Some developer left the full time development of Universe Sandbox 2

[Cesare]

I have noticed that some developers have left the workplace for developing Universe Sandbox 2. Please can you explain to me why that happened?

Please hire more developers, as many as possible.

[unclejoeussr]

Oh well that would explain the delays as of recent to updates and content.

As to why it happened, probably either lack of money, or maybe the developer didn't like the way things were being done, a third possibility would be that he/she just got bored or lost interest in the project and left.

All of the above is pure speculation and I am not affiliated in any way with the developers. Just wild guesses.

Where did you hear about this btw?

[Cesare]

I did not hear about this. There used to be around 14 developers, but now it seems like there are only 13. There should be replacements of developers.

[unclejoeussr]

They probably don't have the money to hire any more devs. Sadly there never gonna make any money unless they can make US2 appeal to wider audience.

What they need to do is add modding support so that people can actually add materials, and settings, and what not. It is my personal belief that if this game was fully moddable that it would be way more popular than it is right now, and way better. The lack of mods kills this game IMHO. I mean how stupid, modding is like free development of the game basically, but hey if they want to sabotage there program not my problem.

[Cesare]

There is a possibility for modding the colors of gas giants and rocky planets already, but I do agree with you that there should be more constructive modding abilities.

[Jar]

We're still in a great financial position with Universe Sandbox and continue to reinvest our money back into the project. We recently parted ways with a developer, but as with all jobs and all projects, sometimes people simply part ways with a project because they're not a good fit for it or because they're moving onto other things. To be clear, this is not a reason for any delay, and it's not any indication of the status of our development or sales. More recently, we hired another developer to work on sound. We may hire others in the future, too, but it's not always the case that the more people you throw at a problem the faster things get done.

We agree mods would be great, and it's something we want to explore more in the future. But there may be some conception of mods out there that are a bit incorrect. We can't simply flip a switch to enable mods, and what mods look like varies for different projects. We're working with a lot of complex systems, and it would be a huge undertaking to implement it, and likely a big undertaking for anyone working on mods.

[unclejoeussr]

My bad I didn't mean to come across like that, I don't imagine it would be easy or simple to add modding support, however I would say that no matter how difficult it might be to setup, in the long run it would be a well worth it IMHO, assuming you did make it possible I think it likely it would result in a far longer life for US2, as well as giving the game potentially far more content than you guys would be able to on your own.

The way I see it, the Devs should focus on a decent set of modding tools first, than once that's released you can let the community add new content and then the Devs would be free to focus on improving the engine and bug fixes.

Also in my experience games without modding support tend to not keep there playerbase for very long, and die rather more quickly compared to a game which is able to be constantly given new life by the community.

Let me be clear, I don't pretend to have any idea what all would be involved in doing this, but I for one think its absolutely necessary to keep this program alive for any really long term future.

[Cesare]

I am happy that Jar announced that the developers have good income and continue to invest for the development of Universe Sandbox 2. I am also happy that Jar mentioned that he will hire more developers in the near future for other areas within Universe Sandbox 2.

Please continue to improve and release updates for Universe Sandbox 2.