Talking about the KSP 2 Shutdown with HarvesteR - the Creator of Kerbal Space Program!

I’m gonna guess you know what’s up with KSP 2 right now, in that, we have no idea what’s going on with KSP 2 right now – the entire studio has apparently been shut down, with multiple employees directly associated with KSP 2’s development announcing their departure from the company.

Really, it’s all guesswork right now, whole lot of smoke and mirrors, us YouTubers aren’t privy to any information that the public doesn’t know, so I don’t have anything meaningful to share.

One voice that I thought you guys might find interesting though is Felipe Falanghe’s, also known as HarvesteR, who is the creator of the original Kerbal Space Program, pitching the game to Squad back in 2011!

Shadowzone's video:

Buy KitHack Model Club on Steam!

My PC specs:
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor
64 GB RAM
3840 x 2160, 144Hz

This video is intended for audiences 13+ years old.

Chapters:
00:00 The KSP 2 Situation So Far
01:27 HarvesteR's Origins
03:45 The Beginning of Kerbal Space Program
07:02 The ORIGINAL Kerbals
09:03 KSP: From Concept to Game
11:02 Were you really NEVER approached for KSP 2?
12:45 HarvesteR's Theory about the Take 2 Acquisition
15:25 Why do you think KSP 2 has taken SO long to make?
20:20 What makes KSP so difficult to develop
25:15 Was using Unity for KSP 2 a mistake?
29:00 How HarvesteR found out about the KSP 2 shutdown
31:10 How does this situation make you feel?
32:48 HarvesteR's idea for a KSP Sequel!
36:10 How would you have developed KSP 2?
40:07 If asked, would you work on KSP 2?
42:05 Is there anything Intercept did that you wouldn't?
43:52 HarvesteR's NEXT Space Game!
48:45 HarvesteR's Newest Release
51:45 Closing Thoughts

[MattLowne]

Enjoy! Remember that we don't know anything about what's internally happening at Intercept/Take 2 Interactive. This video is purely speculative opinion, but it's the speculative opinions from a person who created Kerbal Space Program and therefore I felt was something worth sharing.

[ThatOnePlaythrough]

KSP: "I hate marketing, here's a great game"

KSP 2: "We don't have a complete game, but here's some marketing"

[unotechrih]

HarvesteR, as a scientist I would like to thank you for creating an amazing simulator that has gotten a countless number of people into maths and science. You will never know how truly important you have been to the aerospace industry and science in general. Thank you a million times over.

[martiantexan]

This is a good look at how sharp and thoughtful the original dev is.

[iambiggus]

Any interviewer that lets their guest just talk without interrupting is a good one. Thank you.

[elliesteele]

This game really just crashed harder than my typical attempt at a "rocket"

[sulijoo]

That KSP aviation prequel would have been fun. Instead of the Wright Brothers we could have had the Wrong Brothers. 😂

[Danny]

Excellent video, love hearing about HarvesteR, especially since these inside scoops remind me of the good ol' days of checking his KSP forums account, to see if he commented something development-related anywhere.
A real treat for anyone who is interested in non-superficial glimpses at a game, thank you for doing this!

[xelaxander]

Really weird nobody from the OG team was contacted. Felipe seems like a reasonable guy to work with. Even just getting to pick his brain about what issues they had during development seems like good strategy for risk minimization.

[FlavourlessLife]

For a guy responsible for creating one of the best games ever made, he's surprisingly humble.

[Robert-ynov]

KSP2 was just starting to look appealing, and now it might all go down the toilet, very sad with the way the games industry has been goning in the last few months (thousands of layoffs and dozens of studio closures)

[terra]

This is one of the most beautiful and most sad interviews I've ever listened to

[ShadowZone]

Always great to listen to HarvesteR shed details on KSP development! Him saying he would have started with something like colonies and work from there is bang on how it should have gone. Almost like he knows what he's talking about ;)

One thing though to the dev team size mentioned at 23:50: The studio was 50 to 70 people. But actual engineers were never more than 20. Current credits (v0.2.1) show 18 people in "Programming/Engineering". And a part of the studio (smaller than the actual KSP2 team) was working on that secret second game.

[OperationDx]

OMG! They didn't even try and contact him. Dude! And I was thinking that HarvesteR didn't want anything to do with it. That makes this situation even more sad.

[MarcusHouse]

This was really really great to listen to. I didn't know a lot of this from those very early KSP days. Nice interview/collab mate.

[Kenionatus]

The "everything was on fire, all the time" said about the KSP1 development at 17:20 amusingly mirrors the way our Kerbal contraptions often work. (Just not with the stress of loosing your job if it burns down.)

[calabrais]

11:40 It's absolutely not an ego thing, and it's extremely weird. I'm a software engineer and we are always in contact with a SME (subject matter expert) or Technical Lead for a project. We would never take on something like this without at minimum hiring Felipe as a consultant. KSP2 was nothing but red flags from the start. Thanks Felipe for birthing such an amazing game and being brave enough to make it a reality.

[ylrltgj]

Half way through the video Im thinking "i wish this video came out BEFORE ksp2 was released... could have saved myself some money and heartache"
wow and at the end... starting from the end and working back, this guy is a genius

[scotianbank]

I think NASA, or some other aerospace agency should give Felipe some special recognition award or something like that (if they haven’t already). I mean, the amount of new engineers that will have or have had their careers start with KSP must be unprecedented. At the very least, it probably made a non insignificant portion of the youth population interested in space flight and exploration.

Thank you Felipe!! And greetings from Costa Rica!

[jackasw]

Wow its very weird that despite this game having such a large impact on my childhood hearing the voice of the creator for the first time is really cool.