Was this a hack?
End of the Machinery Game Engine
31–40 of 101 posts
Re: End of the Machinery Game Engine
#32This looks pretty shady. The current EULA on the website includes a bit that says they can terminate your license and ask you to delete all source and binaries entirely at their discretion[1]. The latest copy on the wayback machine from May does not have that bit.[2] 1. https://ourmachinery.com/eula.html 2. https://web.archive.org/web/20220529230958/https://ourmachin... So they used the 'we can update the eula at any…
I've always thought this kind of "we can update the EULA" clause pretty much invalidated the whole idea that you should carefully read EULAs. If one of your starting rules is "the rules are whatever I say they are" then there's no point even reading the other rules. In reality, of course, nothing means anything until it's tried in court.
> If one of your starting rules is "the rules are whatever I say they are" then there's no point even reading the other rules.
Re: End of the Machinery Game Engine
#33How do these developers ever expect to be taken seriously again? This is a reputation killer; no one should ever trust them.
Re: End of the Machinery Game Engine
#34How do these developers ever expect to be taken seriously again? This is a reputation killer; no one should ever trust them.
Probably sold the tech to a buyer who is trying to maximize the value of their purchase, which they think they can achieve by screwing everyone currently using the engine as much as possible and doing something else with it instead. Who knows, maybe its new purpose is to be placed into an incinerator.
Re: End of the Machinery Game Engine
#35Probably not the way they hoped to reach HN front page...
Having followed the project from the beginning, the blog, the podcast: I hope they (the people) are ok.
Re: End of the Machinery Game Engine
#36For a moment I thought this was my fault because I had just asked for a free academic license, and somehow that would be the final straw :(
I was very excited to start reading the C code and was hoping a Nim port would be possible. Sad to hear I’m this late to the party because now I can’t even enjoy the blog posts.
Re: End of the Machinery Game Engine
#37Ceasing development is one thing, rug pulling licensees by demanding they delete the framework they've built their projects on is another thing entirely. The hell happened at Our Machinery? The Machinery was a young engine but it had pedigree as the spiritual successor to Bitsquid, which did ship in a number of commercial games until it was killed by Autodesk after they acquired it. The main developers went on to fou…
Maybe this is part of an out-of-court settlement with Autodesk to avoid a lawsuit.
Then they need better lawyers.
Re: End of the Machinery Game Engine
#38Holy shit, what madness is this.
On the list of things to worry about, this was always like #100. #1 was a lack of updates, but a rug pull? I mean, what the hell?
Re: End of the Machinery Game Engine
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe this is part of an out-of-court settlement with Autodesk to avoid a lawsuit.
Then they need better lawyers.
Maybe, we don't have any idea how bad their legal position is. They might be considering themselves lucky to avoid prison, like Anthony Levandowski. 50 years ago doing what he did was normal; it was how Silicon Valley got built. Since then the laws have changed.
Re: End of the Machinery Game Engine
#40I'm sorry, is this in any way legal? Did they just tell people to delete their games? Like... I'm pretty sure this kind of rug pull would destroy any company that relies on this engine. 14 days for a full re-write is insane.
I doubt it's legal and it will certainly destroy companies. And what makes it worse, is that my best guess is that they are going to capitalize on this move. Maybe repackage it as some other high priced software. Either way, the whole company should be ashamed.
I use Godot and now I'm wondering if this can't happen at Godot as well. Perhaps it's time to switch to Unity. You pay but at least they have sort of stood the test of time.