Before we start another huge chain of people saying this is the death of Flash because all the developers will leave the platform due to revenue sharing, please read what the requirements actually are. This will only apply to very specific apps and developers. Unless you are planning to use Unity or UnrealEngine in Flash, this will most likely not apply to you.
Right now it applies to very specific apps and developers. Tomorrow, if this model shakes out favorably to Adobe, it may not. The frog boils slowly.
I'm an Adobe Flash fanboy, but even I'm starting to become pro HTML5 for rich media. I can't understand why Adobe is making these decisions when they're competing with an upcoming technology that has a such large & growing fanbase.
This 9% completely changes the distribution model. Previously when you made a swf, it's yours to keep and do as you want. You paid for the tools to make it, in the same way you pay for a hammer. Now you're being charged for running the swf in certain ways, which will make policing it hard, scare off new developers and cause pointless lawsuits.
IE 10 touch and iOS won't work with Flash anyway, so I would hope social game developers are at least looking at HTML5 for their next projects. I sometimes wonder why their isn't a cross platform "game browser"? It seems one of the cross platform game engines could do a much better job than flash. Adoption is a problem, but people seem to be able to download a lot of apps these days.
A big reason that Flash still wins for game development is that audio support sucks in HTML5 and silent games are no fun. An example - Mobile Safari only lets you play sound on one channel.
Flash is also anywhere from 2 to 3 times faster then html5+javascript for high performance games.
We recently started using the Unity3D plugin in addition to Flash. We considered packaging Unity in Flash, but there are some missing features so we went straight for the plugin.
Our site is for 8-12 year old kids, so it's not the most technical audience. The Unity plugin installs in a few seconds without requiring admin rights--even most computers under corporate lockdown can install it. We've had a total of one customer service complaint, which was resolved with a little explanation.
In conclusion, just for 3D content just forget flash and go straight to the Unity plugin.
IE 10 touch and iOS won't work with Flash anyway, so I would hope social game developers are at least looking at HTML5 for their next projects. I sometimes wonder why their isn't a cross platform "game browser"? It seems one of the cross platform game engines could do a much better job than flash. Adoption is a problem, but people seem to be able to download a lot of apps these days.
A big reason that Flash still wins for game development is that audio support sucks in HTML5 and silent games are no fun. An example - Mobile Safari only lets you play sound on one channel.
Unity had better audio support than Flash (3D positioned audio right out of the box).
HTML5 may get there someday, but Unity is already there now.
As far as I know there's no way for anything written in ActionScript to use ApplicationDomain.domainMemory, so this really does only apply to C/C++/Unity games targeting the Flash runtime (something that's not even possible yet). It wouldn't affect any game currently on Kongregate as far as I know. Still not a good sign though. If you've got great developer tools, then charge for the tools!
The funny thing is that Adobe does charge for the tools. Flash Professional retails for $700!
Before we start another huge chain of people saying this is the death of Flash because all the developers will leave the platform due to revenue sharing, please read what the requirements actually are. This will only apply to very specific apps and developers. Unless you are planning to use Unity or UnrealEngine in Flash, this will most likely not apply to you.
Right now it applies to very specific apps and developers. Tomorrow, if this model shakes out favorably to Adobe, it may not. The frog boils slowly.
This is not particularly enlightening. Any number of things are possible. It was possible for Adobe to institute unreasonable pricing terms before this announcement too.
EDIT: Uh-oh, somebody downvoted this. Quite worrisome, because right now it only applies to my comment, but tomorrow, it may not. Right? Because apparently one data point constitutes a trend.
IE 10 touch and iOS won't work with Flash anyway, so I would hope social game developers are at least looking at HTML5 for their next projects. I sometimes wonder why their isn't a cross platform "game browser"? It seems one of the cross platform game engines could do a much better job than flash. Adoption is a problem, but people seem to be able to download a lot of apps these days.
You cannot possibly put HTML5, mostly three.js at this time (thank you Mr Doob, you rock Sir), at the same level as what Flash is able to do on a browser or what Flex is able to do on mobile. It is also not supported in some present browsers. Neither targets "social gaming" at all. Adobe is doing HD specs at 60 fps, full GPU render support. What other cross plat does this in the browser at this point and what other cross plat that does this aims at social game developers even? HTML 5 does a better job at what ? 8 bit looking socket based casual games and full 3D are not the same thing. IE 10 is lining up to miss on browser level AAA looking games and iOS prefers to determine the "future" where it is able to vote, none of this brings hardcore gamers in no matter how anyone may want to present it. Look at the triple A titles that sell, look at what Abode is doing, then look at what three.js does, does it look like social gaming to you ? Let's be realistic and not just play along to a party line. In the process lets also not build up casual gaming to be something that it is not, some sort of made up standard for what gaming should be just because it is of interest to push for specific tech at a specific point in time. It is getting old already.
I'm an Adobe Flash fanboy, but even I'm starting to become pro HTML5 for rich media. I can't understand why Adobe is making these decisions when they're competing with an upcoming technology that has a such large & growing fanbase. This 9% completely changes the distribution model. Previously when you made a swf, it's yours to keep and do as you want. You paid for the tools to make it, in the same way you pay for a h…
"I can't understand why Adobe is making these decisions when they're competing with an upcoming technology that has a such large & growing fanbase."
I think Adobe is currently a divided company. Part of it want to remain with Flash and view HTML5 as a competitior, while the other part is into HTML5 and see it as the future. Adobe makes their money from development tools, after all. The technology used to present the content is less important as long as people use their tools, even if Flash player gave them a sort-of monopoly on it's creation.
As far as I know there's no way for anything written in ActionScript to use ApplicationDomain.domainMemory, so this really does only apply to C/C++/Unity games targeting the Flash runtime (something that's not even possible yet). It wouldn't affect any game currently on Kongregate as far as I know. Still not a good sign though. If you've got great developer tools, then charge for the tools!
The funny thing is that Adobe does charge for the tools. Flash Professional retails for $700!
https://www.adobe.com/products/flex.html <- free.
All the other tools can be found for free too, specific swf packaging, etc. But now it is down to sprite sheets so...