So. Let me get this straight....
Japster
Member Posts: 672
...Judging by this, am I right in thinking that YES, the Game developer side of things IS going to be dropped/not supported? - so where does this leave me in terms of actually trying to get my existing games released, that I'm still awaiting Gamesalad fixes for?:-
Brent's 'bumph'/sales pitch, from the site:-
"Since I joined as CEO in May 2016, our team has achieved these results:
- Successfully transformed from a game development platform business to a leading education technology company. (?! - not EXPANDED, clearly it states TRANSFORMED FROM -> TO)
...blah blah, education.... education.... ...education....
- Experienced a 180° company cultural shift with our team stretching into their true abilities, including the addition of excellent team members. (Again, 180° COMPANY cultural shift, I'm assuming that that is referring to the changes caused by the above)
...blah blah, education.... education.... ...education...."
So....
Is there any point my even continuing to hope that GS will EVER be again at a point where I could release a fully working, ads-revenue supported game, or am I just p***ing in the wind here?
Comments
Business talk for "we fired everyone"
Lol
Education is great, but it seems to make even more sense to teach someone how to use your software so they then continue to use it into professional adulthood. Unfortunately at the moment it seems that the plan is to stop at education. Maybe that will change.
http://jamie-cross.net/posts/ ✮ Udemy: Introduction to Mobile Games Development ✮ Learn Mobile Game Development in One Day Using Gamesalad ✮ My Patreon Page
Gamesalad was more like "our priorities have shifted" , next day everyone was gone,
Smooth
It's a joke, is what it is.
What ISN'T a joke is 3-4 years of head-screwing work, working around bugs, limitations, etc, to produce what I feel are a couple of genuinely impressive (in terms of showing what GS can do) titles, that I have spent 1000's of (unpaid) hours on, with a view to making that MASSIVE commitment pay off via ad-revenue and store presence, loyal users etc, and now, well, that's looking like 3-4 years of my life pretty much WASTED.
YES, I can try to re-create projects, YES, I learnt some new stuff, but the new stuff I learnt, and the clever workarounds I created, were pretty much related to GS, and GS only.
So yeah, I walk away a LITTLE wiser, and a LOT poorer, if this sh*tty trick education-only model is now the ONLY model they're running with.
A little honesty would have helped, right? - instead of just stringing along paying customers into a dead-end planned obsolescence of the VERY PRODUCT WE'VE INVESTED $100,000's between us, and YEARS of our lives creating projects in, instead of perhaps being honest, and admitting it's gonna get canned completely?! - But no, that don't pay the bills, and that's easy money right there, from loyal subscribing DEVELOPERS, so let's massage the truth a little, or just hey! - leave it out completely...
Why was I NOT surprised to read that crap spiel above? - Well, I'm hoping the supportive fans who condone everything GS does, those who defend them with immovable loyalty, can read between the lines and at least get themselves started on something else, to save having the learning curve start when the GS they know, love, and depend upon for a livelihood inevitably gets flushed down the toilet. :frowning:
Also probably goes hand-in-hand with that bit about 'increased revenue/profits' in the rest of the spiel I read (ie. 'increased' probably at least directly in line with those salaries no longer needing paying, hence true in a way, although not in the way that's portrayed...
)
Where is this new blurb, I can't seem to find it?
http://jamie-cross.net/posts/ ✮ Udemy: Introduction to Mobile Games Development ✮ Learn Mobile Game Development in One Day Using Gamesalad ✮ My Patreon Page
Not sure GS has any immovably loyal subscribers left. I think most of us are just trying to get through our projects while we still can, and secretly hope things will do a real 180 one day.
I've just come to terms with how GS is now, and I think we should all be honest with ourselves. GS isn't going to become the tool we all know it could be, unless something drastic happens.
At least we still have it, and at least we do get some updates, even if they're rather slow.
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In all seriousness though, I fully agree with Brent regarding this:
I'll find out the link and post it here mate...
Oh yeah, ironically enough, it's NOT on THIS site where it'd be easy to see... It's on a certain Brent Dusing's Linked-In profile.... if you're on Linked-In, you can read it yourself, but you have to be a member/joined, so I'm guessing it was figured a safe enough place to post (after all, who on here would possibly be inclined to go check out that linked-in page and spot that? - oh yeah, several of us, it appears...)...
Funny that it only mentions those game-changing, MASSIVELY IMPORTANT points above about GS, on there, and NO mention of what's planned / seemingly been achieved, on this site / forum... transparency?... er.... yeah. continued subs from un-knowing funders, more like?...
@jamie_c - There ya go mate, in the interests of transparency etc, I figured you guys might like to read it...
...and I'm not sure I'd call the current status of the Web product / company business model 'successful' - financially maybe, based on sales of what people have been promised it WILL be (sounds familiar?), but delivering? Industry-Best? - err... no.
im pretty sure they know for more than a year ago (when they announce the web creator for education) that they will be focused on education and not development.
But! they didn't have that ready, so they needed "and still need" our money to get there.
So they choose better don't said anything to keep us here paying for something will never get.
and when educational part is 100% self sustaining and don't need us anymore, thats when it will be announced, no more new features for publishing or revenue or anything that is not essential for education purposes.
i cancel the annual payment and have the monthly option meanwhile i make my transition to somewhere else, i believed many times that their where working on new things and always being
.
So, better be ready when the announce its made.
Death by a thousand cuts and I think I'm on 999...
Scary...
In the first paragraph:
Is that an indication that publishing capabilities will eventually be dropped? And you'll be able to play the games only using the GS Viewer? This gives the QR Code game loading for the Web Tool a truly nefarious spin...
On a more positive note, @Braydon_SFX told me there should be a Creator update and a State of GameSalad post coming shortly (I assume next week, unless they manage to push it today). The update should contain a ChartBoost API update, so I don't think they are pulling publishing just yet.
But still, anyone who is serious about game/app development and doesn't have at least a backup exit strategy at this moment is foolish and might get caught in painful limbo.
100% agree here. Anyone serious about app development needs to have a backup plan if things continue down this path.
I've partly rebuilt a couple of my better performing games in another game engine, hopefully I won't need to finish them off and publish them to replace the gamesalad versions - but better safe than sorry!
Maybe hes sensing whats in the wind, and just updating his LinkedIn profile with bullshit as he gets ready for the ship to sink.
Most folk only update their LinkedIn when they
a) get promoted and get a new title
b) when they're actively on the look out for a new job.
@Japster, thanks for posting. No wonder I couldn't find on the GS site!
My subscription is about to expire, next month, sad to say I won't be renewing anytime soon. I'm sure I'll keep up-to-date on what goes on with the software, but I think I'm going to jump into coding and see how that goes. It's always fun and good to learn something new!
http://jamie-cross.net/posts/ ✮ Udemy: Introduction to Mobile Games Development ✮ Learn Mobile Game Development in One Day Using Gamesalad ✮ My Patreon Page
They did announce this in fall 2016. Online tool and education focus. I guess I was hoping that devs might benefit along the way. I hope the education direction focus works out for them.
But what happens to our games when they ditch the development side?
Does that mean we cant update our games and make revenue and when something is broken we cant submit an update?
What a nightmare.
And they give no warnings to new users who could be spending a lot of money on their GS project...
@jamie_c - No worries mate, a fellow inmate opened my eyes to this, and it was only fair to pass it on and give people a chance to see the writing on the wall...
I have to say, I don't think you'll go wrong with a certain 'Game' 'Making' tool... Could be worth trying that, I've found the transition VERY easy, and massively more powerful/flexible... Oh, and you can MERGE and PASTE code directly into it.... Ain't never gonna happen with GS....
Sad to say, this latest bit of info opened my eyes to the fact that clearly, GS do not give a s**t about what happens to us, or our years of investment, 1,000's of hours spent developing products to potentially never see the light of day thanks to THEIR decision to change the company, product, and market from underneath it's paying customers and lifeblood...
@pHghost - Good point - I'd had an uneasy feeling after reading that too, but I think you've hit the nail on the head mate...
Definitely as regards exit strategies - if anyone doesn't have one at this point / with this knowledge, they'd have to be crazy... They can always seek us out for advice too, if they need to - I've already got a great example of how quickly I've found a much better, supported solution and community that I'm already halfway to publishing my first WINDOWS game ON STEAM too, with, after just a few weeks... Happy to advise and nudge anyone here who PM's me...
@Toque - True mate, BUT, they led us to believe it was a solution for ALL of us, and that we'd co-exist, all benefiting from these 'new and improved' tools, still being able to carry on using GS and publishing games, all of the while taking our (substantial) 'subs' money...
Very different to what's being said above... Pretty disgusting tbh....
@Zwire ... yep. Got it in one mate... and if you're not even shelling out (err.. subscribing) at any point, then hey! - you can't even OPEN your project to view it, and hopefully manually piece a working version together in another engine...
...which obviously means that yes, ONCE they 'flick the kill switch' on us, we are well and truly screwed, if we haven't yet jumped ship and/or migrated (with the workload THAT entails) our hard work to other solutions... nice.
Someone definitely needs to produce a GS project export helper to help affected users (including myself, I don't fancy writing Parcel Monkey from scratch again... for F!*%'s sake). @Manto - if we kickstarted you, how about it fella?....
Oh yeah, and your last point... It just shows how unethically they operate these days. So, get someone to naively commit to a year's subs, on a product that may not even BE here in a year, and certainly won't be supported other than token 'riot-calming' measures, once they've invested (like ourselves) a HUGE amount of time in learning it...
Oh, and to think I didn't even think to highlight the first bit of the first paragraph - THAT kind of says it all too...
"GameSalad is a leading company in Computer Science education"
Yeah, pretty much re-branded themselves right there. Not even any mention of what it WAS, other than the bit that mentions the 'successful' transformation FROM that, so read what you will of that....
The writing was on the wall and I choose to continue on instead of facing reality.
I see the edge problem in my game. I’ve tested other engines games and they can touch closer to the edge.
Even my older published games I can touch closer to the edge. I think you posted exact measurements in red at one time? Or was that phGhost?
I think all resources are being poured into the online tool. I really hope you can publish your game as some point.
But when the CEO says they are converting it to an education tool. I’m guessing that’s what is happening. And pretty much what we seen in the last few months. The indi dev side of things will not get fixes...????
Watch an update will pop up in the next hour and prove me wrong.......
Yep, definitely got WORSE with recent versions mate - Catflap never had the problem, and I daren't re-publish some fixes I wrote for it, for that very reason - ie. it'll be broken with the camera issue, and the touch issues...
It's a pretty pathetic situation tbh, but at least I now know EXACTLY where I stand with these people....
The affected touch area is HUGE.... I posted an image somewhere showing where a fellow forum user's buttons would have to be, to NOT be affected, and it was laughably far away from the edges...
Yep, I wrote a tester program, and ALL of the outside / edge buttons I placed were affected, with some others not even near the edge ALSO being affected quite badly.... completely unusable, as @Zwire has unfortunately found. He's written a perfectly good game, and suffering the exact same thing I knew I would have, had I released mine. Crappy reviews, and mass uninstalls, probably for those people to avoid his games in future too. Completely unacceptable, and grossly unfair that it's STILL an issue, when people are paying subs monthly!
I've only been using Gamesalad for about 6 months but I decided to pull the plug on my sub after realising that support is pretty much grinding to a halt.
I've got quite a few bigger projects in process, but looking ahead 12 months (for realistic-ish release dates), I'm pretty pessimistic about if I can even publish when they're complete. How long has High Sierra beta been available for, 6 months? And still no stable Creator build (and probably another major MacOS update on its way in 5 or 6 months)
So I lose a few hundred hours of (albeit enjoyable - as for me it's just a hobby) development time. I really feel for the folks who have YEARS of investment in this engine.
If Gamesalad is going to shut down the dev side of the business, they should open source the engine (and publisher) at least. But.. yeah.
Exactly mate - TBH, if you've spent 6 months learning it, and realised you're in a dead end, I'd definitely suggest trying the 'other' closest 'game' maker out there... you'll find the transition pretty painless, and hey, it's FREE to try... I tried it, and there was enough to the free version to show me that it's definitely better, way more functionality, and pretty similar in how you build your games, to get a running start if moving across from GS... (plus, ALL of the pro's, and minus the con's...)
@AlchimiaStudios - Unfortunately you're absolutely right, and that fact that they STILL DGAF speaks volumes too, but you know what would have been more ethical? - if they KNOW what they're planning, maybe to have built an exporter to help those of us forced to make the change? - that would have bought a LOT of goodwill back, and possibly some of our blessing, but no, underhandedly doing this and hoping no-one would notice, then leaving their loyal supporters completely in the s**t is NOT the ethical thing to do.... but hey, quelle surprise...
In all honesty, I'm beginning to think that the only coding talent that could have done this, AND that could have fixed GS to an acceptable level, has long since left the ramshackle GS shack / ruins.