
Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive - Impossible
https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/en/?page_id=747
======
TeMPOraL
KSP was possibly my best entertainment spending ever. It definitely is the
best game for me in terms of costs / time played. If you haven't played it
yet, do yourself a favour and buy it now. If you have a kid with even
tangential interest in space, get a copy for them.

Side effects of playing KSP include:

\- getting an intuitive feel for basic orbital mechanics

\- finding yourself reading up on actual math to better understand what's
happening with your rockets (and how to build more efficient one)

\- no longer being able to watch most space movies due to frustration caused
by the filmmakers not grokking basic orbital physics

(RE the last point - after _Gravity_ , _Interstellar_ , _The Martian_ and _The
Expanse_ series, getting basic spaceflight wrong should no longer be accepted
in popular media. Looking at you, makers of _The 100_.)

~~~
hoorayimhelping
The game also has a horrible habit of turning people into arrogant know-it-all
armchair rocket scientists.

> _no longer being able to watch most space movies due to frustration caused
> by the filmmakers not grokking basic orbital physics_

Oh boy, this again. Are you not able to watch movies with guns because Rainbow
Six taught you how guns work and now you're just too woke to suspend
disbelief?

Something about this game causes people to feel the need to signal all their
knowledge of science by putting down things for not being pure enough.

~~~
vanderZwan
Don't be so flippant. It's not exactly controversial to say that trained
musicians will suffer more when listening to bad music, so why would it be
different for _any_ other skill?

One of the main gameplay mechanics is all about understanding orbital physics,
and fiddling around with that for tens if not hundreds of hours will leave
anyone with a grasp of it on an intuitive level.

Once the brain is that trained, is it so hard to believe that the process can
take on an aesthetic experience? Ant that seeing it done wrong is like a false
note in music?

~~~
simonh
Maybe, but I've got hundreds of hours of KSP under my belt and thought Gravity
was fantastic. I'm a proud science and gamer geek, but feel that the urge to
nit pick is the scourge of the geek community. I'll happily engage in a
conversation about the compromises made in Gravity, it none of them spoiled
the movie for me and I'm very glad it exists. If it makes movie goers more
interested in Space and feel positively about space research and exploration,
that's a wonderful thing.

~~~
milcron
I think they were saying that Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian and The
Expanse are all _good_ examples.

~~~
ucarion
I'm confused about this too. _The Martian_ (at least the book) has good
science throughout. But in _Gravity_ , the space shrapnel is moving much
faster than the ISS, yet has the same orbit as it. I don't think that's
possible, from what KSP has taught me.

~~~
simonh
I don't think it has the same orbit, I think it has a crossing orbit inclined
relative to that of the space station. Imagine a belt of debris, much like the
rings of Saturn, with the ISS on an orbit that passes through the ring twice
on each orbit, on opposite sides of the planet.

------
jesseryoung
Hopefully the game will be better off under Take-Two (I am not familiar with
their past treatment of indy-like games like this)

I have read several stories online about how poorly SQUAD treated the core
development team of KSP: [https://www.develop-online.net/news/squad-devs-
blast-kerbal-...](https://www.develop-online.net/news/squad-devs-blast-kerbal-
space-program-studio-for-high-crunch-and-low-pay/0220059)

~~~
dingo_bat
$2400 sounds incredibly low even in PPP terms for Mexico.

~~~
crispyambulance
That does seem impossibly low. I happen to know that electronics manufacturing
techs in Mexico (assembly line work) get the equivalent of $50/week for the
lowest rung. To pay the same for high-skill developers/content-creators seems
like something has been mis-communicated or maybe a typo.

Kerbal Space program has been doing well. I wonder who, exactly, has been
raking in all the cash?

------
mhh__
Kerbal Space Program is a game that we're quite lucky to have. No
microtransactions, no DRM, just sciencey goodness.

Except for those making it, who Squad apparently didn't bother paying anywhere
near what they were worth.

~~~
dragonwriter
Its likely the lack of excessive monetization and the lack of pay to
developers are not unrelated.

~~~
epicide
This possibly isn't the least hard to read sentence I have read :)

Easier to read and hopefully captured what you were trying to say:

> Reduced monetization likely reduced developer pay.

~~~
dragonwriter
A more accurate rephrasing would be:

The lack of effort toward monetization likely is an effect of the same cause
as low developer pay.

I was suggesting that the two were linked, but not suggesting the specific
causal link from monetization to developer pay of your version.

But you are correct that the original was unnecessarily elliptical.

~~~
kfrzcode
I'm almost certainly in the minority, however, I do so enjoy pedantry.
"Everything in its right place."

~~~
pc86
HN survives on pedantry.

------
mediocrejoker
I hope this goes well. I would love to see a remake that retains the exact
same gameplay with more modern graphics. Hopefully all the people who paid for
the current in-development version are not left high and dry in terms of
updates and bugfixes.

I also have heard the rumors that the team was not treated well, and that the
game was never really the focus of the company. I think it may have been a
side project of one of the developers on a totally unrelated product (ie. not
even a game).

~~~
slg
>Hopefully all the people who paid for the current in-development version are
not left high and dry in terms of updates and bugfixes.

How long is a developer expected to keep improving a game? Maybe it is the old
console gamer in me, but it wasn't that long ago that a game developer was
done with a game when it was released. This game has been public for 6 years,
been on Steam for 4 years, and been out of beta for 2 years. I don't get how
customers can complain about a lack of commitment to the game especially
considering the low price the game was usually offered at. I wouldn't blame
Take-Two one bit for trying turn a bigger profit with more paid content or a
complete sequel.

~~~
Bartweiss
It's an interesting balance. On one hand, games were historically 'dead' at
release. On the other, they were at least theoretically _done_ at release.
That's no longer even a goal for many developers today - features get
deferred, and players get used as a massive QA team.

KSP as it first hit Steam was fun, but obviously incomplete. KSP 1.0 was
viable as a finished product, but had obvious, planned upgrades unfinished.
After-release support was pretty obviously planned from the beginning.

As for how long, though, I don't know. I'm exceedingly happy with the KSP I
got for my money, and unlike some games they could have quit support before
now without upsetting me. So as long as Take-Two keeps a decent business
model, I'll happily pay for further content.

~~~
xanderstrike
> features get deferred

It's actually the opposite, bug fixes get deferred in favor of more features.
Fixes make your player base happy, but they already paid and are therefore not
worth any more money, new features drive sales.

~~~
deciplex
Mojang is particularly aggravating about this. They spent like a year
completely reworking The End and adding hang-gliders or whatever, and
meanwhile furnace carts have been broken for like three years, and the fix is
apparently like a dozen lines of code or something. In fact the entire mine
cart and track system should be overhauled if they're really serious about
improving the game - but instead they just keep adding more stupid shit nobody
asked for.

Not to mention a lot of the good mods are still on like 1.6 or something
because obviously no one is going to diligently update their mod over the
course of ten years or however long Mojang wants to keep this up.

~~~
Bartweiss
> Not to mention a lot of the good mods are still on like 1.6 or something
> because obviously no one is going to diligently update their mod over the
> course of ten years or however long Mojang wants to keep this up.

I've never seen most of Minecraft's newer stuff for this exact reason. I
played enough to get pretty deep into FTB and the other large mod packs, and
pretty quickly realized modders put out both content and bugfixes faster than
Mojang itself. At that point, you might as well just consider the 'real' game
a particularly shoddy branch of mods.

------
Orangeair
I sometimes get the feeling that this is the only game HN plays. When people
talk about not being able to switch away from Windows due to games, it seems
like someone always responds, "Well Kerbal Space Program runs on Linux and
that's all I care about." I don't think I've ever seen articles similar to
this one about other games gain as much traction. Can't think of very many
articles about games getting to the top of HN at all, actually, unless they're
about John Carmack writing one.

~~~
mdavidn
Agreed. I'm surprised Factorio hasn't surfaced more frequently on HN. The
game's automation play is just as addictive and creative, and it runs on Mac
and Linux.

~~~
j9461701
The people who have found Factorio have yet to come back from playing
Factorio. Their children miss them.

~~~
simonbarker87
So true, I spent about 150 hours on that game in 2 months and apparently
that's pretty light compared to a lot of people (probably explained by me not
being a gamer and this being the only game I've completed in the last decade
other that Leo's Fortune), I launched a rocket and have since uninstalled it.
Fortunately I found the latter stage of the game such a trudge that I've got
little inclination to go back to it - although I think 0.15 will solve many of
my gripes so I'm avoiding reading about it for now.

Factorio is nicknamed Cracktorio for a reason :-(

------
parisidau
Shameless self-promotion, but together with some friends I wrote a book for
O'Reilly Media on KSP!

Amazon: [https://www.amazon.com/Kerbal-Players-Guide-Easiest-
Program/...](https://www.amazon.com/Kerbal-Players-Guide-Easiest-
Program/dp/1491913053)

O'Reilly:
[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920035138.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920035138.do)

Safari: [https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/the-kerbal-
pl...](https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/the-kerbal-
players/9781491913475/)

------
nirav72
I just logged into my account and grabbed the installers and portable zip
files for the last 2 versions. Just in case, take-two's influence somehow
breaks the KSP experience I've come to love and enjoy.

~~~
rplnt
I mean, you should have done that when many (most?)of the core staff left. Or
the lead dev before that.

~~~
nirav72
Yeah I should have. But the staff shake up didn't really make the headlines
enough to get my attention. I didn't know it occurred until weeks later.

------
xigency
Video game company acquisitions can be brutal. I hope everything goes well for
the team now and several years in the future.

~~~
Declanomous
I think most of the team actually left after 1.0 was finished. They got sick
of working for Squad. I think Squad was never a particularly good place to be
a game developer, and they realized they should probably cash out now.

~~~
Svekax
The ones that were weren't fired and replaced with Mexican "interns" working
full time for $200 per month.

[https://www.destructoid.com/former-kerbal-space-program-
deve...](https://www.destructoid.com/former-kerbal-space-program-developers-
slam-studio-for-poor-pay-and-crunch-time-359507.phtml)

I wonder if Take-Two Interactive considered the morality of acquiring a
company that paid slave wages. Maybe they should change their name to Take-Two
Thousand Annually.

~~~
MrZongle2
Take-Two appears to have purchased the KSP _property_ , not Squad, the
original owning _company_.

~~~
Svekax
What is your point?

~~~
mcphage
Well, you asked:

> I wonder if Take-Two Interactive considered the morality of acquiring a
> company that paid slave wages.

But they _didn 't_ acquire the company.

------
pawadu
Whats next? Dwarf Fortress acquired by EA?

~~~
intended
I know The world has been odd for the past year, but I assure you that we
aren't in the EA buys DF time line.

We may be in the DF eats EA timeline though.

Edit: I wonder what the Adams brothers would do with "fuck you" money

~~~
eduren
>I wonder what the Adams brothers would do with "fuck you" money

If EA bought Dwarf Fortress then they would move onto their next game:

"Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter III: Simulation Hypothesis"

Some say we already live within it.

------
tangue
I hope they won't fuck up the game. As a side note I didn't suspect there was
that much people working on this game.

~~~
LoSboccacc
is this por guy getting downvoted for giving a reality check?

have you noticed in the last six month they managed to add just
internationalization and the console port didn't move an inch ahead with
people totally unable to enjoy the game since release because of the save
corruption?

right now there are only newbs and modders left in that team, none of the core
team is there and for the most part they're barely getting by in maintenance
mode. notice how few of the long standing issue ever got resolved?

btw, asking some real question here, what will be of this now?
[http://archive.is/aPSX7/image](http://archive.is/aPSX7/image)

~~~
Analemma_
The core team left because Squad was a terrible place to work, hence the
dismal development pace. The optimism in this thread stems from the fact that
Take-Two will hopefully be better and attract talent back to the team.

------
Graham24
I await the release of Grand Theft Planet.

~~~
TeMPOraL
YouTube delivers:

[https://youtu.be/zszJRsGzo9A?t=124](https://youtu.be/zszJRsGzo9A?t=124)

(also good from the very beginning, though content warning: dank themes)

------
cydonian_monk
Hopefully this means things will "improve" without turning the community into
a sterile, lifeless environmemt, but we'll see. Maybe not much changes, maybe
they take the IP and run with it. Who knows.

Must say it was weird to stumble on this news here on HN first instead of on
the KSP forum (where admitedly it was posted first); guess it's been a busy
morning and I just missed it.

~~~
itgoon
Mostly, I hope they mostly improve the game. Not remake it, re-think it, re-
purposed. Just clean it up, make some UI improvements.

If I were to make a big change, it would be to add a stand-alone server. Not
necessarily multi-player, but just something I can leave running and attach
to. I have an itch for real-time missions (days and weeks long), plus I'd like
to run multiple scenarios at once.

I guess what I'm saying is I hope Take-Two doesn't lose the _spirit_ of the
game. It has let us ground-bound wanna-be rocket scientists the opportunity to
play.

~~~
cydonian_monk
Agreed.

A stand-alone server would also be great for those of us that run the game
with a different integrator (such as Principia for n-body physics). I too like
real-time missions, at least short duration ones, and recently flew Vostok 1
in near real time (though less successfully).

------
cosinetau
Congrats KSP team! Hope this next adventure is unlike my adventures with Jeb.

~~~
intoverflow2
Read up on the reality of the KSP team. It's not pretty.

~~~
cosinetau
Assumptions outside of scientific contexts also aren't pretty.

------
cr0sh
I have a good (bad) feeling that this change will likely mean that, sooner or
later, Linux support will be dropped.

/bet me it won't...

~~~
omg_ketchup
Isn't Linux becoming more and more compatible with modern games/development?

~~~
Doxin
The problem isn't, and has never been, linux being compatible with games or
with their development. The problem is game developers not making their game
compatible with linux.

------
renega3
I stopped playing KSP due to the microstutter issue (ostensibly due the to
garbage collector) fixing that would make the game playable again.

~~~
lukeduff
It's fixed for the most part as of 1.2. There also the MemGraph mod that
allows you to give more memory to the game so the GC doesn't fire off as much.

~~~
renega3
I ran into it post 1.2. I can try the MemGraph mod though.

------
tdsamardzhiev
Well, out of the big gaming companies, Take Two is the best one to get
acquired by. Let's see where that leads.

------
dschuetz
I'm just glad that Microsoft didn't get this one. I bought it within the early
access period, so I actively contributed to the development. I hope/expect to
see some franchise spin-offs with the Kermans <3

------
codezero
I've had so much trouble playing the port on console. I know it was made by a
contractor but ugh. I want to love this game but it's total masochism to play
on console right now. Hopefully this leads to something good.

~~~
amiga-workbench
Playing it with a controller must be like pulling teeth! KSP isnt really that
entertaining for me without mods to expand the gameplay either.

~~~
codezero
It's actually fun enough to suffer quite a bit, but yeah, watching people with
mods on PC makes me very very jealous!

------
koiz
It seemed something was up when a few devs went to valve.

------
erikb
Why do they always say "nothing will change"? Of course things will change.
That why someone acquired them, to change something.

And why do they always say the acquisition is good for the community? I count
meself to the community, yet I didn't receive any six to ten digit payouts
from the sale. Why should it be exciting for me?

------
cdrark
Come on co-op mode!

------
wexxx
this is awesome!

