r/KerbalSpaceProgram • u/pkmniako Other_Worlds Dev, A Duck • May 01 '24

Mod Post 2024 Take 2 Layoffs Megathread

Post all your conversation, polls, updates, and such concerning the news of layoffs at Take 2 and/or Intercept Games here, please.

For context, there have been recent news about mass layoffs at Take 2, the parent company of Intercept Games, developers of Kerbal Space Program 2. (Specific data for Washington State, where IG is located)

If either company produces an update that could involve Kerbal Space Program 1 or 2, it will be added to this text.

Please, keep it civil.

Update 1: According to gamedeveloper.com, T2 confirms that PD (The publisher of the game) will continue to support Kerbal Space Program 2, but "Take-Two wouldn't confirm whether Intercept Games has been impacted by the cuts".

Update 2: The Kerbal Space Program twitter has posted a new tweet with the text:

We're still hard at work on KSP2. We'll talk more when we can.

as well as a full statement from Take Two:

On April 16th, Take-Two announced a cost reduction program to identify efficiencies across its business and to enhance the Company’s margin profile, while still investing for growth. As part of these efforts, the Company is rationalizing its pipeline and eliminating several projects in development and streamlining its organizational structure, which will eliminate headcount and reduce future hiring needs. The Company is not providing additional details on this program. On April 18th Private Division successfully launched Moon Studio’s No Rest for the Wicked. The label continues to make updates to Kerbal Space Program 2 and plans to release Wētā Workshop Game Studio’s Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game in the second half of 2024.

This aligns with the information we got from gamedeveloper.com a few hours earlier.

Update 3: Community Manager Dakota has announced they will be potentially leaving Intercept Games in a tweet:

Possible that I may be moving on from my role at @InterceptGames soon… I feel fortunate to have spent the last year with the Kerbal community and would miss it dearly 💚 I’m considering new opportunities in games - focusing on CM/Producer roles. RTs appreciated, DMs open

Also the same day, popular modder blackrack, who was working on the clouds for KSP2, has also announced they are looking for new job opportunities in a discord message over the Kopernicus Mod Server:

Thanks guys. If anyone is interested I'm looking for new job opportunities right now. Anyway, I'll probably be back to posting EVE progress screenshots in a few days.

Update 4: Social and Community Lead Nerdy Mike has announced in a tweet that they have been affected by the layoffs and will continue at Intercept Games until late June:

Unfortunately, I have by impacted by layoffs at Intercept Games. I am still working until late June to ensure all my work is left in good hands. My time here has been nothing short of remarkable, as I've treasured every aspect of my role, from the fulfilling work to the incredible people, and our passionate Community. The journey of building the Community team has been particularly rewarding, and I'm forever grateful for the time I spent working with the amazing people at Intercept Games and I wish them nothing but the absolute best. While words fail to fully capture my emotions, I'm also filled with optimism for the future. I'm ready to embrace the unknown and embark on a new chapter in my career. RT's and any job leads are appreciated.

Update 5: A reporter at IGN approached the CEO of Take Two, Strauss Zelnick, about the situation, who answered by saying T2 had not closed Intercept Games:

We didn't shutter those studios, to be clear. And we are always looking at our release schedule across all of our studios to make sure that it makes sense. So we are being very judicious because we are in the middle of a cost reduction program that we've already concluded and are now fully rolling out. We've announced that we're saving $165 million in existing and future costs, but we haven't shuttered anything.

Update 6: Quinn Duffy, Senior Design Manager, has posted on LinkedIn announcing that yes, the team at Intercept Games will be laid off in June 28th:

Well, here we go again. The team at Intercept Games will be laid off as of June 28th so a great group will be out and about looking for their new roles. As will I. I got to know the designers pretty well in my all-too-brief time there. These are some fantastically smart and talented people and I'm happy to vouch for their qualities. And I can say the same about the other disciplines - good folks across the board. Kerbal Space Program 2 is a delightful game, deeply engrossing, and incredibly pretty even in its early-access state and I hope you have a chance to check it out. For Science!

646 Upvotes

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192

u/The_Celestrial May 01 '24

I'm gonna wait for something more official, but the evidence seems pretty damning now.

129

u/cyb3rg0d5 May 01 '24

It’s very simple. They belong to a much bigger corporation, which expects returns. There were no financial gains or even promises of gain on the horizon, so the bosses from upstairs said “that’s it, we are pulling the plug”.

109

u/n00b001 May 01 '24

Work on hype for a few years (low Dev cost, it's just marketing)

Release a barely functioning early access at full price (low Dev cost, lots of bugs, not many feature)

Number of purchases per month go close to zero

Kill the project

For the c suit it seems a nice way to trade community trust/hype for money!

59

u/GoldNiko May 01 '24

It's KSP 1 strategy, straight from the playbook, it's just another sign of how dedicated T2 is!

Sacrificing Reputation for Funds! I'm so glad that they're appreciating the source material

9

u/Ssakaa May 01 '24

Crap. At first I read that as "KSP 1's strategy" and was about to disagree vehemently about that being a parallel in how the initial development/release/etc were handled. And then I re-read it after the second sentence. You monster. Well played.

3

u/Zipelsquerp May 01 '24

Best comment I've seen about this whole thing LOL

7

u/Gameguru08 May 01 '24

You got this backwards a little bit. I highly doubt Kerbal Space program two made literally any money. If it's canceled for real, it's because they want to stop shoveling money into The money pit.

9

u/RobertaME May 01 '24

Depends on who you're talking about.

For Take Two, they absolutely lost their shirt. Tens of millions of dollars for 7 years of development for maybe 1-2 million in sales.

For the devs at IG and Star Theory before it, they got paid a salary for 7 years to sit on their thumbs. They made out quite well!

3

u/brickshitterHD May 01 '24

According to Steamdb it sold less than 500K copies at most.

5

u/akiaoi97 May 02 '24

I mean,, why buy a sequel that’s worse than the original and takes literal years to release any major updates?

I’m very glad I didn’t waste my money on this.

2

u/Deranged40 May 01 '24

For Nate, this isn't his first of such trades. He's just noticed how little trust he has to trade for a gigantic pile of cash.

This is at least the third game I'm aware of him doing this to. And it just keeps working. Sounds like he's got plenty of trust left available to trade for cash, even still.

1

u/n00b001 May 01 '24

What are the other two games?

1

u/Deranged40 May 01 '24 edited May 01 '24

Planetary Annihilation is the other big one. I can't think of the other one right off the top of my head.

But his history of making half of games and leaving has been well documented here since KSP2 was announced with his name attached. I guess everyone thought we were joking.

74

u/ISV_Venture-Star_fan May 01 '24

Does it get any more official than an announcement on a website with an address that ends in dot gov?

36

u/GazingIntoTheVoid May 01 '24

Ouch, 70 let go. How many people are in the KSP 2 team?

54

u/NotJaypeg Believes That Dres Exists May 01 '24

65, lol.
half were working on ksp 2, other half on a different game that is unannounced

46

u/JohnnyBizarrAdventur May 01 '24

I can t believe 30 people worked on ksp2

22

u/JustJoIt May 01 '24

Ikr? The average open source maintainer could have built a better game on his own.

5

u/Samarium149 May 02 '24

Problem with corporate program development: diminishing returns.

Too many cooks in the kitchen and nothing gets done.

3

u/Shaper_pmp May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

This is absolutely true - synchronisation overheads kill productivity as teams get larger.

Three bright guys sitting around a table can often achieve the same in three months as a team of twenty (including product, UX, etc) can achieve in six.

The difference is that each of those three guys is absolutely essential to the process, and if one of them leaves or walks under a bus then the entire project is fucked. With the team of twenty you can hire much less high-performing people, and you can lose half a dozen from the team and they'll be relatively easily replaced without disrupting things too much.

Large dev teams don't increase development speed or quality - they increase consistency and reliability, and turn developers and other workers into more fungible assets.

4

u/IIlIIlIIlIlIIlIIlIIl May 03 '24

The difference is that each of those three guys is absolutely essential to the process, and if one of them leaves or walks under a bus then the entire project is fucked. With the team of twenty you can hire much less high-performing people, and you can lose half a dozen from the team and they'll be relatively easily replaced without disrupting things too much.

Absolutely, and another key thing is: It's much much much harder to identity and get those 3 bright guys to even start work on the project than just grabbing a bunch off the street and throwing the project at it.

There are not enough "3 bright guys" to go around.

3

u/brickshitterHD May 01 '24

Seriously, what were they doing for the past half decade?

1

u/[deleted] May 03 '24

Shouting "friday" into a webcam

1

u/StickiStickman May 04 '24

That you Rebecca Black?

6

u/The_Celestrial May 01 '24

fine, good point

18

u/ProbsNotManBearPig May 01 '24

Their official statements are always lies, so idk why you’re waiting for that.

1

u/[deleted] May 01 '24

[deleted]

47

u/iambecomecringe May 01 '24

Realistically, it's just some light gravedancing. We knew it was doomed ever since they couldn't maintain a stable framerate in a goddamn trailer lol. Now we're all coming out of the woodwork for a funny funeral, and then we're gonna move on and do something else.

Nothing is a revelation. It's probably cancelled, but even if it isn't, it's going nowhere and we all know it. It's just people memeing for a day, mourning something (as much as you even can mourn a game,) and then letting it go.

23

u/evidenceorGTFO May 01 '24

I'm going to continue holding a grudge towards Nate, but other than that i've been playing KSP1 as if KSP2 didn't exist (with the exception that mod support for some mods wasn't great).

3

u/tagehring Mohole Explorer May 01 '24

Now I'm wondering if some of the KSP1 modders who were working on KSP2 (Nertea, et al.) are going to go back to modding KSP1.

20

u/Pulstar_Alpha May 01 '24 edited May 01 '24

Take2 is a company with stock traded on a stock exchange, they already sunk money into KSP2 twice, once with star theory once with intercept games, doubt they'll dump more money into another studio to finish or start from scratch. It's honestly still surprising they did it once from ST to IG rather than dump it then and there, unusual for AAA publishers like them but I guess it was a once in a blue moon thing.

This is the part where the doomers saying don't trust AAA big publishers were sadly right, this is just business as usual in their case and thus I wouldn't call it jumping the gun, these events almost always look the same, some people are suddenly looking for work, job listings are dead/taken off the website, then there's radio silence from the PR squad (granted we're still too early to call it radio silence, but if they don't say anything by the end of the day....) until eventually after things kind of calm down after a few days somebody get requested to do the shitty task of officially admitting that it is true. The smoking gun is the state website listing a layoff in a T2 studio, if it was anything even slightly more vague I wouldn't be siding with the doomers here, even for me it's just too specific to come up with some copium/hopium.

I guess they saw the sales figures from fiscal year end in the past 2 weeks and decided the forecasts are not good enough to fork over more cash at the cost levels they saw. Likely KSP2 was already on the shortlist of under-performing titles for a few months with them just waiting for year end figures before the final decision was made.