Former Kerbal Space Program devs join Valve

It transpires that the developers who left the Kerbal Space Program team last year headed to Valve.

PCGamesN reports that former Valve architect and environmental designer Roger Lundeen revealed the news in the Game Dev Unchained podcast.

[Valve] are still buying up mod teams,” he said. There’s the group that made Kerbal Space [Program] – I think that happened about five or six months ago. They gave that entire team jobs.

Valve itself then confirmed the news: Yes, they joined a little while ago and we will have more news about what they are doing soon.”

It was announced last October that eight of the main developers behind Kerbal Space Program had left the studio, although developer Squad assured fans the game would live on.

In a post onRedditeight developers announced their departure from the Kerbal Space Program team. Mike (Mu), Bill (Taniwha), Nathanael (NathanKell), Sbastien (Sarbian), Jim (Romfarer), Brian (Arsonide), Chris (Porkjet) and Nathan (Claw) have all left the project, after completing the 1.2 update.

All good things must come to an end, and so it is for us,” said the group of developers. It is time for each of us to move on from Squad. Kerbal Space Program is an incredible game and has truly been a joy to create. We have greatly enjoyed working together with such a tightly-knit, professional, and talented development team, and with such a wonderful community.

"Over the last update cycle we’ve taken KSP to new heights and achieved great things with such a small team. We’ve finished work on update 1.2 and when Squad releases it, it will be a product of which we can be truly proud. We hope you share that opinion and we hope you enjoy playing it as much as we loved creating it.”

UPDATE: At the request of Squad, the headline has been altered from ‘Kerbal Space Program team has joined Valve’ as they felt it suggested the entire development team had abandoned the game. A Squad statement reads:

"There was news today that former KSP developers have joined Valve. We want to clarify that Squad is not joining Valve, and we continue to be an independent studio with the core KSP team remaining at Squad, hard at work on the improved KSP for consoles port, Update 1.3 and the Making History Expansion. The KSP community shouldn’t be concerned about this news having any impact on the game.

"Regarding the developers joining Valve, it is important to note that we have had several people working on our team over the years, and it is common among development studios for team members to come and go. If some of them joined Valve, it is on their own behalf and we wish them good luck and success in their current and future endeavors.

"So do not worry, everything continues normally with KSP. Happy launchings."