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Kerbal Space Program 2 release disrupted by corporate strife

312 points by tboerstad 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
speeder 6y ago
Can someone show me a non paywall version of this? KSP is fairly important to me. (I studied with KSP author, and told him when in college, that a game like what he promised to create was impossible. KSP was among other things, him proving me wrong)
- gnulinux 6y ago
  I'm curious why did you think it was impossible?
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    KSP takes some liberties with physics, simplifying things so that e.g. the N-body does not apply (that is, your craft are only affected by one body at once). Other challenges are the scale and number precision. It doesn't get it exactly right either, especially when you use the time accelleration, things can go a bit... weird. See https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Deep_Space_Kraken https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Deep_Space_Kraken
    - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
      We don't really know the scope of the original pitch, so hard to make a determination of feasibility. But yes, a fully modeled spacecraft simulator would have been effectively impossible.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        Goes to show that you don't need a fully modeled simulator, you need modeled enough, and then to iterate on it. (And let the community do some of the hard work for you. With appropriate mods, KSP can have a very realistic aerodynamics model (that handles supersonic speeds as well), and - as others mentioned - n-body physics simulation.)
    - mrfredward 6y ago
      There may not be an analytic solution, but solving the n-body problem numerically with newtonian physics isn't a difficult thing to do...it's simple enough that it has been used as a benchmark for doing computations: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/performance/nbody.html https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...
      - ben-schaaf 6y ago
        I'm sure they know this. The problem is that n-body simulations don't scale well with simulation speed. In KSP you can speed up time by up to 100,000x, which is essential for gameplay. If you want the same accuracy for n-body at that speed, you'll also need to do 100,000x the calculations. Whereas with KSPs simplified model you can calculate the position in orbit at arbitrary points in time, making 100,000x just as computationally expensive as 10x.
        bkanber 6y ago
        I don't know which integrators they're using but an algorithm like RKF45 should handle time acceleration with adaptive step sizes no problem. As grandparent said, n-body is very well-known. Regardless, KSP's workaround of using SOIs is simple and quite effective.
        mrfredward 6y ago
        The top entry in my link above simulates 50 million years in 6 seconds for an n=6 system. That's 11,000,000,000,000X running on a normal PC.
        e_y_ 6y ago
        From a gameplay perspective, there isn't much sense in a full N-body simulation. Players only care about their spacecraft, which is a restricted three-body problem (small spacecraft, massive gravitational bodies) outside of special cases like gravity tractors. And the simplified two-body SOI worked pretty well in practice. In any case, the bigger gameplay problem tends to be the vehicle physics simulation, where you have hundreds+ parts interacting and not in the most stable fashion especially above 2x time warp. That's the part that seemed amazing when KSP first came out, moreso than the orbital simulation (although the solar system exploration clinched the overall experience).
    - garaetjjte 6y ago
      KSP community implemented n-body physics: https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia
      - sq_ 6y ago
        > Principia is released on every new moon with whatever features and bug fixes are ready at the time. This ensures relatively timely improvements and bug fixes. This may be the funniest/best way to say "we have a roughly monthly release cadence" that I've ever seen.
      - afterburner 6y ago
        Any idea how well it works? Are there trade offs, or is it all upside, physics-fidelity-wise?
        cydonian_monk 6y ago
        It worked really well when I used it. It replaces a bunch of the stock navigation tools, and takes a bit of learning, but really seemed to be a good n-body simulation engine. It's been well over a year since I touched KSP though, so I can't speak for the current versions of either Principia or the base game.
  - speeder 6y ago
    The aerodynamics, he was then a flight simulator modder, and said his dream was to make a game where you could use parts to build an arbitrarily shaped airplane and it would calculate automatically the aerodynamics, because the manual setup of aerodynamics for flight simulator was really bad and annoying. Granted wasn't him that implemented airplane aerodynamics on KSP (it was a modder of KSP, his mod being considered "mandatory" with how much it changed the game physics)
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      You had the right instinct---what he's describing is done by X-Plane, but X-Plane started as an aerodynamics sim tool that became a flight simulator, so they had to swallow the hard-part elephant before getting to the game part of it. (On the other hand, someone should note that maybe both our instincts are flawed, because you could also see the X-Plane story and say "Why can't he do it? It's been done before!" ;) )
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  http://archive.is/IWOo5 http://archive.is/IWOo5
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    That link redirects me to https://ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/blog/2019/09/11/turn-off-doh-firefox/ https://ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/blog/2019/09/11/turn-off-doh-f..., which, what the hell? It also seems to be conflating me using CloudFlare's DNS with me using DoH. Also, they're ironically removing my choice, because I chose CloudFlare's DNS yet I can't see the content because of that.
    - Operyl 6y ago
      Sounds about right given Archive.is has this feud going on with Cloudflare. https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/ https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        I guess, but being against DoH just because the default for that is Cloudflare is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
        Operyl 6y ago
        Yeah, who even knows. I think it's all petty to be honest.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        I spoke with the creator of archive.is a while back, he uses the location from DNS to protect archive.is against some attacks, and the Cloudflare cache breaks things for him because they return the cached result instead of a live one. It's an unfortunate situation, but it doesn't look like an easy solution exists on either side.
- akersten 6y ago
  They're sending the full article and just putting an overlay on it, so reader mode or inspect element will clean it right up.
Dayshine 6y ago
> The LinkedIn message went on to say Take-Two was setting up a new studio to keep working on the same game Star Theory had been developing, a sequel to the cult classic Kerbal Space Program. Take-Two was looking to hire all of Star Theory’s development staff to make that happen. I'm amazed that the contract Star Theory had with Take-Two didn't have a clause prohibiting Take-Two from poaching employees like this. Edit: A more general question: If I hire a consultancy company to build something for me, would I normally be able to directly hire the employees who did the work? That sounds like the worst possible outcome for a consultancy, so surely contracts prohibit it!? Edit 2: Lots of people responding that anti-competes are always bad, and I don't disagree, but this feels slightly different. How about: Is it ethical for a company to deliberately cause you to be made redundant so they can hire you? (Emailing all employees of a company make it fairly clear it was planned)
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  They walked away from the deal... no contract.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    They had a previous contract for the work up to that point.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    They walked away from the acquisition deal, but this: > the same game Star Theory had been developing certainly means they had an earlier contract.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    No, they walked away from a buyout deal, they had a contract with take two to develop KSP2.
    - Heliosmaster 6y ago
      From the article, it seems like the contract was ending, and there were talks of a 6mo extension when everything came apart.
WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
If these are the people that dicked over the original team on bonuses and are now getting karma... then good riddance.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  The original developer (Squad) was bought by Take-Two who then contracted Star Theory to develop KSP2. Take-Two then screwed over Star Theory. Or in other words, same people who dicked over the original team, now dicked over another team, and probably have enough content done to still make a financial killing in the process. Given the pandemic I suspect they'll hire on the rest of the Star Theory team at a steep discount as well.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    I heard Squad screwed over the developers of KSP as well, their wages were low compared to how successful the game was.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/55xv60/kerbal_space_program_developers_only_paid_2400/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/55xv60/kerbal_space... (thread with some sources) Squad were paying the original developers next to nothing for working full time on KSP
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
It looks like Take-Two studios didn't want to pay the the premium of having another studio do the work, so they switched to recruiting the employees directly instead. And it worked. > The LinkedIn message went on to say Take-Two was setting up a new studio to keep working on the same game Star Theory had been developing, a sequel to the cult classic Kerbal Space Program. Take-Two was looking to hire all of Star Theory’s development staff to make that happen. “We are offering a compensation package that includes a cash sign-on bonus, an excellent salary, bonus eligibility and other benefits,” Cook wrote. I won't go so far as to condone Take-Two's actions, but I don't see this entirely as a negative for the employees involved if (and it's a big if) Take-Two chose to pay the employees extra compensation and bonuses instead of giving the money to a middleman. As someone who went through an acqui-hire only to see our founders walk away with millions while the employees' salaries remained unchanged, I wouldn't be opposed companies directing those acqui-hire funds to hiring bonuses given directly to the employees.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Also, for a lot of those devs a successful launch of KSP2 is going to be a career booster; they don’t want to walk away from it.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    But if they worked for Star Theory they would likely benefit a lot more than if they worked for Take Two directly (I believe the article touches on that).
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      For sure, but the former is off the table. So they’ve got to decide which is more valuable to them: finishing KSP2, or the extra comp they could get somewhere else.
    - diggan 6y ago
      Guess that depends on your definition of "benefit". As one developer (from the article) puts it: > he didn’t want to work for a big company where he wouldn’t have the same degree of influence or financial benefits if the game were a hit. “I was at a small studio, where the work I did had a massive impact on our success,”
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
No loyalty nor generosity in the game business. Everybody out for a buck. Eat or be eaten. I think that summarizes it?
- tree3 6y ago
  Hmm? It sounds to me like there is a lot of generosity- Take Two poaching a lot of engineers, offering them nice bonuses. The employees are the ones winning in this story
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Because it was cheaper than dealing with their current employer. All about controlling costs. The bonus was carefully calculated to balance the development costs versus contract costs. Those employees can expect precisely nothing once the game is complete, unless coincidentally their new employer has another project they can be immediately put to work on.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      That would have been the same result after the game was finished either way, given that Star was only a contractor. At least at Take Two the employees have the possibility of working on other games.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
    Not necessarily. The employees may have been stuck between a rock and a hard place. If amazon sent your whole team messages saying they'll hire you or crush you, taking the job at amazon might be more like trying to keep your job. Especially as others start to take the offer. The only thing saying the bonuses were nice bonus was the "hey come join us" email, and we all know what those are worth. One of the people involved said he didn't take the offer because he didn't think he'd get the same benefits. Since the contract stuff was about royalties, it might be that joining take-two meant trading royalties for salary/bonus, and as interest grew in KSP2, that might be a shitty deal.
samkater 6y ago
Can somebody with knowledge about how those contracts are set up comment on what happens to the IP developed by Star Theory? I understand they were contracted to build KSP2, but when "the project was pulled" by Take Two who owns the development to date? Does Take Two/Infinity need to start from scratch (with the benefit of many of the original developers) or do they essentially get to go forward with whatever the latest development version was available?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- saberdancer 6y ago
  Usually when you are contracted to develop something custom, you do not own the IP but rather the company that you are building it for. I doubt this is any different here. There are possibilities that it is arranged differently, for example if the IP you are developing can be used multiple times the company that ordered the IP may want to offer you the rights to distribute and use it further, for a discount, but it is very unlikely a game would make sense for this.
  - samkater 6y ago
    That makes sense. It would seem one way to protect the contracted company would be the right to withhold releasing the source code until the terms of the contract were met. You may not want to fight that legal battle, but at least it would give the smaller guy some leverage. As it sounds from the article, Star Theory Games doesn't have anything to fight back with.
  - shkkmo 6y ago
    > Usually when you are contracted to develop something custom, you do not own the IP but rather the company that you are building it for. While it can get messy, generally the IP belongs to the original creators unless otherwise stipulated by contract. Most likely, Star Theory gained ownership of the IP created by their employees via employment contracts. The contract between Take Two and Star Theory would then stipulate the conditions underwhich Star Theory gives that IP to Take Two. How and when that IP gets assigned should be a part of any such contract negotiations and not something you should gloss over or sign blindly.
spiritplumber 6y ago
I wonder how Felipe feels like about it. I helped a little with the wheels way back when (and sent the dev team a rover when they finished!)
neuralzen 6y ago
One of my family members worked for Star Theory during this time, and turned down job offers from Take Two in favor of loyalty, but it ended up biting them in the ass unfortunately. They did end up with a great job elsewhere, but still sad to hear this all went down. A reminder to look out for your own interests, even if you like the people you work for, or at least balance them because no one else likely will.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.md/IWOo5 https://archive.md/IWOo5
rendall 6y ago
It was a sleazy thing to do, at least as Bloomberg describes it, but this time it won the day. ... I'm not sure that Take Two wins the war, though. Now other development companies will be more wary about working with them.
shmerl 6y ago
Take Two decided to outdo EA in destroying studios. Wasn't original Kerbal Space Program made by Squad? I'm glad they released it for Linux. I doubt Take Two will do the same.
- staz 6y ago
  Squad totally abused the original dev see the other comments in the thread. Take Two have some Linux games (mainly Civ, Borderland and X-Com)
cwhiz 6y ago
Important to note that Take Two is a huge, publicly traded, corporation with a market cap of nearly $15 billion. They owned 2K Games, Rockstar, and others. The tactics described in this article would be extremely shady from one small business to another... but a massive corporation swooping in and basically ruining another company? Wow.
- modwest 6y ago
  I can't read the article. Did everyone except the developers get laid off? Or did Take Two hire literally everyone from the smaller co? edit: Ah I see they hired only about 1/3 of the staff.
  - gimmeThaBeet 6y ago
    > Brian Roundy, a spokesman for Private Division, said the company contacted “every member of the development team” at Star Theory with an invitation to join the new studio, called Intercept Games. “More than half of the team is now at Intercept Games,” Granted it's from the mouth of T2, but it sounds like the offer was at least more universal, and they would have preferred or at least been amenable to absorbing the whole team.
  - shultays 6y ago
    They offered jobs to eveyone, 1/3 has accepted
bdowling 6y ago
From the article: > The contract with Take-Two was the studio’s only source of revenue at the time. Without it, the independent studio was in serious trouble. > The [founders] had been in discussions about selling their company to Take-Two but were dissatisfied with the terms, they explained. > Take-Two hired more than a third of Star Theory’s staff, including the studio head and creative director. > By March . . . Star Theory closed its doors. So, a small game studio played chicken with Take-Two, a $15 billion juggernaut, and lost. Take-Two picked up the pieces.
- codezero 6y ago
  Said a different way, a small studio tried to stand up for its developers, so they would be rewarded for their hard work, and they got strong armed by an industry goliath so they could keep all the profits.
  - toyg 6y ago
    It really depends on where those “royalties” were going and how they’d be managed going forward. Somehow I wouldn’t bet on them going to devs, but I’m just an old cynic.
beckingz 6y ago
Given how badly Star Theory performed on planetary annihilation, I have minimal sympathy for the company. Still, the hardball tactics by Take-Two is sad to see.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  Oh it's them? Wow, hadn't heard that Uber Entertainment had changed their name. (Planetary Annihilation was not a bad game; it just wasn't the Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander sequel that people were expecting.)
  - beckingz 6y ago
    It wasn't a bad game. Definitely. That said, they over promised and under delivered on the original, and then had a stand alone expansion (Planetary Annihilation: Titans) that finally filled most of the promises. I recall that at first they did a bad job of supporting players who had pre-ordered, but eventually walked it back and gave kickstarter supporters the expansion for free and early purchasers large discounts.
z3t4 6y ago
The game has gone worse since the original developers left. More and more bugs that ruins game-play. I guess the game still sells good though.
everyone 6y ago
Damn. I was really looking forward to that game. I love KSP but the original is so janky with memory leaks / slowdown / physics craziness, the bigger the mission you try, the less fun it is. The same game but with its own custom-made engine learning from the previous game would have been great. Anyway no way I can buy it now and support that.. Also even if I just pirate it, its probably gonna turn out shite anyway now with giant publisher running everything.
richardwhiuk 6y ago
Normally these contracts have a no-poaching clause to prevent this.

312 points by tboerstad 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Can someone show me a non paywall version of this? KSP is fairly important to me. (I studied with KSP author, and told him when in college, that a game like what he promised to create was impossible. KSP was among other things, him proving me wrong)

gnulinux 6y ago
I'm curious why did you think it was impossible?
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  KSP takes some liberties with physics, simplifying things so that e.g. the N-body does not apply (that is, your craft are only affected by one body at once). Other challenges are the scale and number precision. It doesn't get it exactly right either, especially when you use the time accelleration, things can go a bit... weird. See https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Deep_Space_Kraken https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Deep_Space_Kraken
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    We don't really know the scope of the original pitch, so hard to make a determination of feasibility. But yes, a fully modeled spacecraft simulator would have been effectively impossible.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Goes to show that you don't need a fully modeled simulator, you need modeled enough, and then to iterate on it. (And let the community do some of the hard work for you. With appropriate mods, KSP can have a very realistic aerodynamics model (that handles supersonic speeds as well), and - as others mentioned - n-body physics simulation.)
  - mrfredward 6y ago
    There may not be an analytic solution, but solving the n-body problem numerically with newtonian physics isn't a difficult thing to do...it's simple enough that it has been used as a benchmark for doing computations: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/performance/nbody.html https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...
    - ben-schaaf 6y ago
      I'm sure they know this. The problem is that n-body simulations don't scale well with simulation speed. In KSP you can speed up time by up to 100,000x, which is essential for gameplay. If you want the same accuracy for n-body at that speed, you'll also need to do 100,000x the calculations. Whereas with KSPs simplified model you can calculate the position in orbit at arbitrary points in time, making 100,000x just as computationally expensive as 10x.
      - bkanber 6y ago
        I don't know which integrators they're using but an algorithm like RKF45 should handle time acceleration with adaptive step sizes no problem. As grandparent said, n-body is very well-known. Regardless, KSP's workaround of using SOIs is simple and quite effective.
      - mrfredward 6y ago
        The top entry in my link above simulates 50 million years in 6 seconds for an n=6 system. That's 11,000,000,000,000X running on a normal PC.
      - e_y_ 6y ago
        From a gameplay perspective, there isn't much sense in a full N-body simulation. Players only care about their spacecraft, which is a restricted three-body problem (small spacecraft, massive gravitational bodies) outside of special cases like gravity tractors. And the simplified two-body SOI worked pretty well in practice. In any case, the bigger gameplay problem tends to be the vehicle physics simulation, where you have hundreds+ parts interacting and not in the most stable fashion especially above 2x time warp. That's the part that seemed amazing when KSP first came out, moreso than the orbital simulation (although the solar system exploration clinched the overall experience).
  - garaetjjte 6y ago
    KSP community implemented n-body physics: https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia
    - sq_ 6y ago
      > Principia is released on every new moon with whatever features and bug fixes are ready at the time. This ensures relatively timely improvements and bug fixes. This may be the funniest/best way to say "we have a roughly monthly release cadence" that I've ever seen.
    - afterburner 6y ago
      Any idea how well it works? Are there trade offs, or is it all upside, physics-fidelity-wise?
      - cydonian_monk 6y ago
        It worked really well when I used it. It replaces a bunch of the stock navigation tools, and takes a bit of learning, but really seemed to be a good n-body simulation engine. It's been well over a year since I touched KSP though, so I can't speak for the current versions of either Principia or the base game.
- speeder 6y ago
  The aerodynamics, he was then a flight simulator modder, and said his dream was to make a game where you could use parts to build an arbitrarily shaped airplane and it would calculate automatically the aerodynamics, because the manual setup of aerodynamics for flight simulator was really bad and annoying. Granted wasn't him that implemented airplane aerodynamics on KSP (it was a modder of KSP, his mod being considered "mandatory" with how much it changed the game physics)
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    You had the right instinct---what he's describing is done by X-Plane, but X-Plane started as an aerodynamics sim tool that became a flight simulator, so they had to swallow the hard-part elephant before getting to the game part of it. (On the other hand, someone should note that maybe both our instincts are flawed, because you could also see the X-Plane story and say "Why can't he do it? It's been done before!" ;) )
BitwiseFool 6y ago
http://archive.is/IWOo5 http://archive.is/IWOo5
- StavrosK 6y ago
  That link redirects me to https://ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/blog/2019/09/11/turn-off-doh-firefox/ https://ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/blog/2019/09/11/turn-off-doh-f..., which, what the hell? It also seems to be conflating me using CloudFlare's DNS with me using DoH. Also, they're ironically removing my choice, because I chose CloudFlare's DNS yet I can't see the content because of that.
  - Operyl 6y ago
    Sounds about right given Archive.is has this feud going on with Cloudflare. https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/ https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      I guess, but being against DoH just because the default for that is Cloudflare is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
      - Operyl 6y ago
        Yeah, who even knows. I think it's all petty to be honest.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        I spoke with the creator of archive.is a while back, he uses the location from DNS to protect archive.is against some attacks, and the Cloudflare cache breaks things for him because they return the cached result instead of a live one. It's an unfortunate situation, but it doesn't look like an easy solution exists on either side.
akersten 6y ago
They're sending the full article and just putting an overlay on it, so reader mode or inspect element will clean it right up.

Dayshine 6y ago

> The LinkedIn message went on to say Take-Two was setting up a new studio to keep working on the same game Star Theory had been developing, a sequel to the cult classic Kerbal Space Program. Take-Two was looking to hire all of Star Theory’s development staff to make that happen. I'm amazed that the contract Star Theory had with Take-Two didn't have a clause prohibiting Take-Two from poaching employees like this. Edit: A more general question: If I hire a consultancy company to build something for me, would I normally be able to directly hire the employees who did the work? That sounds like the worst possible outcome for a consultancy, so surely contracts prohibit it!? Edit 2: Lots of people responding that anti-competes are always bad, and I don't disagree, but this feels slightly different. How about: Is it ethical for a company to deliberately cause you to be made redundant so they can hire you? (Emailing all employees of a company make it fairly clear it was planned)

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
They walked away from the deal... no contract.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  They had a previous contract for the work up to that point.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  They walked away from the acquisition deal, but this: > the same game Star Theory had been developing certainly means they had an earlier contract.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  No, they walked away from a buyout deal, they had a contract with take two to develop KSP2.
  - Heliosmaster 6y ago
    From the article, it seems like the contract was ending, and there were talks of a 6mo extension when everything came apart.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago

If these are the people that dicked over the original team on bonuses and are now getting karma... then good riddance.

marcinzm 6y ago
The original developer (Squad) was bought by Take-Two who then contracted Star Theory to develop KSP2. Take-Two then screwed over Star Theory. Or in other words, same people who dicked over the original team, now dicked over another team, and probably have enough content done to still make a financial killing in the process. Given the pandemic I suspect they'll hire on the rest of the Star Theory team at a steep discount as well.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  I heard Squad screwed over the developers of KSP as well, their wages were low compared to how successful the game was.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/55xv60/kerbal_space_program_developers_only_paid_2400/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/55xv60/kerbal_space... (thread with some sources) Squad were paying the original developers next to nothing for working full time on KSP

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

It looks like Take-Two studios didn't want to pay the the premium of having another studio do the work, so they switched to recruiting the employees directly instead. And it worked. > The LinkedIn message went on to say Take-Two was setting up a new studio to keep working on the same game Star Theory had been developing, a sequel to the cult classic Kerbal Space Program. Take-Two was looking to hire all of Star Theory’s development staff to make that happen. “We are offering a compensation package that includes a cash sign-on bonus, an excellent salary, bonus eligibility and other benefits,” Cook wrote. I won't go so far as to condone Take-Two's actions, but I don't see this entirely as a negative for the employees involved if (and it's a big if) Take-Two chose to pay the employees extra compensation and bonuses instead of giving the money to a middleman. As someone who went through an acqui-hire only to see our founders walk away with millions while the employees' salaries remained unchanged, I wouldn't be opposed companies directing those acqui-hire funds to hiring bonuses given directly to the employees.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Also, for a lot of those devs a successful launch of KSP2 is going to be a career booster; they don’t want to walk away from it.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  But if they worked for Star Theory they would likely benefit a lot more than if they worked for Take Two directly (I believe the article touches on that).
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    For sure, but the former is off the table. So they’ve got to decide which is more valuable to them: finishing KSP2, or the extra comp they could get somewhere else.
  - diggan 6y ago
    Guess that depends on your definition of "benefit". As one developer (from the article) puts it: > he didn’t want to work for a big company where he wouldn’t have the same degree of influence or financial benefits if the game were a hit. “I was at a small studio, where the work I did had a massive impact on our success,”

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

No loyalty nor generosity in the game business. Everybody out for a buck. Eat or be eaten. I think that summarizes it?

tree3 6y ago
Hmm? It sounds to me like there is a lot of generosity- Take Two poaching a lot of engineers, offering them nice bonuses. The employees are the ones winning in this story
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Because it was cheaper than dealing with their current employer. All about controlling costs. The bonus was carefully calculated to balance the development costs versus contract costs. Those employees can expect precisely nothing once the game is complete, unless coincidentally their new employer has another project they can be immediately put to work on.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    That would have been the same result after the game was finished either way, given that Star was only a contractor. At least at Take Two the employees have the possibility of working on other games.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  Not necessarily. The employees may have been stuck between a rock and a hard place. If amazon sent your whole team messages saying they'll hire you or crush you, taking the job at amazon might be more like trying to keep your job. Especially as others start to take the offer. The only thing saying the bonuses were nice bonus was the "hey come join us" email, and we all know what those are worth. One of the people involved said he didn't take the offer because he didn't think he'd get the same benefits. Since the contract stuff was about royalties, it might be that joining take-two meant trading royalties for salary/bonus, and as interest grew in KSP2, that might be a shitty deal.

samkater 6y ago

Can somebody with knowledge about how those contracts are set up comment on what happens to the IP developed by Star Theory? I understand they were contracted to build KSP2, but when "the project was pulled" by Take Two who owns the development to date? Does Take Two/Infinity need to start from scratch (with the benefit of many of the original developers) or do they essentially get to go forward with whatever the latest development version was available?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
saberdancer 6y ago
Usually when you are contracted to develop something custom, you do not own the IP but rather the company that you are building it for. I doubt this is any different here. There are possibilities that it is arranged differently, for example if the IP you are developing can be used multiple times the company that ordered the IP may want to offer you the rights to distribute and use it further, for a discount, but it is very unlikely a game would make sense for this.
- samkater 6y ago
  That makes sense. It would seem one way to protect the contracted company would be the right to withhold releasing the source code until the terms of the contract were met. You may not want to fight that legal battle, but at least it would give the smaller guy some leverage. As it sounds from the article, Star Theory Games doesn't have anything to fight back with.
- shkkmo 6y ago
  > Usually when you are contracted to develop something custom, you do not own the IP but rather the company that you are building it for. While it can get messy, generally the IP belongs to the original creators unless otherwise stipulated by contract. Most likely, Star Theory gained ownership of the IP created by their employees via employment contracts. The contract between Take Two and Star Theory would then stipulate the conditions underwhich Star Theory gives that IP to Take Two. How and when that IP gets assigned should be a part of any such contract negotiations and not something you should gloss over or sign blindly.

spiritplumber 6y ago

I wonder how Felipe feels like about it. I helped a little with the wheels way back when (and sent the dev team a rover when they finished!)

neuralzen 6y ago

One of my family members worked for Star Theory during this time, and turned down job offers from Take Two in favor of loyalty, but it ended up biting them in the ass unfortunately. They did end up with a great job elsewhere, but still sad to hear this all went down. A reminder to look out for your own interests, even if you like the people you work for, or at least balance them because no one else likely will.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.md/IWOo5 https://archive.md/IWOo5

rendall 6y ago

It was a sleazy thing to do, at least as Bloomberg describes it, but this time it won the day. ... I'm not sure that Take Two wins the war, though. Now other development companies will be more wary about working with them.

shmerl 6y ago

Take Two decided to outdo EA in destroying studios. Wasn't original Kerbal Space Program made by Squad? I'm glad they released it for Linux. I doubt Take Two will do the same.

staz 6y ago
Squad totally abused the original dev see the other comments in the thread. Take Two have some Linux games (mainly Civ, Borderland and X-Com)

cwhiz 6y ago

Important to note that Take Two is a huge, publicly traded, corporation with a market cap of nearly $15 billion. They owned 2K Games, Rockstar, and others. The tactics described in this article would be extremely shady from one small business to another... but a massive corporation swooping in and basically ruining another company? Wow.

modwest 6y ago
I can't read the article. Did everyone except the developers get laid off? Or did Take Two hire literally everyone from the smaller co? edit: Ah I see they hired only about 1/3 of the staff.
- gimmeThaBeet 6y ago
  > Brian Roundy, a spokesman for Private Division, said the company contacted “every member of the development team” at Star Theory with an invitation to join the new studio, called Intercept Games. “More than half of the team is now at Intercept Games,” Granted it's from the mouth of T2, but it sounds like the offer was at least more universal, and they would have preferred or at least been amenable to absorbing the whole team.
- shultays 6y ago
  They offered jobs to eveyone, 1/3 has accepted

bdowling 6y ago

From the article: > The contract with Take-Two was the studio’s only source of revenue at the time. Without it, the independent studio was in serious trouble. > The [founders] had been in discussions about selling their company to Take-Two but were dissatisfied with the terms, they explained. > Take-Two hired more than a third of Star Theory’s staff, including the studio head and creative director. > By March . . . Star Theory closed its doors. So, a small game studio played chicken with Take-Two, a $15 billion juggernaut, and lost. Take-Two picked up the pieces.

codezero 6y ago
Said a different way, a small studio tried to stand up for its developers, so they would be rewarded for their hard work, and they got strong armed by an industry goliath so they could keep all the profits.
- toyg 6y ago
  It really depends on where those “royalties” were going and how they’d be managed going forward. Somehow I wouldn’t bet on them going to devs, but I’m just an old cynic.

beckingz 6y ago

Given how badly Star Theory performed on planetary annihilation, I have minimal sympathy for the company. Still, the hardball tactics by Take-Two is sad to see.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago
Oh it's them? Wow, hadn't heard that Uber Entertainment had changed their name. (Planetary Annihilation was not a bad game; it just wasn't the Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander sequel that people were expecting.)
- beckingz 6y ago
  It wasn't a bad game. Definitely. That said, they over promised and under delivered on the original, and then had a stand alone expansion (Planetary Annihilation: Titans) that finally filled most of the promises. I recall that at first they did a bad job of supporting players who had pre-ordered, but eventually walked it back and gave kickstarter supporters the expansion for free and early purchasers large discounts.

z3t4 6y ago

The game has gone worse since the original developers left. More and more bugs that ruins game-play. I guess the game still sells good though.

everyone 6y ago

Damn. I was really looking forward to that game. I love KSP but the original is so janky with memory leaks / slowdown / physics craziness, the bigger the mission you try, the less fun it is. The same game but with its own custom-made engine learning from the previous game would have been great. Anyway no way I can buy it now and support that.. Also even if I just pirate it, its probably gonna turn out shite anyway now with giant publisher running everything.

richardwhiuk 6y ago

Normally these contracts have a no-poaching clause to prevent this.