I forgot to mention something: A couple of weeks ago, model rocket builder Estes released new Kerbal themed models. This marketing maneuver was unknown to the former KSP2 team members I spoke to. So I guess that's already an example of this "make the most out of the license by selling what you can" I allude to in the video.
Seems unlikely that it was a deal made by Haveli, the timing is just too tight to get a physical product into production in that short span of time, seems more likely it was either by T2 or handled entirely through PD, with little to no involvment by either T2 or Haveli. Plus a small marketing deal would not have been their first priority, that would be setting up their new publisher.
@@LeonNogal Try tying your shoes while wearing glasses that only let you see 5cm in front of you. This is similar to trying to do something productive under an equity firm, as they don't care what happens next financial quarter
At this point, Kitten is the only real viable path forward. Trying to reuse the KSP1 or 2 code base is just going to be going back to the same problems that we've had all along. Hack on top of hack to try to build a 3D space sim in a game engine not designed for it.
Every time I mention this I get told "iT's NOt tHe eNGiNe" Uh... yea, it is absolutely is the engine. I'm very familiar with Unity. It's general purpose, and KSP isn't.
@@G4M5T3R you're absolutely right. yes, technically unity can be modified and extended to do this kind of game... but it certainly isn't out of the box and KSA is about the only company that seems to be approaching this from the extremely specific technical challenges necessary to overcome to do a game like this properly.
@@G4M5T3RI’m not saying you’re wrong because I don’t know the first thing about game design but logically the fact that KSP1 exists and is amazing is quite literally proof that Unity can be successfully and even dare I say wonderfully adapted to support a space game. I’ve heard of some of the limitations but your statement reads like KSP1 doesn’t exist or matter
Yeah, but ksp2 had a lot of well designed parts (engines), planets, recource systems and game mechanics. Which would probably be very cool if implemented into a better engine
I love your rant on the current state of journalism. The idea commercialized news was scary 15 years ago. Now it’s just created the horrible world we live in today. That being said, where do you trust to get your news? There are so few outlets that don’t jump through these hoops that it is difficult to find reliable, unbiased, consistent news sources for any field.
Many media outlets use Associated Press, Reuters and other news agencies as their primary source or jumping off point for writing their stories. These independent news agencies don't care about ad revenue. Their business model relies on other means of income, so there is no incentive to generate outrage or clickfarming etc. They also do not publish opinion pieces, just reports. Which makes it oftentimes very dull to read. Dull, but factual. So you might want to start there.
@@ShadowZone Just expanding on that, any serious new outlet would've opened with "Bloomberg reported" somewhere in the first paragraph, which lets you actually consider the credibility of that source. I'd argue Bloomberg is mediocre to poor as news goes; they've had way more than their fair share or high profile technology scoops that are misleading or outright fiction.
You can check out Media Bias Fact Check and Wikipedia's Reliable Sources/Perennial Sources list to check the bias and trustworthiness of many common outlets.
The only real alternative to "commercialized" news is state-owned/controlled news. The problem is that the majority of people seem all too willing to ignore news they don't like in favor of "news" that they do like. Nobody cares about the truth when someone out there is telling them exactly what they want to hear, and how justified their beliefs are, regardless of reality.
to be perfectly honest... i somewhat expected to hear an ad for Ground News somewhere in the vid. I did not, which actually made me glad. not because i don't like ads about it, it's just because shadowzone was really honestly mad about the unprofessionel work which was delivered by said media outlets. that implies he is actually considering his "job" the way it should be. you did earn my atmost respect shadowzone
Back in my journo days each day one staff member was tasked with doing the "issue review", basically reading that day's paper and sending feedback on it to everyone in the office. The assignment was to not hold back criticism - in a respectful manner of course. I always enjoyed that as you might have already guessed ;)
@@ShadowZone As you well know, the problem is, and always has been, that good journalism is usually not good business. Modern internet advertising and AI-driven slop have just made it worse. Some indie journalists who have nothing to stand on but their morals and reputation do good work, but the more profit becomes a motive, the worse it gets. Non-profit journalism outfits are generally better. Not perfect, but better. As a well known example in the anglosphere, the BBC, or the CBC for a less famous Canadian example, are FAR from perfect in MANY ways. But every time I am forced to watch American news channels, I cringe. I might even be watching the one whose politics lines up with mine, but the fact that they have a known and deliberate slant, and don't even TRY to eliminate it makes me despair. The fact that bias in journalism is something that can never be completely eliminated is not a reason to give up trying. It is something that you will eternally fight against both within the journalism trade and by education of the public (I mean, isn't this the kind of stuff you are supposed to learn in secondary school?). The eternal struggle is necessary for a healthy society, but huge swathes of the world seem to have abandoned it, and that is probably one of the fundamental ills of the world today.
@@ShadowZone that sounds like a really great and healthy work environment, i can see the appeal for wanting to work in journalism for hopes of an environment like that. i hope someday we can be free of all this hyperbole and blatant misinfo. thanks for your thoughts on it, it was really insightful!
2:22 "private equity firm". RIP KSP, we loved you. That employee page is an AI fiction, not one of those people exists I'll bet. The real people are going to slice and dice until there's nothing left, just as you say in the video.
I'm worried abut Kitten Space program, because there no way it can be fun if I EVA from a suborbital ship and all my explorers still land on their feet. What fun is that?
The moment I knew it was private equity my hopes (which I though were already at its lowest) plummeted. Also, you are so right about journalism. I avoid 90% of clickbait titles, but for the 10% I actually fall for, I almost always find out have no actual content. In fact I learnt about the new owners some days ago, and I thougt "ShadowZone has not released a video about it? The man must be doing his homework." And he was. Thank you, ShadowZone.
That RPS article wasn't news, it was a gossip column. Thanks for calling it out. KSP2 isn't being resurrected, a private equity firm saw they could get some assets at a distressed price and had the liquidity to hold onto them while seeking to flip them at a profit, that's all. To maximise their returns they snapped up some veteran industry staff on the publishing side, which are the people best placed to know the value of those assets and who might be interesting in buying them, probably also at a distressed hiring price because of the Annapurna fallout. Honestly it's a rare case of private equity appearing to do exactly what it's supposed to do by salvaging from the wreckage rather than causing the wreckage themselves. No mention is made of KSP2, only of the franchise. They're probably just going to keep it running for mostly passive income from the first game, and do nothing else with the franchise unless someone makes them a good enough offer for the IP, and the only likely buyer in town appears to be lukewarm to the idea (which may be a negotiating position, but may also just be truth).
Stopped reading RPS years ago. It wasn't really only ever a blog site with any 'news' being opinion pieces on said news and was fine as that. It started going downhill leading up to the time they were sold to Gamers Network. New writers joining as the original staff drifted away or straight out left impacted the quality. @Ylyrra As you said, it is a rare private equity good news story. Some games will be released rather than canned, the KSP IP might be leveraged for licensing revenue enabling things like the KSP forum to be retained rather than shut down.
Thanks for making a video on this! Ive seen a lot of people confused about who owns what now, this should help make things a bit clearer. Thanks for calling out the media too, the second hand reporting on this was horrendous. I also consider any significant changes to ksp2’s situation anytime soon to be unlikely, but all we can do is wait and see (as usual)
Happy to help, Greg! It's a bit jarring to see what a lot of media have made out of the original Bloomberg source. The author himself says on Bluesky that nobody should get their hopes up since there are zero developers working right now.
Private equity? Say no more, KSP2 is dead, and if you think you see it stumbling around one night, remember that's just a re-animated zombie summoned by one of the soulless warlocks that work at Havarti Investments or whatever the fuck that place calls itself.
@@alexsiemers7898 why? so far, everything theyve done and shown has met the hopes and expectations of pretty much everyone, and they all seem extremely passionate. the path theyre taking to build the game, alone, should be enough evidence to show that the developers truly care.
I think KSP, as an IP, is completely dead in the water. The new owners 95+% chance won’t want to collaborate with Rocketwerkz and KSA since that would mean the IP is out of their control in some way. I’d honestly say if anything the question becomes what happens to the KSP forums if KSA takes over the community.
Agreed, PE want nothing other than ROI on their purchase. Unless RocketWerkz are able to fork up an unreasonable amount of cash that could go on the development of their own game/salaries of their employees they'll never own the IP.
@@MrDoItNice Yes, but if they want ROI on the KSP franchise then they will probably sell it to someone who is willing to do a third part. There is noone buying KSP2 at this point and probably same for KSP1. Saving KSP2 is something I really doubt they will do. They might be investigating what that would mean as an investment, but I guess it's too much. Also many already own it, they will not get money from them. And everyone else should rather be careful. I don't think they specifically target RocketWerkz as a buyer, but it's probable they reach out and talk, at least at some point.
Honestly, the KSP IP might be detrimental to use for a game at this point. The KSP community has always struck me as being very engaged, so I think the vast majority of people familiar with the games are aware of this debacle. But I may be too biased to form an accurate impression
I couldn’t agree more with your critic to “modern” journalism. All the support from an Italian colleague. I write technical and divulgative articles on sustainability and energy and devote hours of research for each piece to be accurate, objective and independent.
i would like to hold a prayer for kerbal space program 1 & 2, all the kerbals we have stranded in low solar orbit for all of eternity, the one kerbal we have all purposely left on Eve in science mode, and also, ksa doesn't get a sequel and history repeat.
Came for the KSP news, stayed for the honest criticism of modern "journalism" and media landscape. Always a pleasure to watch your videos. Edit: By the way, you mentioned your native tongue isn't English. What is your native, language? Is it to personal to ask? If so, totally fine.
The only real hope for Kerbal is if the IP was split off and sold/licensed separately. On one hand, it seems unlikely because the whole situation is very complex and the firm that now owns it is probably going to put their resources into other properties. On the other hand, I'm not sure how they can make any money off of the IP in the current situation at all. Maybe they aren't planning to, but maybe someone comes along and makes them an offer that's better than "we own it but are ignoring it" and does something. Unfortunately, I doubt that would be the KSA folks since they probably couldn't afford it and seem uncertain to the value. Personally, I think the value is very real there and it would be worth going after. But if that's not how they see it, that's something of a dead end. All in all, this report really didn't add anything new but created a lot of false hype. We knew it was sold to some private equity nonsense and would probably never see the light of day already, the only new information is the name of the firm. The rest is a weird ball of kind of irrelevant (to KSP) and supposition that grew into sensation because headlines need clicks.
Is it weird that my thought on this video was - hey! I want to click this and find out what the real scoop is on the random hype that I haven't actually seen since I can't stand click bait sites! Trust for journalism is an asset!
This reminds me of when a Private Equity Firm bought SOE and everyone thought development would increase. But instantly axed EQ Next/Landmark. Yes they have developed more expansions for EQ/2, but that helps their return-on-investment. If they can't make a lot of money quickly, it won't happen.
I've gotta ask, as private equity firms have money making in mind, always. What value is the Kerbal IP to them? There generating precisely nothing from it. No one is buying, no-one is going to be buying it given it being review bombed into oblivion. You can't sell a product, and generate revenue on something no-one wants, and the *only* way to make people want it is to bloody finish it. So I hope they got a mega, bargain basement price for their investment. Like going out and putting money down on a truck (an actual delivery truck, not a pickup) whilst having nothing to ship. You're just wasting your funding buying a truck at that point. Did Take Two offer it so someone for three dollars or something?
if they are smart, they do simoly wait for ksa to mature, and sign a contract to the "k" goes from being kittens to being kerbals. (if the game is good that is). and then, they diversify the IP by outsourcing more games in the kerbal universe to other studios. they can try and sell then merch (lego, etc...) and even try to make a minion-like movie.
You're missing the bigger picture... this story isn't about KSP. This story is a private equity firm buying Private Division's assets. What they will do is cherry pick the shiniest most resellable items, turn a profit on them, and throw the rest in a box in the garage to maybe sell at a yard sale of their own in ten years time if it's worth the effort. They didn't buy the job lot of Private Division's assets for KSP2, they bought it for the other stuff. So not getting a return on KSP2 is irrelevant to them: that was never the point. Your analogy is more like they bought a refrigerated truck when they don't have frozen goods to ship... but they didn't buy the truck "because it was refrigerated", they bought it because it was the cheapest truck, so they don't care that they're not getting value out of the refrigeration unit, it can move other cargo just fine too.
You should look up the guy that the Pulitzer Prize is named after and what he did for Journalism. I'll quote Grandma Sophie in _Howl's Moving Castle:_ "Only idiots believe what they read in the newspaper." For anyone who can't be bothered to look him up on Wikipedia: He revolutionized journalism by inventing the modern hyperbolistic newspaper headline, reducing factuality in favour of sensationalism in all his newspapers, and decreasing the amount of factual content in order to increase the amount of comic strips in his papers. He made so much money he bought up paper after paper, became the first Rupert Murdoch of his day, and quickly had more money than he knew what to do with. Before John Pulitzer, newspapers were mostly published by political organizations and parties to put out factual information that supported their party lines. He turned them into a sensational big dollar mega industry that was primarily focused on capturing people's attention.
I am very excited about the project Kitten Space Project, the only think that I do not like too much, is the idea to use kittens as astronauts. It's only a question of taste, I know, but I would have preferred to have realistic humans as astronauts or gobelins, but kittens?!?
They've been repeatedly clear that kittens are a placeholder. They're being cagey about what they're a placeholder for, probably because they're waiting for the dust to settle on the Kerbal IP before they decide what to do. The last thing they'll want is to invest time and money in developing a brand and then finding that the Kerbal IP was within their price range, or to imply that they're holding out for the Kerbal IP and thus cause the asking price to rise, or to develop a new IP that's too close to the Kerbal IP if it ends up owned by someone litigious. So it's kittens for the foreseeable future. As a placeholder.
Goblin Space Program has a ring to it...they are green, they are known to build barely functional contraptions, and they are closely linked to explosives 😅
Your journalistic professionalism and sharing of knowledge is greatly appreciated. It's an ironic example of a child's game where you whisper a word to the person next to you and they pass it down. By the end, the word isn't evencl close. Seems media outlets never played that game as a child because that's what they are doing to the "news" they "report" its just recycling what others said but less accurately.
Plus, the moment I hear "Private Equity Firm", I know all hopes are out of the window. I'd like to be proven wrong but majority of PEFs are behind so many issues all over the place.
Great video! Interestingly, despite greatly appreciating the actual video topic, i ended up loving the second section where you talked about the state of today's journalism! I do agree with everything you said, and it's nice that you still have integrity even in today's media landscape.
Thanks for covering this. I've seen a couple of titles "reporting" this, but the titles all looked like click-bait. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck guess what: It's a duck. So I didn't click on any of them. I do trust the info coming from this channel, though.
honestly i dont want ksp to come anywhere near ksa, given how awful the ksp 2 situation was for reputation and frankly so I can forget about the nightmare ksp snowballed into xd
Some weird thing going on with my audio sometimes. Levels were never even close to clipping but it still sounds as if it does, as you said. Might be the mic itself being broken? I am a bit stumped right now.
Hard to say. I suspect RUclips does odd things to the audio sometimes. There is a button on some RUclips clients to normalise the audio ie stop the loud bits being too loud and the soft bits being too soft.
It's unfortunate that it's unlikely KSA becomes KSP3. Because while KSA looks incredibly promising from the technical point of view, it seems very unlikely they can make it as appealing as KSP, whose design (kerbal and universe in general) was perfect. I honestly don't think the kitten idea is that good. I hope I'm wrong.
@@person4579 @person4579 I don't think so. In a previous video from ShadowZone (I think) there were an interview of KSA's editor CEO and he was supporting the name/concept. While he said that was not definitive he clearly stated it was a choice they made after internal debates and it implied it was not just a placeholder. Also m main point is not that it is especially bad or I have reason to distrust them, just kerbals are especially great and a big part of the appeal of KSP, a part that cannot be overstated. The design of the characters, their behavior, the jokes, the video, the artwork, everything. All this is extremely valuable and probably very difficult to equal, for a small company that is not specialized in this type of stuff, without directly copy it.
Like Shadow said, the kerbal franchise should be discounted. Choosing kittens will turn people off who don't like cats, like myself. Buy the Kerbal rights cheap and increase customer base
I appreciate the rant on journalism. I agree... it is far too exhausting to try to determine what an article is trying to sell me or make me feel when I am just trying to get the news.
There's still a chance that the private equity firm bought Private Division just to divide it and sell individual IPs for profit. It happens fairly often. So someone might still buy the IP.
The only hope for Kerbals is, that we now know you owns it. They want money, if some one gives them enough, this one can give the Kerbals to KSA. But the likelyhood is not very high IMHO.
So, essentially, it went from one holding firm who only owned the IP because they thought it would help them maximize profits over all else, to... another holding firm who only bought the IP because they thought it would help them maximize profits over all else. And here I was hoping 2024 was the beginning of the end for investor-driven game development. :/
While I completely agree with your criticism of the sloppy journalism, mentioning only former members of a publishing company without any hint of developers, and reminder that the new owers being an investment firm that wants to maximize ROI means the renewed development for KSP 2 is not as likely as many seen to believe; I do think that this news appreciably increases the chance (i.e. going from 5% to +25%) of either KSP 2 being finished, or a new sequel to KSP eventually being developed. Sure, the new owners will want to focus on selling the existing or near complete games, especially immediately. However, even in late stage capitalism, sometimes investment firms actually make medium to long-term investments (crazy idea, I know😜), if they think there will be enough of an profit in it. So I conclude based on what little we know, there is now at least a small, but still realistic, chance that we will see some sort of sequel to KSP worthy of the name. Also, as you pointed out the possibility of some sort of collaboration with the Kitten Space Agency developers is basically nil. As they are quite clear they want to self-publish their game, and really at this point who could blame them?
"If you are a journalist and you are reporting the news" then you boss will be happy if your articles draw in a lot of readers and customers and if you create them fast and in high numbers. Job ethics has never been the most important thing in a free market. BTW a lot is written or filled-in by AI nowadays.
Given the way the mismanaged KSP2 (forcing them to reuse old engine code without being able to speak to the original devs of said code). I am highly skeptical that this will result in anything remotely close to what was promised to us. My attention will stick to KSA
Alternate take... You have a legendary publishing team (that picked and funded critical indie hit after hit, 90%+ reviews) fleeing Annapurna due to heavier oversight from the Money team, which wanted them to migrate into AAA, cross-media productions (and tie IP into the lagging film division). Resisting this, the publishing team started negotiations to spin off from Annapurna (which fell through), during which time they probably got in close contact with private equity. After a failure to spin out, the mass exodus from Annapurna probably followed an alternate path offered by this private equity. Somewhat reasonably, the equity firm seems to be trying to unite a successful and tested (but neglected) indie publishing team with some of the most treasured (but neglected) IP that also collapsed due to poor oversight from other large corporate publishers - probably hoping that each would amplify the value of the other. I don't think the fact that they are private equity means this is a bad idea. The endgame is probably to spin off a new publisher with a track record of revitalizing treasured IP, demonstrated by their proven management of creative projects. The proof will be in the pudding, so I won't judge yet.
Finally…someone did their homework. Thank you! I’m am curious if the IP for KSP could be sold. I would think the value has diminished quite a bit and perhaps they could profit simply by selling the name off to someone else.
If you priced the Kerbal IP appropriately for its current value, sure -- but that value is likely *negative*, due to the costs associated with resolving the KSP2 situation. Finish the project? Immensely expensive, because you have to start with an all new dev team. Oh, and a significant portion of the userbase has *already* paid for the game, revenue that you will never see. Cancel it? If you don't offer refunds to all KSP2 buyers you will generate *even more* ill will from the current Kerbal fanbase. I don't see a third option, and in the absence of such an option KSP2 is a guaranteed money loser. Paying even $10 for the Kerbal license is _far_ more than it is objectively worth -- and a private equity firm is going to demand $1 M or more.
Your rhetoric on opinion pieces vs news reporting is really true about all forms of news media, I’d love for everyone with strong political opinions to have the ability to see the flaws in modern journalism that you outlined in this video. Everyone would be a little wiser if they learned the lesson you’ve just explained
At this point, I have utmost confidence in continuing my KSP 1 experience and finally reaching Jool because it's clear there only ever will be, KSP 1. 🚀 That said, KSP 1 with graphics mods is amazing, and surprisingly optimized!
Thank you for your honest report on KSP. It makes us all sad to see a good game go die but there were no guarantees amd kitten space agency seems like the spiritual successor in terms of ideas and hopefully gameplay too.
so then what _does_ this company want KSP for? if their goal is purely to make money from it, _how_ could they do that? i doubt that just the sale of the 2 games in their current state and some merch would be enough to make up for their purchase unless they got it very cheap?
My guess is they wanted the Private Division property. KSP still sells. KSP2 Early Access is still being sold on Steam! Tales of the Shire is due to release in a month or two and looks great.
That's the entire point of the rant about the articles being misleading wishful thinking. The company didn't particularly want KSP, they wanted the other stuff. KSP came bundled with it. They'll just keep making whatever earnings they can from the original game by parking it on the desk of one of the former publishing staff who will "manage" it and probably another 10 games similarly parked by keeping the store pages up to date and whatever other admin is needed. They'll finish off whatever needs doing on the remaining titles that were inches from launch (Tales of the Shire basically) and get them out the door. And they'll shop around for buyers for any of the IP, but KSP only has one potential buyer who would actually do anything with it, and they're sending signals that they don't want it... at least under the terms they'll have heard via the grapevine. Basically, making any money at all from KSP is probably just going to be considered a windfall, and only pursued if the cost of getting that windfall is good return on the cost of making the deal happen.
I agree with you that it shouldn't continue to be sold, but nobody should get a refund, EA means bought as seen, whoever ignored all the red flags and bought the thing has only themselves to blame and should just learn the lesson.
Wow, a 16 minute ad for GroundNews without even mentioning them. Well done! :p /s More seriously though, great video as always. Unfortunately 90% of online 'news' is nothing more than clickbait to sell ads. In Australia at least, even most of (non-online) 'mainstream' media is incredibly biased. People wonder why politicians/governments are becoming so ineffective yet at they same time they vote for whoever can up with the best 5 or less word slogans and don't vote for anyone proposing any form of meaningful change as the other side/s tell them there is a (usually very small) possibility you might be worse off.
My hope is that they fix the game into a stable state, and then maybe slowly add new features / parts. I dont wanna get my hopes up again 😭 I have a feeling they are going to just sell kerbal plushies and shirts
I highly doubt this company will touch the KSP 2 code. Honestly the absolutely best thing they could possibly be expected to do, is have enough self-respect to take down the Steam listing. They won't, but it would be the right thing to do and wouldn't require any actual effort.
@@Lord_zeel They might delist it on Steam just because they're now the obvious point of liability for it continuing to be listed, and PE firms don't like complications like that.
Although take 2 would never sell the ksp IP, it sounds like this new company doesn’t really care about it and may be open to an offer. The ksp models definitely sound like a “well, we own it. might as well do something”
yeah well, what can I say... I have an opinion and I am not bringing the news. But when some company buys the property of another company you will have to know what is the complete deal of buying the property. I can recall certain incidents that the source code wasn't a part of the property (homeworld cataclysm is one of them). Therefor you only by the final product and its IP. Meaning, no other company can use that IP because it is owned by a different company. Even if the source code has been obtained, and you would find a new software developer studio to continue to work on it, first thing that needs to be done is 'what is all this code doing'. In my case and in my defence, this takes months to complete just to found out how things are working under the hood. This depends on how well things are documented (and is the documentation also a part of the deal). So by the time you can get started with re-developing a project this would take months just to get started. Because you also need to have the proper talent to even work on it. This is no rocket science (I made a pun) to make a statement like this. Because simply put codebase a and codebase b often work totally different. Ow, and you need to have some proper knowledge about the engine of the game... but they fired everyone... so there is that part.
6:59 The problem is: *how* are they going to make it sell without any code? That's an impossible task. They only way to make the game sell well would be to fix the bugs and add the features that are missing.
Speaking of misleading games journalism, how much did Haveli buy Private Divisions for? And how much does KSP represent of that amount? Because if they are looking for a quick return on investment...crowdfunding, anyone?
I feel like this is the only hope. Not crowdfunding necessarily, but if KSP just came in the bundle with other stuff they wanted there would be a chance that someone who did want to do something with it could buy it because money is money. It doesn't seem like an asset they can really use outside of merchandising, and at the moment the property has really bad reputation so probably not a lot of people looking to buy stuff. But they might not want to bother splitting it off, and there may not be anyone willing to make the purchase.
The best case scenario is the equity firm sell KSP's IP to RocketWerkz, and Dean Hall reconsiders the value of the IP. The only future for KSP is a blank slate in the hands of a developer trusted by the community, which is KSA. Any attempts outside of KSA are basically necromancy.
The KSA developers would be foolish if they didn't try buying the rights to the Kerbals. Many men playing a complex space game will not find kittens cute, but rather annoying. They'll have broader appeal with kerbals
They'd be foolish to try to buy the IP when the private equity company is going to try to milk them for as much money as possible. Far better to pretend you don't care and that you have other options and let the PE company come to you trying to sell. Or at least wait until it's obvious that you're the only people in town willing to buy at any price and that it's not a seller's market. Both companies know this of course.
rocketwertz would be foolish to waste a ton of budget on the IP before even having a successful game, rather than allocating it all to development and wages. and seeing as the game isnt in good hands at all, buying the ip wouldnt be easy or cheap
Okay, 3 minutes into the video time for my own insanity. Sounds to me like ksp has been bought by what amounts to a holding company rather than developers, there is a small chance they might hire some people to make a ksp game, and a microscopic chance they will hire someone to finish of ksp 2. But the 90 something percent chance is that what they will do is nothing, just sit there and accept the money from people buying compies of ksp and ksp2. Eventually they will make their money back and sell it off to someone else at dubble the price they paid for it. In short a get richer quick scheme.
Best case scenario the IP will be sold or leased to a now developer to create another 70€ game. But right now the Kerbal IP is in the dust, and there is nothing to stop a developer to create another space game with cats, dogs, or other funny characters without paying royalties
I forgot to mention something: A couple of weeks ago, model rocket builder Estes released new Kerbal themed models. This marketing maneuver was unknown to the former KSP2 team members I spoke to. So I guess that's already an example of this "make the most out of the license by selling what you can" I allude to in the video.
This is the only news i have heard lol the rest is not news at all!
Seems unlikely that it was a deal made by Haveli, the timing is just too tight to get a physical product into production in that short span of time, seems more likely it was either by T2 or handled entirely through PD, with little to no involvment by either T2 or Haveli.
Plus a small marketing deal would not have been their first priority, that would be setting up their new publisher.
"I wouldn't say saved.. more like under new management"
this is the best quote to choose for this lmao
Dang, I wasn't aware of this yet even though I've seen the movie ages ago! That would have been an excellent clip to put in there somewhere.
Me loves a good megamind reference
Argh, beat me to it!
oh hi dan
Uh oh. The second I heard "private equity firm" I thought "Oooooooooooh we're so cooked"
same, i heard "private equity firm" and knew immediately it fucks it over.
Why tho?
@@LeonNogalSee current healthcare. Also see any dying once popular retail chain
@@LeonNogal because private equity firms care nothing about the community and all about straight profit
@@LeonNogal Try tying your shoes while wearing glasses that only let you see 5cm in front of you. This is similar to trying to do something productive under an equity firm, as they don't care what happens next financial quarter
At this point, Kitten is the only real viable path forward. Trying to reuse the KSP1 or 2 code base is just going to be going back to the same problems that we've had all along. Hack on top of hack to try to build a 3D space sim in a game engine not designed for it.
Every time I mention this I get told "iT's NOt tHe eNGiNe" Uh... yea, it is absolutely is the engine. I'm very familiar with Unity. It's general purpose, and KSP isn't.
@@G4M5T3R you're absolutely right.
yes, technically unity can be modified and extended to do this kind of game... but it certainly isn't out of the box and KSA is about the only company that seems to be approaching this from the extremely specific technical challenges necessary to overcome to do a game like this properly.
@@G4M5T3RI’m not saying you’re wrong because I don’t know the first thing about game design but logically the fact that KSP1 exists and is amazing is quite literally proof that Unity can be successfully and even dare I say wonderfully adapted to support a space game. I’ve heard of some of the limitations but your statement reads like KSP1 doesn’t exist or matter
Yeah, but ksp2 had a lot of well designed parts (engines), planets, recource systems and game mechanics. Which would probably be very cool if implemented into a better engine
Juno new origins!!
"Take 2 no longer owns KSP"
:D
"Private equity firm"
:CCCCC
I saw LOTR Farming game and I knew that KSP was going to be on shaky grounds. Expect them to milk the sh*t out of the ip.
Best case scenario: they try to flip the IP for profit.
I love your rant on the current state of journalism. The idea commercialized news was scary 15 years ago. Now it’s just created the horrible world we live in today. That being said, where do you trust to get your news? There are so few outlets that don’t jump through these hoops that it is difficult to find reliable, unbiased, consistent news sources for any field.
Many media outlets use Associated Press, Reuters and other news agencies as their primary source or jumping off point for writing their stories. These independent news agencies don't care about ad revenue. Their business model relies on other means of income, so there is no incentive to generate outrage or clickfarming etc. They also do not publish opinion pieces, just reports. Which makes it oftentimes very dull to read. Dull, but factual. So you might want to start there.
Yep. I dropped RPS over 10 years ago, when it became a money pit chasing investment, instead a a review, journo or just anything of value.
@@ShadowZone Just expanding on that, any serious new outlet would've opened with "Bloomberg reported" somewhere in the first paragraph, which lets you actually consider the credibility of that source. I'd argue Bloomberg is mediocre to poor as news goes; they've had way more than their fair share or high profile technology scoops that are misleading or outright fiction.
You can check out Media Bias Fact Check and Wikipedia's Reliable Sources/Perennial Sources list to check the bias and trustworthiness of many common outlets.
The only real alternative to "commercialized" news is state-owned/controlled news. The problem is that the majority of people seem all too willing to ignore news they don't like in favor of "news" that they do like. Nobody cares about the truth when someone out there is telling them exactly what they want to hear, and how justified their beliefs are, regardless of reality.
to be perfectly honest... i somewhat expected to hear an ad for Ground News somewhere in the vid. I did not, which actually made me glad. not because i don't like ads about it, it's just because shadowzone was really honestly mad about the unprofessionel work which was delivered by said media outlets. that implies he is actually considering his "job" the way it should be. you did earn my atmost respect shadowzone
utmost*
/r/boneappletea
I see so many ground news ads I'm about ready to uninstall the app feom frustration.
I wish we'd let KSP2 die already. Its time to support KSA since all the real people who built and supported KSP are there.
KSA isn't out yet, and it'll be a long while until it's in any reasonably playable state.
That's a very good point.
So they're gonna refund everyone who bought KSP2, right?
@@joj. Ahahaha.
Yes, KSP IS DEAD! LONG LIVE KSA!
Mods are still being written and maintained for KSP
except KSO and other abandoned mods right
@@JackalRacingNetwork Like what? If you mean KSO = Kerbin Orbital Shuttle, it's too old, but there is the Shuttle Orbiter Construction Kit
thank you linuxgurugamer youre a titan of ksp. We all appreciate you
Thank you very much ❤️🌌
@@sonkefh But youre not linuxgurugamer 🤨
RUclips has broken me. When you started analyzing the news coverage in the last segment, I fully expected a Ground News plug was coming.
Hahaha, you're right! Well, since RUclips isn't my main source of income (far from it), I haven't even thought about that.
This piece was much better without the add. Well done and well said
Should I count myself lucky that I've never heard of Ground News? I use SponsorBlock religiously.
I love your critical analysis of the writing of the articles
Back in my journo days each day one staff member was tasked with doing the "issue review", basically reading that day's paper and sending feedback on it to everyone in the office. The assignment was to not hold back criticism - in a respectful manner of course. I always enjoyed that as you might have already guessed ;)
@@ShadowZone As you well know, the problem is, and always has been, that good journalism is usually not good business. Modern internet advertising and AI-driven slop have just made it worse.
Some indie journalists who have nothing to stand on but their morals and reputation do good work, but the more profit becomes a motive, the worse it gets. Non-profit journalism outfits are generally better. Not perfect, but better. As a well known example in the anglosphere, the BBC, or the CBC for a less famous Canadian example, are FAR from perfect in MANY ways. But every time I am forced to watch American news channels, I cringe. I might even be watching the one whose politics lines up with mine, but the fact that they have a known and deliberate slant, and don't even TRY to eliminate it makes me despair.
The fact that bias in journalism is something that can never be completely eliminated is not a reason to give up trying. It is something that you will eternally fight against both within the journalism trade and by education of the public (I mean, isn't this the kind of stuff you are supposed to learn in secondary school?). The eternal struggle is necessary for a healthy society, but huge swathes of the world seem to have abandoned it, and that is probably one of the fundamental ills of the world today.
@@ShadowZone that sounds like a really great and healthy work environment, i can see the appeal for wanting to work in journalism for hopes of an environment like that. i hope someday we can be free of all this hyperbole and blatant misinfo. thanks for your thoughts on it, it was really insightful!
2:22 "private equity firm". RIP KSP, we loved you. That employee page is an AI fiction, not one of those people exists I'll bet. The real people are going to slice and dice until there's nothing left, just as you say in the video.
I'm worried abut Kitten Space program, because there no way it can be fun if I EVA from a suborbital ship and all my explorers still land on their feet. What fun is that?
It doesn’t matter if u land on your feet at terminal velocity xD
Just wait for the modders to introduce bread with jam - backpacks.
The moment I knew it was private equity my hopes (which I though were already at its lowest) plummeted. Also, you are so right about journalism. I avoid 90% of clickbait titles, but for the 10% I actually fall for, I almost always find out have no actual content. In fact I learnt about the new owners some days ago, and I thougt "ShadowZone has not released a video about it? The man must be doing his homework." And he was. Thank you, ShadowZone.
That RPS article wasn't news, it was a gossip column. Thanks for calling it out. KSP2 isn't being resurrected, a private equity firm saw they could get some assets at a distressed price and had the liquidity to hold onto them while seeking to flip them at a profit, that's all. To maximise their returns they snapped up some veteran industry staff on the publishing side, which are the people best placed to know the value of those assets and who might be interesting in buying them, probably also at a distressed hiring price because of the Annapurna fallout.
Honestly it's a rare case of private equity appearing to do exactly what it's supposed to do by salvaging from the wreckage rather than causing the wreckage themselves.
No mention is made of KSP2, only of the franchise. They're probably just going to keep it running for mostly passive income from the first game, and do nothing else with the franchise unless someone makes them a good enough offer for the IP, and the only likely buyer in town appears to be lukewarm to the idea (which may be a negotiating position, but may also just be truth).
Stopped reading RPS years ago. It wasn't really only ever a blog site with any 'news' being opinion pieces on said news and was fine as that. It started going downhill leading up to the time they were sold to Gamers Network. New writers joining as the original staff drifted away or straight out left impacted the quality.
@Ylyrra As you said, it is a rare private equity good news story. Some games will be released rather than canned, the KSP IP might be leveraged for licensing revenue enabling things like the KSP forum to be retained rather than shut down.
Thanks for making a video on this! Ive seen a lot of people confused about who owns what now, this should help make things a bit clearer. Thanks for calling out the media too, the second hand reporting on this was horrendous.
I also consider any significant changes to ksp2’s situation anytime soon to be unlikely, but all we can do is wait and see (as usual)
Hi Geg!
Happy to help, Greg! It's a bit jarring to see what a lot of media have made out of the original Bloomberg source. The author himself says on Bluesky that nobody should get their hopes up since there are zero developers working right now.
Hi geg :)
Private equity? Say no more, KSP2 is dead, and if you think you see it stumbling around one night, remember that's just a re-animated zombie summoned by one of the soulless warlocks that work at Havarti Investments or whatever the fuck that place calls itself.
They already sold off branding to Estes, the model rocket company, expect to see more Kerbal model rockets.
our trust is in the kittens
You can't go wrong with kittens 🙂
And I have no trust in them
@@alexsiemers7898 why? so far, everything theyve done and shown has met the hopes and expectations of pretty much everyone, and they all seem extremely passionate. the path theyre taking to build the game, alone, should be enough evidence to show that the developers truly care.
I think KSP, as an IP, is completely dead in the water. The new owners 95+% chance won’t want to collaborate with Rocketwerkz and KSA since that would mean the IP is out of their control in some way. I’d honestly say if anything the question becomes what happens to the KSP forums if KSA takes over the community.
Agreed, PE want nothing other than ROI on their purchase. Unless RocketWerkz are able to fork up an unreasonable amount of cash that could go on the development of their own game/salaries of their employees they'll never own the IP.
@@MrDoItNice Yes, but if they want ROI on the KSP franchise then they will probably sell it to someone who is willing to do a third part. There is noone buying KSP2 at this point and probably same for KSP1. Saving KSP2 is something I really doubt they will do. They might be investigating what that would mean as an investment, but I guess it's too much. Also many already own it, they will not get money from them. And everyone else should rather be careful.
I don't think they specifically target RocketWerkz as a buyer, but it's probable they reach out and talk, at least at some point.
Honestly, the KSP IP might be detrimental to use for a game at this point. The KSP community has always struck me as being very engaged, so I think the vast majority of people familiar with the games are aware of this debacle. But I may be too biased to form an accurate impression
I couldn’t agree more with your critic to “modern” journalism. All the support from an Italian colleague. I write technical and divulgative articles on sustainability and energy and devote hours of research for each piece to be accurate, objective and independent.
Grazie mille!
we need to get this guy to 100K subs
Clicking subscribe only gives me options to pay to become a member... wtf is up with that
i would like to hold a prayer for kerbal space program 1 & 2, all the kerbals we have stranded in low solar orbit for all of eternity, the one kerbal we have all purposely left on Eve in science mode, and also, ksa doesn't get a sequel and history repeat.
I don't understand how\why they can continue to sell KSP2 on steam early access with the fake roadmap and no development studio.
Kerbal Scam Program 😭
Came for the KSP news, stayed for the honest criticism of modern "journalism" and media landscape. Always a pleasure to watch your videos.
Edit: By the way, you mentioned your native tongue isn't English. What is your native, language? Is it to personal to ask? If so, totally fine.
The only real hope for Kerbal is if the IP was split off and sold/licensed separately. On one hand, it seems unlikely because the whole situation is very complex and the firm that now owns it is probably going to put their resources into other properties. On the other hand, I'm not sure how they can make any money off of the IP in the current situation at all. Maybe they aren't planning to, but maybe someone comes along and makes them an offer that's better than "we own it but are ignoring it" and does something. Unfortunately, I doubt that would be the KSA folks since they probably couldn't afford it and seem uncertain to the value. Personally, I think the value is very real there and it would be worth going after. But if that's not how they see it, that's something of a dead end. All in all, this report really didn't add anything new but created a lot of false hype. We knew it was sold to some private equity nonsense and would probably never see the light of day already, the only new information is the name of the firm. The rest is a weird ball of kind of irrelevant (to KSP) and supposition that grew into sensation because headlines need clicks.
Is it weird that my thought on this video was - hey! I want to click this and find out what the real scoop is on the random hype that I haven't actually seen since I can't stand click bait sites!
Trust for journalism is an asset!
Totally agree! If we can no longer trust journalism, then this institution can no longer provide the value it until now did to our society.
This reminds me of when a Private Equity Firm bought SOE and everyone thought development would increase. But instantly axed EQ Next/Landmark. Yes they have developed more expansions for EQ/2, but that helps their return-on-investment. If they can't make a lot of money quickly, it won't happen.
and now daybreak has been gutted for parts, PS2 got sold to somebody else, who laid off the dev team two months later
Oh man, that's just like when SOB sold FMJ to ASAP and they immediately canceled IMO in favor of FYI
@@generalrubbish9513 Sony online entertainment, Everquest next, everquest 2
planetside 2
@@generalrubbish9513 you may want to seek medical attention, i think you just had a stroke.
The AI analyst looked like he was AI created.
I've gotta ask, as private equity firms have money making in mind, always.
What value is the Kerbal IP to them? There generating precisely nothing from it. No one is buying, no-one is going to be buying it given it being review bombed into oblivion.
You can't sell a product, and generate revenue on something no-one wants, and the *only* way to make people want it is to bloody finish it. So I hope they got a mega, bargain basement price for their investment.
Like going out and putting money down on a truck (an actual delivery truck, not a pickup) whilst having nothing to ship. You're just wasting your funding buying a truck at that point.
Did Take Two offer it so someone for three dollars or something?
if they are smart, they do simoly wait for ksa to mature, and sign a contract to the "k" goes from being kittens to being kerbals. (if the game is good that is). and then, they diversify the IP by outsourcing more games in the kerbal universe to other studios. they can try and sell then merch (lego, etc...) and even try to make a minion-like movie.
You're missing the bigger picture... this story isn't about KSP. This story is a private equity firm buying Private Division's assets. What they will do is cherry pick the shiniest most resellable items, turn a profit on them, and throw the rest in a box in the garage to maybe sell at a yard sale of their own in ten years time if it's worth the effort.
They didn't buy the job lot of Private Division's assets for KSP2, they bought it for the other stuff. So not getting a return on KSP2 is irrelevant to them: that was never the point.
Your analogy is more like they bought a refrigerated truck when they don't have frozen goods to ship... but they didn't buy the truck "because it was refrigerated", they bought it because it was the cheapest truck, so they don't care that they're not getting value out of the refrigeration unit, it can move other cargo just fine too.
You should look up the guy that the Pulitzer Prize is named after and what he did for Journalism.
I'll quote Grandma Sophie in _Howl's Moving Castle:_ "Only idiots believe what they read in the newspaper."
For anyone who can't be bothered to look him up on Wikipedia: He revolutionized journalism by inventing the modern hyperbolistic newspaper headline, reducing factuality in favour of sensationalism in all his newspapers, and decreasing the amount of factual content in order to increase the amount of comic strips in his papers. He made so much money he bought up paper after paper, became the first Rupert Murdoch of his day, and quickly had more money than he knew what to do with. Before John Pulitzer, newspapers were mostly published by political organizations and parties to put out factual information that supported their party lines. He turned them into a sensational big dollar mega industry that was primarily focused on capturing people's attention.
I am very excited about the project Kitten Space Project, the only think that I do not like too much, is the idea to use kittens as astronauts. It's only a question of taste, I know, but I would have preferred to have realistic humans as astronauts or gobelins, but kittens?!?
That is turning a lot of people off to KSA, I'm in the same boat. Like, kittens? Really?
didn't they say that kittens were a temporary chosing?
They've been repeatedly clear that kittens are a placeholder. They're being cagey about what they're a placeholder for, probably because they're waiting for the dust to settle on the Kerbal IP before they decide what to do. The last thing they'll want is to invest time and money in developing a brand and then finding that the Kerbal IP was within their price range, or to imply that they're holding out for the Kerbal IP and thus cause the asking price to rise, or to develop a new IP that's too close to the Kerbal IP if it ends up owned by someone litigious.
So it's kittens for the foreseeable future. As a placeholder.
Goblin Space Program has a ring to it...they are green, they are known to build barely functional contraptions, and they are closely linked to explosives 😅
@@Ylyrra Thanks for your response! Now it totally make sense to me!
Your journalistic professionalism and sharing of knowledge is greatly appreciated. It's an ironic example of a child's game where you whisper a word to the person next to you and they pass it down. By the end, the word isn't evencl close. Seems media outlets never played that game as a child because that's what they are doing to the "news" they "report" its just recycling what others said but less accurately.
Plus, the moment I hear "Private Equity Firm", I know all hopes are out of the window. I'd like to be proven wrong but majority of PEFs are behind so many issues all over the place.
Great video! Interestingly, despite greatly appreciating the actual video topic, i ended up loving the second section where you talked about the state of today's journalism! I do agree with everything you said, and it's nice that you still have integrity even in today's media landscape.
Thanks for covering this. I've seen a couple of titles "reporting" this, but the titles all looked like click-bait. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck guess what: It's a duck. So I didn't click on any of them. I do trust the info coming from this channel, though.
honestly i dont want ksp to come anywhere near ksa, given how awful the ksp 2 situation was for reputation and frankly so I can forget about the nightmare ksp snowballed into xd
thanks for clearing this up!! seen so much misinformation about this
(fyi, I think your mic is clipping in parts of the video?)
Some weird thing going on with my audio sometimes. Levels were never even close to clipping but it still sounds as if it does, as you said. Might be the mic itself being broken? I am a bit stumped right now.
@@ShadowZone it might be a compression thing? best of luck trying to fix it :)
Hard to say. I suspect RUclips does odd things to the audio sometimes. There is a button on some RUclips clients to normalise the audio ie stop the loud bits being too loud and the soft bits being too soft.
It's unfortunate that it's unlikely KSA becomes KSP3. Because while KSA looks incredibly promising from the technical point of view, it seems very unlikely they can make it as appealing as KSP, whose design (kerbal and universe in general) was perfect. I honestly don't think the kitten idea is that good. I hope I'm wrong.
The kitten idea is only temporary and it might change. Right now they are building the basic foundations so the name is just a placeholder.
preduction: ksa might become kerbal space agency as the ip is lended to rocketwerkz
@@person4579 @person4579 I don't think so. In a previous video from ShadowZone (I think) there were an interview of KSA's editor CEO and he was supporting the name/concept. While he said that was not definitive he clearly stated it was a choice they made after internal debates and it implied it was not just a placeholder. Also m main point is not that it is especially bad or I have reason to distrust them, just kerbals are especially great and a big part of the appeal of KSP, a part that cannot be overstated. The design of the characters, their behavior, the jokes, the video, the artwork, everything. All this is extremely valuable and probably very difficult to equal, for a small company that is not specialized in this type of stuff, without directly copy it.
My bets and hopes are on KSA. Although I hope the "kittens" never make an appearance and something else takes the place of the "K".
For real
Like Shadow said, the kerbal franchise should be discounted. Choosing kittens will turn people off who don't like cats, like myself. Buy the Kerbal rights cheap and increase customer base
I guess you must be a dog person ;)
What's wrong with kittens?
@@dropcat4635 They can be somewhat saccharine. Also, burning kittens has a fair bit of historical baggage.
the letdown i felt when i heard "private equity"
I had been waiting for your take on the news of the reveal.😊 you did not dissappoint
Thanks for staying on this!
I appreciate the rant on journalism. I agree... it is far too exhausting to try to determine what an article is trying to sell me or make me feel when I am just trying to get the news.
4:44 I like how you put it how it is "This is buissness, plain and simple" while still making complex arguments.
I learned more from the second half of this video than my entire mandatory Expository Writing university course.
There's still a chance that the private equity firm bought Private Division just to divide it and sell individual IPs for profit. It happens fairly often. So someone might still buy the IP.
Kerbal has so much potential as edutainment games outside of Space Exploration.
Better chance of the IP being used to create animated Kerbal shorts or short series to try and milk the brand IP
The only hope for Kerbals is, that we now know you owns it. They want money, if some one gives them enough, this one can give the Kerbals to KSA. But the likelyhood is not very high IMHO.
So, essentially, it went from one holding firm who only owned the IP because they thought it would help them maximize profits over all else, to... another holding firm who only bought the IP because they thought it would help them maximize profits over all else. And here I was hoping 2024 was the beginning of the end for investor-driven game development. :/
While I completely agree with your criticism of the sloppy journalism, mentioning only former members of a publishing company without any hint of developers, and reminder that the new owers being an investment firm that wants to maximize ROI means the renewed development for KSP 2 is not as likely as many seen to believe; I do think that this news appreciably increases the chance (i.e. going from 5% to +25%) of either KSP 2 being finished, or a new sequel to KSP eventually being developed. Sure, the new owners will want to focus on selling the existing or near complete games, especially immediately. However, even in late stage capitalism, sometimes investment firms actually make medium to long-term investments (crazy idea, I know😜), if they think there will be enough of an profit in it. So I conclude based on what little we know, there is now at least a small, but still realistic, chance that we will see some sort of sequel to KSP worthy of the name.
Also, as you pointed out the possibility of some sort of collaboration with the Kitten Space Agency developers is basically nil. As they are quite clear they want to self-publish their game, and really at this point who could blame them?
"If you are a journalist and you are reporting the news" then you boss will be happy if your articles draw in a lot of readers and customers and if you create them fast and in high numbers. Job ethics has never been the most important thing in a free market. BTW a lot is written or filled-in by AI nowadays.
Turns out you are an actual journalist. Subscribed.
Look for a new "Expansion Pack" for KSP1 and an update to the last release. This will kickstart the marketing team and spinoff interest.
Thanks for putting words to my frustration with the state of news media.
Quality bashing of mainstream media (or should I say bloggers) 😂
i can only pray that miracle deal happens..
The official media reporting has fallen a long time ago, but not everybody noticed.
Given the way the mismanaged KSP2 (forcing them to reuse old engine code without being able to speak to the original devs of said code). I am highly skeptical that this will result in anything remotely close to what was promised to us. My attention will stick to KSA
Good job staying grounded. Love the honesty.
This is an incredible video. The end about journalism is so damn true in today's messed up world. Even journalists don't actually do journalism
Alternate take... You have a legendary publishing team (that picked and funded critical indie hit after hit, 90%+ reviews) fleeing Annapurna due to heavier oversight from the Money team, which wanted them to migrate into AAA, cross-media productions (and tie IP into the lagging film division). Resisting this, the publishing team started negotiations to spin off from Annapurna (which fell through), during which time they probably got in close contact with private equity. After a failure to spin out, the mass exodus from Annapurna probably followed an alternate path offered by this private equity. Somewhat reasonably, the equity firm seems to be trying to unite a successful and tested (but neglected) indie publishing team with some of the most treasured (but neglected) IP that also collapsed due to poor oversight from other large corporate publishers - probably hoping that each would amplify the value of the other.
I don't think the fact that they are private equity means this is a bad idea. The endgame is probably to spin off a new publisher with a track record of revitalizing treasured IP, demonstrated by their proven management of creative projects. The proof will be in the pudding, so I won't judge yet.
Shadow i love your journalistic take on it! keep it up!
4:12 WRROOOONNNGGG
Finally…someone did their homework. Thank you! I’m am curious if the IP for KSP could be sold. I would think the value has diminished quite a bit and perhaps they could profit simply by selling the name off to someone else.
If you priced the Kerbal IP appropriately for its current value, sure -- but that value is likely *negative*, due to the costs associated with resolving the KSP2 situation.
Finish the project? Immensely expensive, because you have to start with an all new dev team. Oh, and a significant portion of the userbase has *already* paid for the game, revenue that you will never see.
Cancel it? If you don't offer refunds to all KSP2 buyers you will generate *even more* ill will from the current Kerbal fanbase.
I don't see a third option, and in the absence of such an option KSP2 is a guaranteed money loser. Paying even $10 for the Kerbal license is _far_ more than it is objectively worth -- and a private equity firm is going to demand $1 M or more.
Wow- you don’t usually get to see a game die three times.
A lord of the rings farming game is exactly what Tolkein would have wanted.
Your rhetoric on opinion pieces vs news reporting is really true about all forms of news media, I’d love for everyone with strong political opinions to have the ability to see the flaws in modern journalism that you outlined in this video. Everyone would be a little wiser if they learned the lesson you’ve just explained
Wonderful video, loved the free media critical lesson. It is needed.
Came here for the good news info, stayed for the "news industry" rant and boy that was worthy. Thanks!
At this point, I have utmost confidence in continuing my KSP 1 experience and finally reaching Jool because it's clear there only ever will be, KSP 1. 🚀 That said, KSP 1 with graphics mods is amazing, and surprisingly optimized!
Thanks for the excellent breakdown. I'm still loving both KSPs despite everything.
My prediction is some mobile game slop, but we'll see. No hopes up yet. I will start getting excited when they deliver actually decent game.
They could go not with Kitten Space Agency but with The Mighty Kraken Space Agency :D
Thank you for your honest report on KSP. It makes us all sad to see a good game go die but there were no guarantees amd kitten space agency seems like the spiritual successor in terms of ideas and hopefully gameplay too.
You ripping the poor quality journalism brings warmth to my cold dead journalism students heart.
I was expecting a Ground News sponsor segment
Thanks for the job and the info, Shadow, if u want to do some MTB in Spain, your family has a house in here (Benidorm).
A smart owner of original Kerbal would create a package with all the best mods and sell it as “Kerbal 1.5”
so then what _does_ this company want KSP for? if their goal is purely to make money from it, _how_ could they do that? i doubt that just the sale of the 2 games in their current state and some merch would be enough to make up for their purchase unless they got it very cheap?
My guess is they wanted the Private Division property. KSP still sells. KSP2 Early Access is still being sold on Steam! Tales of the Shire is due to release in a month or two and looks great.
That's the entire point of the rant about the articles being misleading wishful thinking. The company didn't particularly want KSP, they wanted the other stuff. KSP came bundled with it. They'll just keep making whatever earnings they can from the original game by parking it on the desk of one of the former publishing staff who will "manage" it and probably another 10 games similarly parked by keeping the store pages up to date and whatever other admin is needed. They'll finish off whatever needs doing on the remaining titles that were inches from launch (Tales of the Shire basically) and get them out the door. And they'll shop around for buyers for any of the IP, but KSP only has one potential buyer who would actually do anything with it, and they're sending signals that they don't want it... at least under the terms they'll have heard via the grapevine.
Basically, making any money at all from KSP is probably just going to be considered a windfall, and only pursued if the cost of getting that windfall is good return on the cost of making the deal happen.
We need to pertition Valve to stop to stop steam sales of KSP2, until actual new versions get released... (or buyers get refunded)
I agree with you that it shouldn't continue to be sold, but nobody should get a refund, EA means bought as seen, whoever ignored all the red flags and bought the thing has only themselves to blame and should just learn the lesson.
That's what I was waiting for!!! I have still hopes for this game!!
0:04
@MT_Cuber I said I have hopes, not high hopes, a little part of me still wants this game to be finished
@@fRiX15 we all want it to be finished. But i am just saying that you shouldnt get all hyped up so you later dont get sad
Wow, a 16 minute ad for GroundNews without even mentioning them. Well done! :p /s More seriously though, great video as always. Unfortunately 90% of online 'news' is nothing more than clickbait to sell ads. In Australia at least, even most of (non-online) 'mainstream' media is incredibly biased. People wonder why politicians/governments are becoming so ineffective yet at they same time they vote for whoever can up with the best 5 or less word slogans and don't vote for anyone proposing any form of meaningful change as the other side/s tell them there is a (usually very small) possibility you might be worse off.
My hope is that they fix the game into a stable state, and then maybe slowly add new features / parts. I dont wanna get my hopes up again 😭 I have a feeling they are going to just sell kerbal plushies and shirts
i wouldn't expect anything to ever again be pushed for ksp2.
I highly doubt this company will touch the KSP 2 code. Honestly the absolutely best thing they could possibly be expected to do, is have enough self-respect to take down the Steam listing. They won't, but it would be the right thing to do and wouldn't require any actual effort.
@@Lord_zeel They might delist it on Steam just because they're now the obvious point of liability for it continuing to be listed, and PE firms don't like complications like that.
Been in IT long enough to know that private equity = run for the hills (both as customer and as employee)
Although take 2 would never sell the ksp IP, it sounds like this new company doesn’t really care about it and may be open to an offer. The ksp models definitely sound like a “well, we own it. might as well do something”
yeah well, what can I say... I have an opinion and I am not bringing the news. But when some company buys the property of another company you will have to know what is the complete deal of buying the property. I can recall certain incidents that the source code wasn't a part of the property (homeworld cataclysm is one of them). Therefor you only by the final product and its IP. Meaning, no other company can use that IP because it is owned by a different company.
Even if the source code has been obtained, and you would find a new software developer studio to continue to work on it, first thing that needs to be done is 'what is all this code doing'. In my case and in my defence, this takes months to complete just to found out how things are working under the hood. This depends on how well things are documented (and is the documentation also a part of the deal).
So by the time you can get started with re-developing a project this would take months just to get started. Because you also need to have the proper talent to even work on it. This is no rocket science (I made a pun) to make a statement like this. Because simply put codebase a and codebase b often work totally different.
Ow, and you need to have some proper knowledge about the engine of the game... but they fired everyone... so there is that part.
At this point it,... I wouldn't play KSP2 if someone paid me...
6:59 The problem is: *how* are they going to make it sell without any code? That's an impossible task. They only way to make the game sell well would be to fix the bugs and add the features that are missing.
at least if they own the IP for KSP, we might see some well placed Easter eggs in KSA (Like an NPC Jeb hiding out on a large asteroid or something)
I hope PD's new owner sell the KSP IP to Rocketwertz so that Kitten Space Agency can have a more recognizable IP behind it.
Speaking of misleading games journalism, how much did Haveli buy Private Divisions for? And how much does KSP represent of that amount? Because if they are looking for a quick return on investment...crowdfunding, anyone?
That information is currently not available.
I feel like this is the only hope. Not crowdfunding necessarily, but if KSP just came in the bundle with other stuff they wanted there would be a chance that someone who did want to do something with it could buy it because money is money. It doesn't seem like an asset they can really use outside of merchandising, and at the moment the property has really bad reputation so probably not a lot of people looking to buy stuff. But they might not want to bother splitting it off, and there may not be anyone willing to make the purchase.
My feeling is Tales of the Shire may be a good test - it is scheduled to be released in a couple of months.
The best case scenario is the equity firm sell KSP's IP to RocketWerkz, and Dean Hall reconsiders the value of the IP.
The only future for KSP is a blank slate in the hands of a developer trusted by the community, which is KSA. Any attempts outside of KSA are basically necromancy.
The KSA developers would be foolish if they didn't try buying the rights to the Kerbals. Many men playing a complex space game will not find kittens cute, but rather annoying. They'll have broader appeal with kerbals
They'd be foolish to try to buy the IP when the private equity company is going to try to milk them for as much money as possible. Far better to pretend you don't care and that you have other options and let the PE company come to you trying to sell. Or at least wait until it's obvious that you're the only people in town willing to buy at any price and that it's not a seller's market. Both companies know this of course.
rocketwertz would be foolish to waste a ton of budget on the IP before even having a successful game, rather than allocating it all to development and wages. and seeing as the game isnt in good hands at all, buying the ip wouldnt be easy or cheap
Okay, 3 minutes into the video time for my own insanity. Sounds to me like ksp has been bought by what amounts to a holding company rather than developers, there is a small chance they might hire some people to make a ksp game, and a microscopic chance they will hire someone to finish of ksp 2.
But the 90 something percent chance is that what they will do is nothing, just sit there and accept the money from people buying compies of ksp and ksp2. Eventually they will make their money back and sell it off to someone else at dubble the price they paid for it. In short a get richer quick scheme.
I would love to take control over kittens going into space!
This sounds to me like "IP sold to publishing company for money, the reason they bought was for portfolio."
Such a good video 👍. Some others ive seen talking about this have been so naive.
Best case scenario the IP will be sold or leased to a now developer to create another 70€ game. But right now the Kerbal IP is in the dust, and there is nothing to stop a developer to create another space game with cats, dogs, or other funny characters without paying royalties
I love this mephistophelian smile at the end. I pity the poor guy who's going to encounter you.