11 ms·

End of the Machinery Game Engine

209 points by eigenbom 4y ago

The Machinery game engine seems terminated. From email: Thanks so much for supporting The Machinery. Unfortunately, we’ve reached a point where it’s no longer possible for us to continue in the current direction. Per Section 14 of the End User License Agreement, the development of The Machinery will cease, we will no longer offer GitHub access, all licenses are terminated as of 14 days after the date of this notice, and you are requested to delete The Machinery source code and binaries. You will receive a full refund of your annual license payment through Gumroad. We really appreciated you being a part of the Our Machinery Community. We hope we have been helpful in some way to your development needs. -Our Machinery

nudpiedo 4y ago
what happened and what direction is going to take the project from now on? You know, the web page has barely any links at all from a product which seems it was good, if it ever was something else than a landing page. P.D. add "Tell HN:" to the title or a link to the web page
jsheard 4y ago
Ceasing 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 found Our Machinery.
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  Not only that, but they'd have to delete and force consumers to delete any copies of games published that use the license, unless I am misunderstanding it. There's no way that's enforceable (IANAL, but good lord).
- kragen 4y ago
  Maybe this is part of an out-of-court settlement with Autodesk to avoid a lawsuit.
  - danybittel 4y ago
    Then they need better lawyers.
    - kragen 4y ago
      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.
      - elefanten 4y ago
        Curious if you could supply any specific examples of that being normal in old SV? Of people taking a massive cache of proprietary work, including original research done by colleagues? Genuine question.
        kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
        Fairchild semiconductor is one example.
        p_l 4y ago
        At best the "traitorous eight" took with them the direction of research and work they wanted, which wasn't supported by Schockley - and Schockley did try to lockdown as much of the IP he could, taking patents out even if they were dubiously assigned to company.
        kragen 4y ago
        Yes, my claim wasn't that investors approved of their employees leaving to compete with them; my claim was that, since then, the laws had changed in ways that gave them more power to prevent it, for example by vastly expanding the scope of trade-secret law. Levandowski wasn't accused of infringing any patents. Given the expansive scope of papers donated to historical archives by various engineers from that period, it would be at least atypical if they only took the direction of research and work they wanted, rather than extensive knowhow and documentation of the processes they'd developed while working for Shockley (not "Schockley"). Nowadays the practices that made Silicon Valley possible are illegal in California but legal in China.
- gabstv 4y ago
  They also nuked the forums, discord, every other social.
josephcsible 4y ago
Hopefully this will be a lesson that proprietary licenses subject you to rug pulls with no recourse, which FOSS licenses protect you from. Had Machinery been FOSS, then you could at least still keep using the last version of the engine that they did release, and even fork it to continue development yourself.
- the_gremlin 4y ago
  the funniest thing is that they were going on and on about how they would love to make the engine open-source so it could still be developed in the case they stopped working on it
charcircuit 4y ago
So everyone's games using it will need to be taken down too? That is so strange.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- faeranne 4y ago
  Section 3.B of the EULA says no, but also that can be changed at any time, so possibly. I have a friend who released a game using Machine earlier this year, and they're scrambling right now to get a lawyer to look at this. Current opinion is that the 14 day limit means they can't work on it anymore, but current game binaries are free to remain online. They're already working to replace the engine, as they have no faith that 3.B won't be expunged as well.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    Don't you have to agree to new EULA terms? Of course a company is free to update a EULA, but it's an agreement between two parties not a one sided mandate.
MikeBVaughn 4y ago
"... all licenses are terminated as of 14 days after the date of this notice, and you are requested to delete The Machinery source code and binaries." "We hope we have been helpful in some way to your development needs." That's a load-bearing "some way," if I've ever seen one.
jwitthuhn 4y ago
This 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 https://ourmachinery.com/eula.html 2. https://web.archive.org/web/20220529230958/https://ourmachinery.com/eula.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220529230958/https://ourmachin... So they used the 'we can update the eula at any time at our discretion' clause to add a 'we can tell you to delete your source and binaries' clause and then immediately invoked it.
- MikeBVaughn 4y ago
  I was wondering about that. When you go to the Our Machine web page, it shows the EULA having been updated yesterday, which immediately made me suspicious.
- taneq 4y ago
  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.
  - infogulch 4y ago
    > 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.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    There is absolutely no point in reading any user agreements or terms of service. The following statements effectively summarize all such documents: > you own nothing > you have no rights > you promise not to try and exercise any right you think you have > you agree to binding arbitration with the firm we pay, just in case you ever get it in your silly little head that you do have rights > you cannot do anything the company doesn't like > the company can do anything it wants whether you like it or not > the company is not responsible for anything ever > the company makes absolutely no guarantees about anything > the company owns everything
echelon 4y ago
> all licenses are terminated as of 14 days after the date of this notice, and you are requested to delete The Machinery source code and binaries If I had invested a year into building a game on their engine, and they told me to delete my game, I would sue. This is serious monetary harm being inflicted upon developers. If they're going to drop the engine as a product, I would expect a perpetual "same-version, no further support" license offered to existing users. That's the bare minimum these folks could do. This way of handling things is screwing over anyone that bet their project on the engine in the biggest way possible. It is not trivial to change engines while in flight. They're asking people to do a complete rewrite. And if they're really closing up shop, why not release the engine as open source? Are they getting bought out silently? Makes no sense.
- myrryr 4y ago
  Patent / Copyright issues would fit this.
  - bogwog 4y ago
    > Patent That's very concerning if true. Are there any game engine patents significant enough to cause something this catastrophic? I hope instead that it has to do with issues related to whatever contract they signed when they sold Bitsquid to Autodesk. (e.g. a non-compete clause or similar)
rwbt 4y ago
Did they get acquired by some big company? Their blogposts always felt like they want to be acqui-hired.
ivraatiems 4y ago
Can we see a screenshot or some other confirmation that this happened? Not saying it didn't, but it'd be a great way to tank a competitor's business if it were fake. I wanna be sure before I get a pitchfork out. To the extent this is legitimate, it definitely seems like grounds for a lawsuit. IANAL, so can't say if it'd succeed, but I am not convinced the last-minute EULA change would save them.
- zlsa 4y ago
  Termination email: https://host.zlsadesign.com/rkHpL6ET5.png https://host.zlsadesign.com/rkHpL6ET5.png Email about the EULA change that added the termination clause two days ago: https://host.zlsadesign.com/SkfpU6ETq.png https://host.zlsadesign.com/SkfpU6ETq.png
  - ivraatiems 4y ago
    Thank you! This is definitely unacceptable. Are you considering legal action?
    - zlsa 4y ago
      Agreed, this is a crazy outcome. I don't actually use the engine; I evaluated it a while ago for hobby projects but never went beyond that. So this doesn't directly affect me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jsheard 4y ago
  Aside from second hand copies of the email, you can see that nearly all links to ourmachinery.com now 404. They deleted everything besides the frontpage and EULA page, a shame since their blog was a good resource.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
faeranne 4y ago
I'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.
- faeranne 4y ago
  Actually, I might know someone who can answer this. Or, at least they'll have to figure it out. I didn't realize this was that platform. A friend started a company last year to build a game based on this, and I'm pretty sure they already released said game.
  - faeranne 4y ago
    They're gonna reach out and see how far this extends. According to 3.B, the game would be a "derivative work", and as such shouldn't be subject to this requirement. They've already started working on replacing it with Godot.
- devd00d 4y ago
  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.
  - internetter 4y ago
    I really would not think above switching to unity considering in the past few months they have layed off hundreds of employees, the CEO called game developers "fucking idiots", and they merged with a malware distributor
  - 10987654321 4y ago
    Godot is MIT-licensed so no, they can't arbitrarily revoke your license and force you to stop developing your game. What they could theoretically do is stop developing it, or change the license for all newer versions of the engine to one that would force you to pay to use it (or similar). In which case Godot would most likely be forked on the same day and a big part of the current developers would just move over to the fork.
snickerbockers 4y ago
Wtf is/was "the machinery"?
- adamdusty 4y ago
  Well it used to be a game engine. It was on people's radar because the devs had previous success with a different game engine and they wrote fairly technical dev blogs about the process.
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  GamesFromScratch has a nice intro that's still up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_8utTBfE-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_8utTBfE-U
  - kencausey 4y ago
    And the same content creator on this engine today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUJyms9WstQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUJyms9WstQ
myrryr 4y ago
I'm guessing copyright or patent issues. That would explain their "you are requested to delete The Machinery source code and binaries."
UnrealUserSL 4y ago
- google234123 4y ago
  Any additional info to back this up? What specific issues?
UnrealUserSL 4y ago
japhib 4y ago
Was this a hack?
voakbasda 4y ago
How do these developers ever expect to be taken seriously again? This is a reputation killer; no one should ever trust them.
- infogulch 4y ago
  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.
CraftingLinks 4y ago
Probably 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.
seanstrom 4y ago
For 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.
- devd00d 4y ago
  You dodged a bullet. Me too. I just started my 3D journey, dabbling with Godot, Three.js and Unity. If I had stumbled upon Machinery and decided to use, I would have been annoyed now.
mathgladiator 4y ago
Holy 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?
KronisLV 4y ago
> ...you are requested to delete The Machinery source code and binaries. This is pretty weird. Then again, in regards to the engine itself dying, I feel like this is inevitable for many of the projects out there. For example, there was the Xenko engine which was later renamed to Stride: https://www.stride3d.net/ https://www.stride3d.net/ It's actually a nice project, has lots of great features and feels like it should be a more open alternative to Unity, whilst being similarly easy to use. However, compare the attention it is getting in comparison to something like Godot: - https://github.com/stride3d/stride - https://github.com/godotengine/godot On OpenCollective, Stride has an estimated annual budget of around 12k USD, whereas Godot gets around 15k USD per month on Patreon. Stride has a bit under 100 contributors, Godot has almost 2000. Godot gets hype on various game development subreddits regularly, yet Stride gets no such love. Ergo, it's probably pretty easy to draw a trajectory of what the next 10 years might bring for either, with one probably getting more features and development and becoming a mainstay of the indie scene, when compared to the other. But the great thing is that if whatever engine you use has an open license, you cannot have it be taken away from you (as long as you have all of the actual executables and don't depend on external services).
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Stride looks good, but am I right in thinking that unlike Godot, it doesn't support macOS or Linux as a deployment target?
  - tebjan 4y ago
    Stride can deploy games to win, macOS, linux, iOS and android.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      If that's the case then the website could really do with an update as that's the first thing any dev, studio or publisher looks at in 2022. "Can we reach our target demographic?"
      - 4y ago
alajmo 4y ago
For those interested in the blog posts and other technical information about the engine they shared with the public, check out: https://books.ourmachinery.com/ https://books.ourmachinery.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20220529231010/https://ourmachinery.com/post/ http://web.archive.org/web/20220529231010/https://ourmachine... https://github.com/OurMachinery/themachinery-books https://github.com/OurMachinery/themachinery-books
- gabstv 4y ago
  https://github.com/OurMachinery/themachinery-books https://github.com/OurMachinery/themachinery-books is 404 Probably deleted
  - psydvl 4y ago
    It cached in web archive too And if you accurate and patient enough, I think, you can manually copy latest state of repo http://web.archive.org/web/20220801082043/https://github.com/OurMachinery/themachinery-books http://web.archive.org/web/20220801082043/https://github.com...
userbinator 4y ago
IANAL but that doesn't sound like it would be enforceable at all. Consider that even in the case of something like a (physical) product recall, it would not be legal for them to break into your house to take them back.
dasz 4y ago
I'd be interested in the backstory to this. (Like everyone else I guess) Seems like I dodged a bullet. I was looking at this a few months ago. Decided to play with love2d instead. Did a few projects in it. Then I got into unreal engine. A further distraction via cryengine used up the remainder of my time. I was about to get into the machinery in September. Wow. Godot was to be October. So yeah. Bring that forwards. That EULA is likely a bad idea in general. It's also most likely against the law in some jurisdictions. The backstory would be of interest mainly for probably avoiding these Devs in future if there wasn't a good reason for the debacle. Sour taste all round.
stephc_int13 4y ago
This is sad, I've been following their work for some time and I think they were onto something, many good design ideas, very clean albeit a bit verbose sometimes. I'd like to know what is the underlying issue? Disagreement between founders? Acquisition? Legal problem? Not enough funding? Not enough customers?
enqk 4y ago
This only makes sense if they got into legal problems with a powerful entity which would have raised issues with software patents or copyright on the Our Machinery engine. Presumably also with some sort of NDA attached to it?
999900000999 4y ago
Well, I can't wait for Godot 4 + C# now. After trying Godot 3.5, it felt like an inferior Unity. The 4 alpha feels great. My big fear with Unity isn't a total collapse, but gradual suckification of the engine. For now it's still the easiest way to build amazing games, but things are changing. I'd be surprised if Godot or another FOSS engine wasn't dominant by 2025, or at the very least viewed as Blender is compared to Maya.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  The thing about Godot is that you are always… waiting for Godot.
scott_siskind 4y ago
Anyone got a mirror of a release zip (such as https://ourmachinery.com/releases/2022.5/the-machinery-2022.5.a-linux.zip https://ourmachinery.com/releases/2022.5/the-machinery-2022.... ) ?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

209 points by eigenbom 4y ago

nudpiedo 4y ago

what happened and what direction is going to take the project from now on? You know, the web page has barely any links at all from a product which seems it was good, if it ever was something else than a landing page. P.D. add "Tell HN:" to the title or a link to the web page

jsheard 4y ago

Ceasing 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 found Our Machinery.

ivraatiems 4y ago
Not only that, but they'd have to delete and force consumers to delete any copies of games published that use the license, unless I am misunderstanding it. There's no way that's enforceable (IANAL, but good lord).
kragen 4y ago
Maybe this is part of an out-of-court settlement with Autodesk to avoid a lawsuit.
- danybittel 4y ago
  Then they need better lawyers.
  - kragen 4y ago
    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.
    - elefanten 4y ago
      Curious if you could supply any specific examples of that being normal in old SV? Of people taking a massive cache of proprietary work, including original research done by colleagues? Genuine question.
      - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
        Fairchild semiconductor is one example.
        p_l 4y ago
        At best the "traitorous eight" took with them the direction of research and work they wanted, which wasn't supported by Schockley - and Schockley did try to lockdown as much of the IP he could, taking patents out even if they were dubiously assigned to company.
        kragen 4y ago
        Yes, my claim wasn't that investors approved of their employees leaving to compete with them; my claim was that, since then, the laws had changed in ways that gave them more power to prevent it, for example by vastly expanding the scope of trade-secret law. Levandowski wasn't accused of infringing any patents. Given the expansive scope of papers donated to historical archives by various engineers from that period, it would be at least atypical if they only took the direction of research and work they wanted, rather than extensive knowhow and documentation of the processes they'd developed while working for Shockley (not "Schockley"). Nowadays the practices that made Silicon Valley possible are illegal in California but legal in China.
gabstv 4y ago
They also nuked the forums, discord, every other social.

josephcsible 4y ago

Hopefully this will be a lesson that proprietary licenses subject you to rug pulls with no recourse, which FOSS licenses protect you from. Had Machinery been FOSS, then you could at least still keep using the last version of the engine that they did release, and even fork it to continue development yourself.

the_gremlin 4y ago
the funniest thing is that they were going on and on about how they would love to make the engine open-source so it could still be developed in the case they stopped working on it

charcircuit 4y ago

So everyone's games using it will need to be taken down too? That is so strange.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
faeranne 4y ago
Section 3.B of the EULA says no, but also that can be changed at any time, so possibly. I have a friend who released a game using Machine earlier this year, and they're scrambling right now to get a lawyer to look at this. Current opinion is that the 14 day limit means they can't work on it anymore, but current game binaries are free to remain online. They're already working to replace the engine, as they have no faith that 3.B won't be expunged as well.
- ehnto 4y ago
  Don't you have to agree to new EULA terms? Of course a company is free to update a EULA, but it's an agreement between two parties not a one sided mandate.

MikeBVaughn 4y ago

"... all licenses are terminated as of 14 days after the date of this notice, and you are requested to delete The Machinery source code and binaries." "We hope we have been helpful in some way to your development needs." That's a load-bearing "some way," if I've ever seen one.

jwitthuhn 4y ago

This 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 https://ourmachinery.com/eula.html 2. https://web.archive.org/web/20220529230958/https://ourmachinery.com/eula.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220529230958/https://ourmachin... So they used the 'we can update the eula at any time at our discretion' clause to add a 'we can tell you to delete your source and binaries' clause and then immediately invoked it.

MikeBVaughn 4y ago
I was wondering about that. When you go to the Our Machine web page, it shows the EULA having been updated yesterday, which immediately made me suspicious.
taneq 4y ago
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.
- infogulch 4y ago
  > 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.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  There is absolutely no point in reading any user agreements or terms of service. The following statements effectively summarize all such documents: > you own nothing > you have no rights > you promise not to try and exercise any right you think you have > you agree to binding arbitration with the firm we pay, just in case you ever get it in your silly little head that you do have rights > you cannot do anything the company doesn't like > the company can do anything it wants whether you like it or not > the company is not responsible for anything ever > the company makes absolutely no guarantees about anything > the company owns everything

echelon 4y ago

> all licenses are terminated as of 14 days after the date of this notice, and you are requested to delete The Machinery source code and binaries If I had invested a year into building a game on their engine, and they told me to delete my game, I would sue. This is serious monetary harm being inflicted upon developers. If they're going to drop the engine as a product, I would expect a perpetual "same-version, no further support" license offered to existing users. That's the bare minimum these folks could do. This way of handling things is screwing over anyone that bet their project on the engine in the biggest way possible. It is not trivial to change engines while in flight. They're asking people to do a complete rewrite. And if they're really closing up shop, why not release the engine as open source? Are they getting bought out silently? Makes no sense.

myrryr 4y ago
Patent / Copyright issues would fit this.
- bogwog 4y ago
  > Patent That's very concerning if true. Are there any game engine patents significant enough to cause something this catastrophic? I hope instead that it has to do with issues related to whatever contract they signed when they sold Bitsquid to Autodesk. (e.g. a non-compete clause or similar)

rwbt 4y ago

Did they get acquired by some big company? Their blogposts always felt like they want to be acqui-hired.

ivraatiems 4y ago

Can we see a screenshot or some other confirmation that this happened? Not saying it didn't, but it'd be a great way to tank a competitor's business if it were fake. I wanna be sure before I get a pitchfork out. To the extent this is legitimate, it definitely seems like grounds for a lawsuit. IANAL, so can't say if it'd succeed, but I am not convinced the last-minute EULA change would save them.

zlsa 4y ago
Termination email: https://host.zlsadesign.com/rkHpL6ET5.png https://host.zlsadesign.com/rkHpL6ET5.png Email about the EULA change that added the termination clause two days ago: https://host.zlsadesign.com/SkfpU6ETq.png https://host.zlsadesign.com/SkfpU6ETq.png
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  Thank you! This is definitely unacceptable. Are you considering legal action?
  - zlsa 4y ago
    Agreed, this is a crazy outcome. I don't actually use the engine; I evaluated it a while ago for hobby projects but never went beyond that. So this doesn't directly affect me.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jsheard 4y ago
Aside from second hand copies of the email, you can see that nearly all links to ourmachinery.com now 404. They deleted everything besides the frontpage and EULA page, a shame since their blog was a good resource.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

faeranne 4y ago

I'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.

faeranne 4y ago
Actually, I might know someone who can answer this. Or, at least they'll have to figure it out. I didn't realize this was that platform. A friend started a company last year to build a game based on this, and I'm pretty sure they already released said game.
- faeranne 4y ago
  They're gonna reach out and see how far this extends. According to 3.B, the game would be a "derivative work", and as such shouldn't be subject to this requirement. They've already started working on replacing it with Godot.
devd00d 4y ago
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.
- internetter 4y ago
  I really would not think above switching to unity considering in the past few months they have layed off hundreds of employees, the CEO called game developers "fucking idiots", and they merged with a malware distributor
- 10987654321 4y ago
  Godot is MIT-licensed so no, they can't arbitrarily revoke your license and force you to stop developing your game. What they could theoretically do is stop developing it, or change the license for all newer versions of the engine to one that would force you to pay to use it (or similar). In which case Godot would most likely be forked on the same day and a big part of the current developers would just move over to the fork.

snickerbockers 4y ago

Wtf is/was "the machinery"?

adamdusty 4y ago
Well it used to be a game engine. It was on people's radar because the devs had previous success with a different game engine and they wrote fairly technical dev blogs about the process.
phendrenad2 4y ago
GamesFromScratch has a nice intro that's still up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_8utTBfE-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_8utTBfE-U
- kencausey 4y ago
  And the same content creator on this engine today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUJyms9WstQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUJyms9WstQ

myrryr 4y ago

I'm guessing copyright or patent issues. That would explain their "you are requested to delete The Machinery source code and binaries."

UnrealUserSL 4y ago

google234123 4y ago
Any additional info to back this up? What specific issues?

UnrealUserSL 4y ago

japhib 4y ago

Was this a hack?

voakbasda 4y ago

How do these developers ever expect to be taken seriously again? This is a reputation killer; no one should ever trust them.

infogulch 4y ago
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.

CraftingLinks 4y ago

Probably 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.

seanstrom 4y ago

For 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.

devd00d 4y ago
You dodged a bullet. Me too. I just started my 3D journey, dabbling with Godot, Three.js and Unity. If I had stumbled upon Machinery and decided to use, I would have been annoyed now.

mathgladiator 4y ago

Holy 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?

KronisLV 4y ago

> ...you are requested to delete The Machinery source code and binaries. This is pretty weird. Then again, in regards to the engine itself dying, I feel like this is inevitable for many of the projects out there. For example, there was the Xenko engine which was later renamed to Stride: https://www.stride3d.net/ https://www.stride3d.net/ It's actually a nice project, has lots of great features and feels like it should be a more open alternative to Unity, whilst being similarly easy to use. However, compare the attention it is getting in comparison to something like Godot: - https://github.com/stride3d/stride - https://github.com/godotengine/godot On OpenCollective, Stride has an estimated annual budget of around 12k USD, whereas Godot gets around 15k USD per month on Patreon. Stride has a bit under 100 contributors, Godot has almost 2000. Godot gets hype on various game development subreddits regularly, yet Stride gets no such love. Ergo, it's probably pretty easy to draw a trajectory of what the next 10 years might bring for either, with one probably getting more features and development and becoming a mainstay of the indie scene, when compared to the other. But the great thing is that if whatever engine you use has an open license, you cannot have it be taken away from you (as long as you have all of the actual executables and don't depend on external services).

hammyhavoc 4y ago
Stride looks good, but am I right in thinking that unlike Godot, it doesn't support macOS or Linux as a deployment target?
- tebjan 4y ago
  Stride can deploy games to win, macOS, linux, iOS and android.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    If that's the case then the website could really do with an update as that's the first thing any dev, studio or publisher looks at in 2022. "Can we reach our target demographic?"
    - 4y ago

alajmo 4y ago

For those interested in the blog posts and other technical information about the engine they shared with the public, check out: https://books.ourmachinery.com/ https://books.ourmachinery.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20220529231010/https://ourmachinery.com/post/ http://web.archive.org/web/20220529231010/https://ourmachine... https://github.com/OurMachinery/themachinery-books https://github.com/OurMachinery/themachinery-books

gabstv 4y ago
https://github.com/OurMachinery/themachinery-books https://github.com/OurMachinery/themachinery-books is 404 Probably deleted
- psydvl 4y ago
  It cached in web archive too And if you accurate and patient enough, I think, you can manually copy latest state of repo http://web.archive.org/web/20220801082043/https://github.com/OurMachinery/themachinery-books http://web.archive.org/web/20220801082043/https://github.com...

userbinator 4y ago

IANAL but that doesn't sound like it would be enforceable at all. Consider that even in the case of something like a (physical) product recall, it would not be legal for them to break into your house to take them back.

dasz 4y ago

I'd be interested in the backstory to this. (Like everyone else I guess) Seems like I dodged a bullet. I was looking at this a few months ago. Decided to play with love2d instead. Did a few projects in it. Then I got into unreal engine. A further distraction via cryengine used up the remainder of my time. I was about to get into the machinery in September. Wow. Godot was to be October. So yeah. Bring that forwards. That EULA is likely a bad idea in general. It's also most likely against the law in some jurisdictions. The backstory would be of interest mainly for probably avoiding these Devs in future if there wasn't a good reason for the debacle. Sour taste all round.

stephc_int13 4y ago

This is sad, I've been following their work for some time and I think they were onto something, many good design ideas, very clean albeit a bit verbose sometimes. I'd like to know what is the underlying issue? Disagreement between founders? Acquisition? Legal problem? Not enough funding? Not enough customers?

enqk 4y ago

This only makes sense if they got into legal problems with a powerful entity which would have raised issues with software patents or copyright on the Our Machinery engine. Presumably also with some sort of NDA attached to it?

999900000999 4y ago

Well, I can't wait for Godot 4 + C# now. After trying Godot 3.5, it felt like an inferior Unity. The 4 alpha feels great. My big fear with Unity isn't a total collapse, but gradual suckification of the engine. For now it's still the easiest way to build amazing games, but things are changing. I'd be surprised if Godot or another FOSS engine wasn't dominant by 2025, or at the very least viewed as Blender is compared to Maya.

WorldMaker 4y ago
The thing about Godot is that you are always… waiting for Godot.

scott_siskind 4y ago

Anyone got a mirror of a release zip (such as https://ourmachinery.com/releases/2022.5/the-machinery-2022.5.a-linux.zip https://ourmachinery.com/releases/2022.5/the-machinery-2022.... ) ?

deleted 4y ago

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