Take-Two has acquired Kerbal Space Program

Via a press release, Grand Theft Auto, Civilization and XCOM publisher Take-Two has announced that it has acquired Kerbal Space Program—that's the same Kerbal Space Program that scored 96% from PC Gamer back in 2015. Take-Two might own the I.P. now, but development hasn't been wrestled away from its creator, Squad, who will "continue to provide support and ongoing development for the title through game updates and expansions", including the forthcoming Making History expansion that will launch later this year.

Squad has also made a statement about the purchase over on Steam.

"The important thing to know is that this big news doesn’t change much for the KSP community," the team states. "Squad and the current development team is still here and we’re hard at work on KSP and its future updates, but now we are fortunate enough to do so with the help of an experienced publisher like Take-Two, and we couldn’t be more excited and happy to see where our conjoint collaboration will take KSP forward."

The team reiterates that development of Making History will continue, while it's upholding its promise of providing free DLC to anyone who bought the game through April 2013. Take-Two has been "persistently knocking on our door trying to work with us for a long time", Squad says.

Squad has been in the news quite a bit lately. A year ago, lead developer Felipe Falanghe announced that he was leaving the studio, and then, just over a week ago, it came to light that Valve had hired former members of the development team, seemingly at around the start of this year. The following day, Squad released a statement saying that they "continue to be an independent studio with the core KSP team remaining at Squad".

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.