[@CapitaineNautilus]

Thanks for sharing with the results of your inquiry about this drama. Contacting and interviewing all these people and them coming up with this video is a lot of work. Thanks again!

[@agentduck9285]

I swear that shareholders are the best people at self sabotage.

[@Orion-CSAT]

Everything is making sense, watching this. Very well done and informative video, thank you!

[@profwaldone]

Hold on, it was well known in the community that adding multiplayer to ksp 1 was near impossible without severe overhauling. It was also know from mods that other solar systems can get floating point errors and other such issues. So was the original idea for ksp 2 to be a paid bug patch? Doomed from the start is an understatement. This project was doomed wel before the running shoes were even tied on.

[@D1ndo]

Exactly. And who started the scope creep even while fully knowing it's impossible to build with the budget and time constraints? Nate Simpson. Yet this video and some other people still try to defend him, smh. He's the nr1. screw up man.

[@tweda4]

​@@D1ndoNate Simpson was asked what features he wanted to bring into the game. He's not the boss, he was basically just the ideas guy. It's the responsibility of management to establish with the developers what is or isn't possible and make decisions accordingly. Don't get me wrong. I thought the idea to have multiplayer built into KSP2 was moronic, because even without having played it, I knew it was probably janky as all hell, and would be both difficult and arguably pointless, but I don't blame Nate for putting it on his wishlist.

[@pierrotA]

Most people do not seem to understand that modifying very complex codes to add new functionalities is generally harder that making a new code from scratch... Especially multiplayer, you need to replicate a lot of variables and events... If you do not think about it while making your code, better to start again. It's like making a flying drone by modifying a TV instead of building it from nothing and expecting to finish quicker... It make no sences.

[@RandomPickles]

Yeah. Multi-player was the dumbest choice ever. Said it was going to be the downfall since the start while impressionable teens who loved fortnight laughed at me in moron.

[@danilooliveira6580]

@@D1ndo and if you watched the video it wasn't his choice to stick with the original code, it was forced on them by management.

[@gagrin1565]

What is certain is that this is the last time I throw money at anything Take Two touches.

[@kuroraiko986]

Great video, thanks for the details! Fingers crossed about the future!

[@Fieryxjoe]

I know you came to the conclusion Nate is a good guy and maybe just the wrong guy for the job. But to me this proved that he was knowingly lying to our faces in every interview he did. Not just lying about devs having fun in multiplayer, but also lying about there being no KSP 1 code in KSP 2. His statements that every feature was designed with multiplayer in mind when none of them were and the multiplayer team had been fired. Statements that there was no risk of the plug being pulled while the publisher is firing whole departments and the most senior devs and features are being internally erased from the roadmap. At the end of the day Take Two was shooting themselves in the foot but Nate didn't have to lie about these things and was borderline scamming people by doing so.

[@eekee6034]

I'm thinking he lied to us to protect himself. He first convinced Take 2 to follow his vision when he had no idea how to make it work -- a massive display of Dunning-Kruger Syndrome -- then he lied to protect his job. (If you saw my previous, deleted comment, I watched a bit more of the video and no longer think it applicable.)

[@guitarfan01]

Just a point of order here: the multiplayer team wasn't fired until months after the Early Access launch. So it's entirely possible he was telling the truth about everything being designed with multiplayer in mind before that point. When you're trying to evaluate statements made over a period of 5 years, chronology is important.

[@eekee6034]

@@guitarfan01 A solid point of order in the general case, but in this case KSP2 was based on KSP1's code. It would need to be redesigned from the ground up to be "designed for multiplayer". Colony resource management was designed with multiplayer in mind, but core features were designed in KSP1 so they couldn't be. It's like when Nate talked about the devs having so much fun in multiplayer. Now we know that was modded KSP1, but at the time we all believes it was KSP2 as I'm sure Nate knew we would. In both cases, Nate has committed _lies of omission;_ omitting certain details with intent to decieve.

[@user-burner]

I think he probably did have to though, at the demands of Take 2. Remember, someone answering a community question got fired, if you revealed actual info about the development he'd get fired or at least take a huge pay cut probably instantly

[@Fieryxjoe]

@@user-burner no way he was told "lie about that time the devs had fun playing KSP1 and say they played KSP2" or stuff like that. More likely he was simply told "you have to release on this day unfinished and if you dont sell 100k copies the game is on the chopping block" and he decided on his own telling the truth wouldn't make that happen.

[@lewismassie]

You know what's incredible? You were talking about Nate being genuine and with the best intentions and being well spoken in interviews and perhaps overpromising. That is _exactly_ what people said about Sean Murray for No Mans Sky. But Sean was left alone to fix it. Nate will likely never get that chance.

[@henlostinky273]

NMS was self-published so they could set their own deadlines, KSP was kinda cooked the minute T2 bought it thinking they could squeeze minecraft money out of it

[@MagicCuboid]

In addition to Hello Games being private, No Mans Sky also sold way better at launch than KSP2 did. They were able to ride those profits for years fixing the game.

[@meneldal]

Also No Man's Sky, even on release and the mess it was, offered something new and you could see potential. KSP2 on release was just an inferior KSP1.

[@thisisnotajoke]

@henlostinky273 That is not entirely true, Sony was/is the publisher of the PS4 (and probably PS5) version and it was Sony that put a lot of pressure on hello games to release the game at a certain date.

[@rickamsler3088]

the glaring difference here is that Sean is absolutely a developer first, and everything else second. Nate isn't a developer but a "visionary" and quite literally the guy that creates scope creep. KS2 only needed some general visual upgrades, the procedural wings to better design planes, new parts, and a planets update. Interstellar could have been a DLC. where you could work to build a space station that functions as your its own launch platform. you don't have to spend 3 hours delivering ship parts to space after the station is done. just build the ship in a new editor window. Multi player too could have been a DLC - or future update. but it would have needed to be very transparent. highlighting issues when they are encountered and communicating with the playerbase about issues or pitfalls.

[@ZPanic0]

26:16 Small correction. If they get yanked around, they won't be able to solve any problems period. It's not a matter of quality, you simply must become and maintain that "immersed" state to get work done. Every different task requires its own "immersion". They aren't compatible, and go to waste when switching tasks.

[@BenSmith0]

That was fantastic. Thanks for digging all that up for us!

[@TheBeardyPenguin]

Incredibly well researched video. I'm disappointed, but not surprised. As a software engineer for an aerospace firm myself, I've encountered all the same attitudes from upper management that you and the KSP 2 devs have. People who don't understand software making non-negotiable decisions about software just never ends well, but it's unfortunately all too common. I've been on the receiving end of refusals to requests to rewrite code, followed by everything built on the sand foundation inevitably not working and having to spend far more time patching bugs than it would have taken to just rewrite the foundation as initially suggested. Not consulting or bringing on any of the original developers then being surprised when they encountered the same problems was just plain insanity. Glad to see that myself and Scott agree on what we wanted from KSP 2. I would have been perfectly happy with just a prettier, more performant version of KSP 1 with some more quality of life features, better tutorials, and a modding API. Interstellar and colonies I'd have gladly paid for as DLCs - after all, they'd be much larger in scope than the KSP 1 DLCs were. Take Two really have killed the golden goose they had with KSP and the overwhelmingly passionate fanbase it had cultivated. It's very sad to see.

[@makssachs8914]

The idea of such attitudes being present in an aerospace company concerns me. Maybe I should stick to a bicycle for now.

[@TheBeardyPenguin]

@@makssachs8914 I don't work for them, but you've heard of Boeing right? :P Such attitudes are present everywhere there are software engineers

[@makssachs8914]

@@TheBeardyPenguin looks like I’m stuck putting up with DB.

[@Dman6779]

​@@TheBeardyPenguincant wait for the new raytheon drone to mistake my house for a russian military HQ in WW3 and i get lauched into the stratosphere in the form of a fine red mist

[@nikolaideianov5092]

​@@Dman6779or to somehow confuse a dog with an scud d

[@UENShanix]

As a gamedev (not at all related to KSP, TakeTwo, or any other entity featured), I really appreciate your little segment on how "let modders fix it" isn't the panacea most Gamers think it is. For exactly the reasons said and so many more. It may be easy to fix or change something on your end but it's difficult to verify that it's truly fixed without having deeper access. And there are _many_ problems that can't be truly be solved without getting into the nitty gritty of it. I remember having to track down one bug that was coming from how our internal engine was handling IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and treating them, somehow, as the same but different. No modder could've fixed that even our game was as moddable as KSP or Skyrim.

[@guitarfan01]

It's been so annoying seeing all of the technically illiterate people (and I will freely admit I'm only first grade reading level with game dev) saying things like "well, mods could fix it" or "mods can give the same ksp2 experience in ksp1." Neither of those are true. Yes, mods in KSP 1 can give you some barebones approximation of multiplayer, interstellar travel, and colonies. But all of those are hacks into existing systems instead of systems built to do those things. This isn't to take anything away from the brilliance and hard work of the modders that have given us these things at all! The modders simply did not have access to the direct source code. Interstellar through Kopernicus gives you terrible floating point errors when you get half a light year away from Kerbol. Multiplayer has plenty of limitations, especially timewarp and working with other mods. And colonies are the worst of all three: either you try to simply dock colony ships on the ground in ksp and deal with the fact that they all suffer Kraken attacks whenever they load, or if you use Kerbal Konstructs, the difficult UI and lack of satisfying systems and gameplay loop. What KSP2 needed was a new codebase designed from the ground up to support these features. According to people who cracked open KSP2, a lot of those things were in there even in the first Early Access release, just incomplete, ripped out and roughly bandaged to make the deadline.

[@meneldal]

You can fix stuff with mods like limited content, adding a new planet or new engines, but new systems are always going to be difficult and janky.

[@kevinrayne9828]

Great Video! Keep us updated!

[@worawatli8952]

It's insane, imagine a car company funding a new car project but not allowing them access to existing parts and techs. rofl Instead of improving and avoiding previous mistakes and flaws, they would prone to make the same mistake or worse.

[@alexsiemers7898]

Sounds like Cybertruck

[@worawatli8952]

Yea, I love how Cybertruck styling went, but engineering was just, or well, nope.

[@DonnK-rc4im]

Ill never forget the first time i managed to escape orbit in KSP1. It was euphoric after so many trials and failures, then I began to reenter, when i was half way through reentry i noticed id forgotten to put a heat shield on the pod. Great memories. Sad to see how the sequel went.

[@TheBelrick]

People still dont get it. KSP was a huge success BECAUSE of squad. The people. Talent and passion combined. These new devs were never up to the task and were just $$$ seeking learn to code dropouts. It was an obvious fail from the start and I TOLD YOU ALL SO!

[@bizzehdee]

10 million is a nothing budget for a publisher backed game these days, even for a "small" game like KSP2

[@alexsiemers7898]

The full budget of Subnautica was $10M iirc, and compared to KSP2 that’s a tiny game (even with the lore and biosphere being as rich as it is)

[@Infernal_Elf]

yeah absolutely. But not for greedy Publisher Ceo`s that also happen to own most of the company.

[@tiagodagostini]

depend where you develop it. Do it in South america or eastern europe and you can go an OK way with it. You just need to be smart on how to use that money.

[@IstasPumaNevada]

@@tiagodagostini And not have the big developer/publisher's higher ups using the location as a vacation spot/appointment while you bilk the smaller country's government out of grants. LOOKING AT YOU, UBISOFT.

[@Gentleman...Driver]

As far as I understand they didnt want the game to have all these new functions. They just wanted a more polished version of the old game. "Quick and dirty." And honestly, there is a market for that. 10 mio. bucks and two years, seems still like a stretch... Like, how do you even organize that fast? How much time do you have to understand the code really?

[@puppyguard2689]

Thank you for this, I had my guesses but it's nice to know the full story.

[@RobFalcon141]

Absolutely fascinating! And explains a great deal of what happened to get us here. I'm with you and Matt on this; hoping for the best, expecting the worst. Thank you for gathering all this information together!

[@archerroo007]

This was a great send-off for KSP2. Thank you for assembling all the elements, providing insights behind the scenes and synthesizing the elements that brought us to this point.

[@vicviper319]

Thank you so much for the level-headed reporting on this ShadowZone. Your videos do the best job on trying to figure out why we're in this mess.

[@MattSitton]

This whole thing is honestly wild i knew a decent chunk of this but hearing everything is even more wild

[@ceales3]

thanks for your work here. very interesting indeed.

[@MoldySpace]

The real shame is 2 years and $10 million, we could've just polished up KSP1 and had something truly glorious

[@danilooliveira6580]

there wasn't much to polish without throwing alway the old code and starting from scratch. that is the problem.

[@christophelemaire4551]

@@danilooliveira6580 Sure thing, knowing that KSP1 grew way bigger than initialy expected, they really pushed their project to the farthest point possible here.

[@fleetadmiralj]

yeah but what would you have paid for "KSP1 but prettier"? I have a feeling the answer there may be well lower than what T2 would have sold it to you for.

[@tandemcharge5114]

​@@fleetadmiraljPeople would have 100% paid for a polished KSP 1 that have had its jank removed. Imagine being able to approach stations without getting smacked by lag for one

[@manvslife271]

@@fleetadmiralj I wouldn't have paid for "KSP1 but prettier" but I *would* have paid for "KSP1 but ran better" which is basically all what people *actually* wanted from this project at it's core, because a good sandbox game needs a solid foundation which can be built upon.

[@CoperliteConsumer]

This is a perfect example of why making games via "design by committee" always ends in disaster. Art for one cant be done like that and this whole thing was treated like trying to remake an action figure or rerelease an old album. Thats just not how games work. The industry is dying and this is exactly why. So unfortunate to happen to one of the games i was so invested in :'(

[@FatovMikhail]

the most important part that wasn't even touched here is KSP1 WAS FINE, it had yearly updates with new mechanics, major agencies collaborations, i think after "only 150k per year" ksp1 devs started to cry. they were a team, they had a vision, they were capable, they had some refactoring undergoing. with some more budget they could make ksp1 look like ksp2 but work better. now we have both games killed and most of the ksp1 source code lost. and THIS is a terrible situation, not the cancellation of ksp2.

[@aden6427]

Great vid! I was really wondering what was going on with it, and how they could've messed up so bad, but now I get it.

[@JD96893]

Wobbly rockets is a clear disconnect between what the community, aka consumers, want and the devs. That was a big red flag for me.

[@oljimeagle6779]

My favorite part was when the devs would put out short videos saying how they never even played KSP 1 before they were hired.

[@IAmNumber4000]

Not to sound like an "uhhh aykschyually I knew this was going to happen" type person, but something felt very wrong from the start, as the first trailers promised tons of incredible features like interstellar travel and colony building but they didn't show any gameplay or demonstrate that they had built a solid enough foundation to support such extravagant and complex features.

[@cheddar2648]

That launch at 10:52 is pure KSP essence, haha wow.

[@OzzyInSpace]

They did such a rug pull on the community. And they knew it. Teasing us with all those dev blog videos up until the release date announcement; Then that Oct (just few months from that release time) they said none of those previously bragged about features would be there, and it would be early access. I knew at that moment it was a rug pull. They took advantage of the community's good will from the first game. I'm so thankful KSP 1 is in a great place.

[@rainbowkrampus]

You literally just watched a video where it was made explicit that the people involved were dedicated to producing the game but were mired in bad decision making, much of it outside of their control, from the start. And your takeaway is that the game was an intentional scam? Touch grass dude. You've lost touch with reality.

[@OzzyInSpace]

@@rainbowkrampus Whatever helps you sleep at night...

[@thelyric2751]

​@@rainbowkrampusreally it's more like the devs were forced into the rugpulling by Take Two.

[@rainbowkrampus]

@@thelyric2751 The "rugpull" language is unhelpful here. A rugpull is a scam, it requires intent. There was no intent to fail or deceive here. It was a series of bad decisions leading to an overinflated budget and an eventual decision to cut losses on a project that was looking to require way more dev time, and thus dollars, than it already received. It wasn't a scam at any point, it was incompetence and failure. Is every mistake you make a rugpull? Do you see the problem here? "Rugpull" here is just emotive language. It doesn't have anything to do with what actually happened, it has no meaning, It's just OP trying to express their feelings. But by using a term with an accepted meaning it has resulted in them being dishonest. It's not cool. You can be upset and not be dishonest.

[@guitarfan01]

Dumb take, Ozzy. You literally just stated the opposite of what the video showed.

[@cmilkau]

The lesson I take away from this is, never let management in on technical decisions. Management needs to know what you can do, and when (including associated risks), but not how. The how is up to execution, not management.

[@Erowens98]

Problem is, often management will force their way in because they want to feel like they're contributing something. Micromanagement is a plague in the engineering world.

[@fleetadmiralj]

The problem is that the "how" may also be a matter of "how much" and that IS a matter for management.

[@jordanledoux197]

You know the thing you might find absolutely terrifying? I've worked as a software engineer since I was a teenager. I've worked in multiple industries, including at a game studio, on multiple types of software. The engineers (who also occasionally have crack-pot or just wrong ideas about features), probably shield you from about 50-60% of the stuff that would annoy you or be dangerous by lying to their bosses and managers. "Lying" to management, and learning the skill to do so in a non-destructive and convincing way, so that you can actually address the things that YOU KNOW are important but don't have the time or energy to argue about, is an absolutely CRITICAL career skill for engineers. Game studios are particularly susceptible to this problem however, because these kinds of awful decisions can originate from management, but they could also come from the art department doing something they think is "art" but is actually "engineering", or it could come from the director if they are the type to think "I'm the idea guy, so I'm the only guy that has ideas". When it comes to technical issues, any of those people could be the source of EXTRA problems on top of the ones that engineers introduce themselves through the process of development. Devs can probably put their job on the line and kind of bluff their way into blocking one of those groups, but if you are getting problems from multiple directions, it's game over. In that situation, the devs probably know the company is going under almost a year before management does. But like I said, all these examples you actually see in the software you use or want to use of management screwing up technical decisions? That's the stuff the engineers couldn't block, or weren't willing to risk their job over, or weren't willing to ignore and get done on a weekend anyway. If engineers didn't essentially act insubordinate when they knew something was a bad idea, there would be very, very few companies that would be capable of shipping running code that isn't an absolute mess.

[@henlostinky273]

one thing making that hard is that most software management were promoted from engineers (or people who already made a game in this case) and the 'how' colors the way they plan things. they tend to block out plans in terms of what code they need to write, not what features they need to launch, and set priorities according to how much code they think needs to change and how complex the changes would be. this means 'heavy' things like new features and sweeping refactor jobs get priority while 'simple' things like QoL and devops and performance fixes get neglected. or the opposite, they know a lot of complex code lives somewhere so they automatically de-prioritize working on it out of paranoia.

[@hansschmidt884]

Very interesting pieces of information, thank you !

[@Mattribute]

You didn't even mention the things about KSP2 which really really bothered me! But you told us so much about the background, very interesting.

[@generalsirc2615]

I am dumb founded, the level of incompetence is really mind blowing. And we see this Al over the industry. I think it has to be from corporatization, you have people with business degrees making technical decisions. Some things can be corporatized and work out all right. Video games are not one of them. Video games are a creative endeavor, and corporations are rarely creative

[@bobsemple9341]

This is what happens when non tech people infect software

[@Wrangler-fp4ei]

@@bobsemple9341 Specially when they have investors who poke them those people in the side wanting results.

[@user-burner]

Money is just entirely incompatible with art

[@generalsirc2615]

@@user-burner I’d say money is a good motivator for an artist to produce high quality work, but where money is an issue is when non artistic people impose their ideas and cost saving measures onto the artistic people.

[@HuntingTarg]

Are you volunteering to be a 'starving artist'? Money for these projects has to come from somewhere, very few finished projects spring forth unfunded.

[@OlCrunch]

It really does feel like a lot of the mistakes made by the devs would've been ironed out quick smart in a typical development cycle without the crushing silence imposed by Take-Two/Private Division. I'd be pinning a lot more of this on the corporate side of things then on Nate. He was just too optimistic.

[@D1ndo]

On the contrary, I'd be pinning a lot more of this on Nate. He's the one responsible for knowingly exploding the scope well beyond the time and budget constraints, at the start of the project already. That's not how a good manager operates. You can spin it any way you like, everything points to the game being doomed by him going full scope creep, and refusing reality. If T2 had not been benevolent enough to dump so much more money on the project, we would not even have the early access prototype we can play now.

[@rainbowkrampus]

@@D1ndo Then you'd be deranged. T2 agreed to his pitch then tied his arms. When they first ran into trouble they could have talked to KSP1 devs were it not for the bizarre secrecy mandates. You need to touch grass. You just watched an entire video explaining all of this and you still have a rage boner for Simpson. You've lost touch with reality.

[@E1Luch]

​@@D1ndo The possibility of simply making "polished KSP 1" that would've been different enough from regular modded KSP 1 assumes that the old codebase was actually good enough to permit that. And if the old code needed to be thrown out regardless they could have built in some better functionality from the beginning. The problem was that every single person with the power to make decisions was seemingly completely incompetent do deal with anything technical and was instead operating on a bunch of insane and unfounded assumptions about the game and its market niche.

[@alexsiemers7898]

@@D1ndoNate wasn’t the one who gave the go-ahead for the all the new content, he just said it would be a cool idea. T2 is still at fault for letting it get accepted but without changing the budget and dev time for the game accordingly

[@lexyksadvix5922]

Thank you for elucidating this for us, it provides some amount of closure.

[@antaguana]

Great video. Thanks for outlining it and I hope this helps the industry learn from this mistake.