Kerbal Space Program development has ended after ten years
As attention turns to KSP2
Kerbal Space Program update 1.12.2 is live. It's a relatively minor set of fixes, but it marks the completion of the 1.12 update - and, in turn, the end of "sustained development" of KSP. It's been a fun ten years, but its development team are now turning their full attention to work on Kerbal Space Program 2.
It had already been announced that Kerbal development was coming to a close with 1.12, but the latest patch notes brought new finality. "Even though we still may release a minor patch here and there when needed, with this patch we are officially completing the 1.12 update, as well as the sustained development of the original KSP, as we are now shifting gears towards the development of KSP2," reads the post.
The 1.12.2 patch itself fixes over 90 bugs, and adds a few improvements "such as a locking functionality to docking node rotations that allows autostruts to cross over docked nodes." I don't know what that means - and my confusion is a fitting tribute to Kerbal Space Porgram, honestly.
I was an early adopter of KSP back in 2011, playing builds before it came to Steam Early Access. You couldn't even get into space when I was playing it most, but I spent over a dozen hours happily building rockets and trying to reach greater heights. I have returned to it periodically in the years since and seeing it grow and develop has been a pleasure. I never could get a handle on docking ships together in orbit, though.
I don't expect games to remain updated forever, but I'm a little sentimental about Kerbal being effectively finished. It's an inspirational game in many ways, and it generates sentimentality by doing a far better job at communicating the difficulties and grand ambition of space travel than any movie or billionaire-funded PR jolly.
Kerbal Space Program 2 was announced back in 2019 and has had a bumpy journey so far, with development changing between studios. Its announcement trailer remains a stunner, inspired a fanmade trailer for the original game:
