I have signed in without realizing certain facts about the product, and I need to cancel my account and all connection with this company. I have not downloaded anything outside of the website data itself. Is there a way to cancel my account and sever all ties?
Is that because they require you to sign up and create your project on King’s servers?
It is one hell of a way to antagonize indie developers, especially considering the company’s reputation with some of them:
I wonder how nobody at marketing figured out that would put off a lot of people from using the engine. And they even went : “Hey, we should advertise that this is King’s engine, they will love it even more. They will love to put their games on our servers too - it’s free”
After posting about this engine being free at an indie gamedev forum, 99% of the people there said that they don’t want to touch it, because it is owned by King.
I think the only way to earn their trust again is to open source it, or at least remove this silly rule that you must create your project on their server. And make it clear that King does not own the engine, but rather the community owns it now.
Let’s be honest and talk about it. Why do you want to cancel?
I am saying all that because I think that it is a shame. The actual engine looks fantastic. And whoever designed it has done an awesome job. I feel bad that some people will not even give it a try because it is affiliated with a company that is hated by indie game devs.
The reason you have to use our servers is because the tools were designed and built that way, as a service - long before Defold was acquired by King. There will be a version 2.0 of the editor in the works that removes that requirement.
Hi all. I’m following defold engine as silently. (forum,news) And I want to write somethings in here. (without new forum title)
Defold engine is looking good. I use open source c++ frameworks until today. But I don’t know, I can’t understand that, how defold engine will be free? Why?
King games is a commercial company and sometimes I think king games want to opening new commercial way to themselves with this project. Maybe I’m wrong. But indie game developers still can’t believe that factor. If I’m wrong, you need to working on the believing factor. (I know, it’s just a paranoia)
Please give the information to indie game developers about that. (I have readed faq page but I need more information. ) What do you want in the future?
Thanks. (Sorry for my middle level english)
From what I gather some people thought that this engine is going to be subscription. Most people turned away the moment King was mentioned:
But after it was released, some started picking it up on it’s merits. And it is actually worth picking up, once you convince everyone that there is no catch involved.
They had written like my thinks. It’s a problem for deciding about Defold for indie game developers.
So I and other developers need an reason for that, why king games is developing game engine as public and free?
Even, Cocos2d-x game engine(it’s an open source game engine) main developer want to earn money with cocos2d-x social plugins in the future. I know it, because he had written.
But I don’t know that, what does king games want with this game engine in the future? This issue is not clear yet.
This quote is the most important of everything that has been mentioned above. And it’s the truth. There is no catch involved. The engine is free. We will not steal your code and publish it as our own. We’re no evil corporate guys in suits and ties. We love our engine and we’re damn proud of what we do. I sincerely hope you will enjoy creating awesome games using Defold! I truly do.
Ok but why? Why king games want to that, all of developers create games with defold as free? I’m just asking that question. You’re not evil, I know it. But king games is a commercial campany. is it right? The real question is that.
My positive thinks; you want to get feedback from developers in your game engine development processes. Or you’re doing it because earning reputation in development side in game industry…etc.
Indie developers like me needs some reasons for believing you.
And I will already follow defold engine. It’s gonna great.
Those are two of the reasons. We are also in the very fortunate position that we can do it.
Thanks for replies. But I think, maybe you should share these reasons to more developers in promotions. It’s not bad idea. Because it’s a great project and all of developers can ask that question, "why it will be free? "
Game maker isn’t free, unity is free but it has limitations and splash screen, construct isn’t free…But defold is free and it has really great features! Why defold is free under king games company?
I hope you understand me. But I really like your “performance”, “low build size” and “speed” principles.
Yes, we talk a lot about that when we are out meeting developers but you’re right, we need to share the reasons on the site and elsewhere as well. This question is the one that comes up the most…
Sorry about opening self discussion under this subject. I didn’t read this subject discussion. Creating the project in server feature isn’t bad for me. I don’t think that"king games need my project sources or codes". It’s very funny.
I know why we create project in the server. I asked another question and thanks for replies again
I think that an EULA should be included. If the engine is free, but not open source, perhaps it will help earn developers trust by including the terms of service in the help menu at least.
The part about the server is another thing that devs already stated are going to make optional. But that is the thing that tricks people into thinking that the software is designed as a service to be rented to devs.
Yes, it was originally designed that way before the aquisition. We will clear this up in the FAQ.
+1ing that seeing (apparently) editor require King servers for project made me want to not use it even if it was free too. I believe the sincerity of the devs here, but that was still first impression given history.
Glad there will be a 2.0 that will lift the requirement.
By the way… great features and design!
I think, we open project in the server because of “Go team” feature. In fact it’s very nice feature. But people may make a paranoia, because all of solutions like that are thinking how we can earn money in the industry. (Even we’re talking about king company )
But I ask these questions and defold developers team sayed again and again that, they don’t want to commercial plans and another surprise about that in the future. I personally believe their sincerity.
However, new FAQ explanation is looking good. they have written about that question. I like that. I want to say thanks for that.
Hey! We talked about this internally, and realised we did a less-than-good job explaining why it’s free. So thank you for the questions leading to this
Don’t hesitate to ask if you’re wondering about anything else, and we will do our best to answer.
Pasted from the FAQ, for future reference:
Why on earth would King give Defold away?
This may seem out of the ordinary, that a commercial game company releases its core technology for free, but here’s how we see it: the more people who use Defold, the better the engine will be. By releasing Defold to the community, everyone​ can help making Defold better, by creating tutorials, by finding bugs, improving the documentation, and much more. And since King uses Defold internally, every day – the better the engine gets, the happier our internal developers will be. We believe great tech attracts great talent. All in all, we believe this ultimately leads to better games – not only for us at King, but for all game developers.
That’s it. And that’s what we’re all about – making and celebrating great games and the amazing people creating them.
Look guys, Defold being owned by king , being closed source and project creation being linked to king servers puts off a lot of developers.
Even gamesfromscratch had a few words to say on that front:
If you want to earn the indie gamedev community’s trust and get over the King thing, you will need to open source it. Otherwise a potentially big portion of the community would not touch it with a pole.
I personally would use seriously it when the server thing is removed and linux 64 works
We are very aware that a lot of devs will have these thoughts. Alternative project storage is in the plans. Doing that, we would still hope people would stay on our servers so that we can provide awesome features and services, but we realise it’s important that it’s everyones decision to do so.
Before King we ran Defold as a web service, so the hosted content was quite natural (sort of at the same time github appeared on my radar). Initially it worked by streaming the files to the user on demand (as in opening them in the editor), and building the game on the servers. We realised it would be a mess to support things like photoshop and all other 3rd party software wanting to act on the FS, doing like a virtual FS defold driver was a bit out of scope. So we moved the files to the users local file system through git cloning. The former web service model is in fact also the only reason why you need to be connected when opening a project (even though it’s stored locally), as a very weak way to know that a user was paying the fee. We have removed that requirement in the new editor we are working on, it works more like a standard IDE in that respect.