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Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

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31–40 of 344 posts

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#31

I hope this goes well. I would love to see a remake that retains the exact same gameplay with more modern graphics. Hopefully all the people who paid for the current in-development version are not left high and dry in terms of updates and bugfixes. I also have heard the rumors that the team was not treated well, and that the game was never really the focus of the company. I think it may have been a side project of on…

> I hope this goes well. I would love to see a remake that retains the exact same gameplay with more modern graphics.

I second this. I've used many graphics improvement mods in the past. The good thing is, graphics quality is almost an orthogonal performance factor for the game - it's mostly CPU bound due to physics computation anyway.

What I'd love to see is more realistic FX (flames, particle systems, explosions) and better lightning and shadows. Especially the latter would make other worlds more beautiful.

> I think it may have been a side project of one of the developers on a totally unrelated product (ie. not even a game).

The story goes more-less like this: Squad is a marketing company. One of their employees was burning out and wanted to leave, and they offered him to let him develop his side project if he stays. This side project grew into Kerbal Space Program, and now is the most recognizable product of the company.

As for the more recent news about mistreatment of KSP team, this is a completely separate story (and to this day I'm not really sure how much truth there is to it; back when I hung out on /r/KSP the issue was quite muddy).

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#32
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take-Two appears to have purchased the KSP property , not Squad, the original owning company .

What is your point?

Well, you asked:

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

But they didn't acquire the company.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#34
post #14
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case it's probably a good thing. Really, the thing to do is buy it for the name, and then start from scratch in an actually good game engine (i.e. not Unity)

Give a man a game engine and he will write a game. Give a man no game engine and he will write a game engine for the rest of his life. - unknown GDC speaker

Hey, I resemble that remark :-(

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#35

I hope this goes well. I would love to see a remake that retains the exact same gameplay with more modern graphics. Hopefully all the people who paid for the current in-development version are not left high and dry in terms of updates and bugfixes. I also have heard the rumors that the team was not treated well, and that the game was never really the focus of the company. I think it may have been a side project of on…

The problem is not graphics, but rather, the limitations of Unity that make it unsuitable for anything else but lowest common denominator multi-platform games with clearly defined limits. Space Engineers is another game hampered by Unity.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#38
post #34
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give a man a game engine and he will write a game. Give a man no game engine and he will write a game engine for the rest of his life. - unknown GDC speaker

Hey, I resemble that remark :-(

Same here. At some point I had more abandoned game engines than actual games in playable state...

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#40
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a chunk of the team left already (and were subsequently hired by Valve[1]) [1] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-05-22-valve-hired-the...

I saw somewhere that Riot had also picked up a few of them. Not that it really makes what happened much better, but at least these guys got a reward of sorts.

> these guys got a reward of sorts.

Of sorts. The games industry is not exactly known for its humane working conditions.

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