Kerbal Space Program

[Perkel]

this is the moment where kwan realizes that there are places on earth where people don't earn 100k a year for game dev job and to earn something you actually need to be worth something to company you are getting hired at.

"On reddit, r4m0n, a prominent modder in the community who has had significant amounts of contact with Squad, listed multiple problems at the company, including long crunch hours, poor pay, rushed releases to fit the marketing department’s whims, and poor communication between the studio and its community moderators. Meanwhile, former developer NovaSilisko said that, for the 10-11 months they were there as an intern, they were paid a grand total of $2,700, after fees."

I signed something ! They had gun on my head and i had to work for them ! AS INTERN !


article was probably written by someone who wears shoes made by someone for less than a dollar a day.

 

[ThisNameIsFree]

The point of hiring from Mexico is to pay them much less actually. If you don't like it - don't work here. Maybe they raise salary after this.

 

[Burning Bridges]

This explains why there are still no athmospheres.

 

[Drax]

People being mad at mexicans for offering foreign workers shitty working conditions.
DAT perspective.

 

[Burning Bridges]

But 200$ a month? c'mon

Also the main criticism was that people were fired all the time and money not reinvested.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

 

[Hellraiser]

Not surprising news given the update rushing and some history.

But I honestly sense butthurt from PDTv. Out of the people he mentioned, only one person was a developer (and he mostly did server stuff), the rest were all community-management related. Skunky was ill-suited for the job, there were good reasons to fire him, he was a PR disaster waiting to happen considering how he told people to shove it on official squad streams.

However I would not be surprised if NovaSilisko and C7 (Chad Jenkins, now working on Universe Sandbox AFAIK) left for the given reasons. Nova's departure was shrouded in mystery, which implies a lot.

Then you have Claira and Artyom (Bac9), two modders put on payroll 2 or three months apart, disappearing from it rather quickly. With Bac9 it is known he got a job somewhere in Russia, which is why he left Squad. Money and working conditions were likely the cause.

But 200$ a month? c'mon

Also the main criticism was that people were fired all the time and money not reinvested.

Yeah 200$ a month is laughable, it appears I could hire two squad devs out of my salary and still have enough to live on it seems (if I opted to go into full student "rent a room with 4 other people" mode).

And at the same time the company owners who bankrolled the development are raking in major cash for their own projects.

They could have kept Bac9 aboard but he found a better job at a Russian company it seems. How hard can it be to pay a russian 3d artist decently? The guy is brilliant. They still have Mike (Mu) on board, which leads me to believe they're actually paying him decently. The guy is good, risking losing such a programmer is idiotic. Artists seem to be mostly getting the shaft.

 

[Ulminati]

I imagine it's easier to find starving artists capable of emulating the fairly simple animations and geometry in ksp, than programmers with a lot of experience working with custom physics engines.

Shame, really. I guess it's a good thing I keep separate vanilla and modded installs. In another 2-3 hotfixes time, I can freeze my 1.1.x folder and not bother with future updates until they have had time to mature.

And yeah.. $200/month? I should hire 2-3 SQUAD people to do my work for me.

In happier news, Bac9 (B9 aerospace and several of the ksp 3d modules) is working on a totally sweet looking hybrid of x-com and mechwarrior now.


[Edit]

link:
http://tetragonworks.com/
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=54424.0

 

[Hellraiser]

I imagine it's easier to find starving artists capable of emulating the fairly simple animations and geometry in ksp, than programmers with a lot of experience working with custom physics engines.

Shame, really. I guess it's a good thing I keep separate vanilla and modded installs. In another 2-3 hotfixes time, I can freeze my 1.1.x folder and not bother with future updates until they have had time to mature.

And yeah.. $200/month? I should hire 2-3 SQUAD people to do my work for me.

In happier news, Bac9 (B9 aerospace and several of the ksp 3d modules) is working on a totally sweet looking hybrid of x-com and mechwarrior now.


[Edit]

link:
http://tetragonworks.com/
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=54424.0

Him and C7 judging by the email link at the bottom.

 

[Perkel]

Ok bought the game from steam.

Is it me or this game crashes like motherfucker ? I mean after hour or two i get crash from random things.

 

[Drax]

It has some lovely allahu ahkbar moments when it just wants to blow up, yes. More if you mod it.
You get used to it and it becomes just another part of the game's difficulty.

 

[vean]

It varies a lot with versions and hardware it's on. Sometimes you can load a thousand mods and it's perfectly stable. Other times vanilla crashes every 10 minutes.

 

[Data4]

It used to run awesomely in Linux. Now, since 1.1, it crashes Gnome about 50% of the time. I've basically shelved it for now. Was getting bored with it anyway.

 

[Konjad]

Works perfectly fine on my linux (64 bit)

 

[Data4]

Works perfectly fine on my linux (64 bit)

Yeah, I tried it again recently and found that if I run it full screen, it doesn't crash. It doesn't like windowed mode in Mint for some reason.

 

[Hellraiser]

Lead developer just stepped down, and by step down I mean quit:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/140824-my-farewell-to-kerbal-space-program/

 

[EG]

We're boned.

 

[Drax]

Fuck, felipe is out?

 

[Hellraiser]

Wouldn't you? You do overtime, lovingly craft the game of your dreams and some dolts use all the money for their pet projects while your talented artists and designers see jack shit.

At this point it is safe to say the guy earned himself some serious rep in the game industry and probably got a way better gig. After 5 years he was probably tired as well.

 

[Drax]

Oh, I understand completely. It just sucks.

 

[J_C]

The remaining devs should fix the remaining bugs and call it a day, then move on to another project. No need to fuck up the game by adding a lot of shit over years, and ruin KSP

 

[Drax]

They should port the game to java so linux users get the same shitty performance.

 

[Prime Junta]

I just discovered/got around to trying this like a week ago and holyfuckingshit it's taken over my life.

I currently have an Eve orbiter return mission on the way back, two rockets carrying two rovers each on the way to Duna, and while the window persists, am about to launch a third carrying a kerbal in a tin can with a mission to land on Ike.

Then imma start building infrastructure. I want a mining/refueling base on the Mun, then start colonising Duna -- first a mining/refueling/science base on Ike, then try to figure out how to establish a surface presence on Duna. Those big launches are tedious, I'd rather have usable infrastructure in space so I only need light launches to resupply.

Image related.

Spoiler

 

[Caim]

Welcome to the space program, brother. Dental plan's great, but the retirement plan less so.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The writing has been on the wall for a long time. Squad was using up those people and spat them out.

Also the game stopped being interesting to me when they replaced a semi-realistic Mun they already had with some cartoonish shit, some time in 2012.

 

[Drax]