Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of 2K and Rockstar Games, reportedly cancelled a contract with Star Theory Games and tried to poach its staff after that. Star Theory Games is the team behind the Kerbal Space Program 2, which was being published by Private Division, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive. Kerbal Space Program is a space flight simulator and it was launched back in 2015.
The original game was developed by Squad back then, and it quickly garnered a lot of attention from the community as well as critics, with even NASA acknowledging the game. The development team also worked with NASA to bring a replica of NASA's own Asteroid Redirect Mission into the game. NASA's objective was to incite the interest of gamers in aeronautical science via the game. The development of the game was still in the hands of Squad when the original was acquired by Take-Two, and it kept adding updates to the game regularly, with the latest There’s No Place Like Home update giving a complete overhaul to the graphics of the game. The sequel to Kerbal Space Program was announced at Gamescom 2019, however, the development was shifted to Star Theory to ensure that Squad is able to focus on the original game.
According to a report on Bloomberg, Take-Two pulled out of the contract of developing Kerbal Space Program 2 from Star Theory Games two years after the game's development started. For an independent studio like Star Theory, the contract cancellation was a pretty big deal considering the fact that it was the only project it had at that time. According to its founders, Take-Two was planning to acquire the development team but they couldn't settle the terms of the agreement compelling Take-Two to take the decision. To make things worse, Michael Cook, Private Division's executive producer, started offering each Star Theory employee a chance to work on the very same game under a new studio. Surprisingly, this message came before the founders could brief the employees about the contract falling apart.
Despite the founders assuring that they would have enough resources to run the company and they would look for more deals, a number of employees decided to accept the lucrative offer. Take-Two went on to establish a new development studio, Intercept Games, and it comprised about one-third of Star Theory's staff. Star Theory lost its pillars which included some of the top employees in the company, however, they didn't give up hope. They started working on ideas to propose to the publishers at the Game Developers Conference. Unfortunately, that didn't go the studio's way and the coronavirus pandemic lead to the cancellation of the event. With nothing worthy of note being developed or planned - and difficult garnering interest as a result - the studio eventually dissolved on March 4, 2020.
The gaming industry has witnessed independent developers making some intrepid sacrifices to develop their game. Most of the time, the return on their labor is heavily dependant on the publishers they are working with. Take-Two is a billion-dollar venture, and the company is on a roll lately with games like GTA Online making almost $1200 a minute. Considering that, the whole fiasco seems extremely unethical for not only the developers of Kerbal Space Program 2 but the whole gaming industry in general.
Source: Bloomberg