This is veering off-topic, but:
Some of the publishers I had talked to in the past weren’t keen on working with games created using Corona because:
- It was a closed engine with build servers.
- The company behind it wasn’t well-known and/or it didn’t seem stable.
Think about it like this: Corona Labs Inc. was sold to Fuse Powered Inc. in November 2014. 13 months later, it was sold to Perk. 9 months later it was sold to Perk’s co-founder, Roj Niyogi. About 6 months after that, on March 2017, it was sold to Appodeal.
If a company is changing hands that frequently, it’s either something that everyone wants to be a part of (and own), in which case it’d be well-known, or it’s something that’s not very desirable.
Simply put, since the future of Corona Labs Inc. wasn’t clear, investing on games that relied on their engine wasn’t a reliable investment. What if you invested tens of thousands into developing an app and another tens of thousands to user acquisition and marketing, only to have the build servers close a few months later? You couldn’t even do anything as you didn’t have access to the engine’s source.
Using a reliable open source engine, like cocos, or a well-known and financially secure engine, like Unity or Unreal, was simply a safer choice. Now that Solar2D is open source, things are different. Once things get rolling, those worries of the past are lifted.
Also, there are still big and successful Solar2D developers out there. I am currently working for four such developers. It’s just that for most of these developers, once they hit it big, they focus on running their businesses. They don’t hang around in the forums, Discord (or Slack) or interact with the community because they don’t have the time (nor do they need anything from the community as such).
