Corona Cloud DOWN - Your Opinion !

General (non-technical) Testing Forum for Moderators / Admins
#1

Hi David,

 

its sad to read your post. really sad. Not just because corona Cloud goes down,

muchover, that is shows the 'Miss-Management", Wasting Time at the wrong Projects.

 

Its hard to hear I know also for you. But maybe now its the best Time to talk about.

 

Corona was from the Beginning for the majority of Users I guess the best and greatest alternative over to code their application twice, once for Android and once for iOS.

 

Yeah, now there was a Framework, easy to use and simple to create one time a code and spread the app on the major two platforms.

 

Seems that came forgot even quiet early!

 

Soon after Corona was in the Market, I was reading statments from the Management showing more effort in the Direction to come the coolest language to create “Games”.

With a lot of super soft and easy APIS for Beginners. 

 

NICE, we are all very happy when things are easy, but its not so that we all can not program. Several Calls (that have to be maintained by you also) can be done by some extra work for whom who does need them. And some other APIs are there and just not working (like the - GetTunerVolume-) while many Users complain about (for YEARS!) its not working, it was ignored and simply continued in the same old ‘ignorant’ manner.

 

To come back to the BEGINNING !

Corona is a great MULTI-FRAMEWORK.  and here its about -MULTI !!!-

 

Therefore:

 

  1.  keep the API Calls less, but working !!!

  2.  offer them running on MULTI - Devices like OSX, Windows …

 

especially Point 2. MULTi is so important. 

Because over Time, Corona will be “bought” from Users with Money.

And without Money Corona can not exist as a profitable Company.

And Users only can purchase if they have money themselves.

 

So you base your business on professional Programmers who need to earn Money and not just the Hobby GameDevelopers. 

Finally that leads to the point you have to offer that Users options to earn money.

And also that was ignored long time!! (unbelievable) with just 1-2 Adnetworks.

Last not least, OSX has a BUILD IN -STORE- Programmers can make money.

But also that is not ignored but not priorised from the Corona Management.

 

Even you showed YEARS ago you could do a OSX Framework.

But instead you played around with Corona Cloud and invested time in other projects that either do not work or do not make sense.

 

Sorry to say all that. But I have. I love Corona, Its an amazing platform.

Unity is also amazing but not such easy to work with. But if not soon something significant happens in change of the ‘ignorant’ management, there has to come an alternative to Corona.

 

Therefore I call to see all that what happend as the PAST and focus on the Future.

To bring Corona back and also forward to what it was meant to be

A MULTIPLATFORM FRAMEWORK !

 

A MULTIPLATOFRM FRAMEWORK easy to work with and with all the help and focus from the Management to earn Money with.

 

I hope this Call is heard.

 

Yours Chris (with Corona from the very beginning !)

#2

Thanks Chris! Yup, agreed. We have been getting back to basics, and focusing our energies on Corona SDK. And we are actively engaged on solutions to help you monetize. Thanks for the support!

#3

Not particularly fussed by the dropping of Corona Cloud - however I do think Chris’ opinion is quite valid.

I’ve always been a big advocate of Corona; however this is all about creditability. It’s a little bit dubious when you launch a flagship feature (which CC was touted at the time) and then decide to drop it a few months later. I can understand the reasoning behind the decision - however the result does question the overall decision making behind the original announcement.

It’s as though Microsoft announce Xbox One with uber-tight DRM and then decide to drop it - oh wait :slight_smile:

But onwards and upwards - if it means greater focus on the SDK when there’s plenty of alternatives for cloud based solutions then I’m all for it. Just hope the big-wigs at Corona think through major decisions a little more in the future.

#4

To counterpoint Guruk’s post, I thought Corona Cloud was a great idea, and an opportunity to pull together some of the functionality that required a load of third-party support (leaderboards, push notification etc). 

However, as with a great many things that are Internet-based, the timing was wrong and the ‘big boys’ beat Corona to the punch with their own products.

I worked for years at Amazon, where the emphasis, for a time, was on “bold bets” - projects that were experimental and had potential but could and would be killed off if they failed to deliver. Clearly, Cloud looks like one of those projects.

I’m not saying I disagree with what you say - from my perspective Widgets needs more work and there’s several areas of Corona that need extra attention (and if it is possible to cross-comp for a Mac and PC, Huzzah!!!), what i am saying is that Corona is a business that needs to stay ahead of the competition and sometimes, those efforts to stay ahead can fall flat.

I use Corona because it’s fast, efficient and has a brilliant support network through its community - everything I need to get the job done and as long as Walter and the guys continue to help me get the job done, I’m a happy camper (even if there are hiccups every no and again!)

Chris

#5

Simple example:

  1. Inneractive with eCPM about 0.5$ is supported and updated all the time.

  2. Revmob with eCPM above 10$ and as mentioned on Facebook corona group, was used by most people, is not supported and their Lua SDK is a complete mess due to no plugin etc…

People want to pay you $$$ for feature A and you give them feature B. People want to pay you even more $$$ for feature C and you give them beta of feature A, and then you shot it down :wink: And then you give people feature D that nobody cares about…  At the end devs cannot pay you any more becasue they earn 100$ monthly with no monetization options.

Plugin market place is IMHO a great way to bring Corona to its golden time, people could get enterprise only to write plugins and actually earn on them more then on games, like just many people are living from making content for Unity Store (about 20% of all unity users are living from making content for asset store).

In the end i am going to use Corona for at least next 6-9 months, unless its going broke or something. I still love its easy of use and docs quality etc.

My 2 cents

Regards,

Tom

#6

I echo the sentiment about ‘bold bets’ and this being a missed opportunity.

I just landed a project that I heavily based on CC and that would pay my bills for six months. I’ve been in the games biz for 15 years but only this year started as a game developer hence Corona was perfect for me and my limited programming experience. When I read the Corona Cloud release news I was very happy as it (a) meant I could do everything with one service/API and (b) was going to be pretty easy to accomplish.

I take the point that there are other services but if you are trying to make a cross-platform (iOS/Android) asynch multiplayer game with cloud synch, leaderboards, achievements, analytics etc (as I am) then without CC you are forced to use multiple 3rd party services and to have different ones for iOS and Android. Game centre is iOS only. Google Play’s multiplayer is Android only and the other parts of the service require players having a Google+ login which is a barrier to user adoption especially outside the US.

Suddenly we’re back to multiple versions for different platforms and messing about with a bunch of 3rd party services if we want anything other than basic single player standalone apps. That is not good. That goes against the whole value proposition of Corona; e.g. cross-platform support…“build once and publish to iOS and Android”.

I don’t want to be negative and make this a whinge session. I very much assume that the guys at Corona have taken this decision for the right reasons and that is to be applauded for having the courage to pull the service knowing the flak it will cause. Best that than to continue with a service that you know you cant ultimately make what you wanted it to be and had said it would be.

What would help people like me but also (more importantly) help to retain the value of Corona as a game dev tool in an age of cloud services and connected play is to very quickly write and release a comprehensive guide and support area for devs to get them up to speed with 3rd party options relating to:

  1. Registration/login
  2. Turn-based/synch multiplayer
  3. Cloud synch / cross-device gaming
  4. Achievements
  5. Leaderboards
  6. News/content injection (CMS)
  7. Push notifications
  8. Analytics

This needs to be (1) very well structured and written for the less experienced/newbie devs (experienced devs will have the means and knowledge to solve these problems already) and (2)

Stay positive / move forward

Kevin

@kevcorti

#7

I agree with Kevin. CC was a great way to quickly and easily set up multi-platform leader boards, and i used both that and the user signups in a game we released. Now in the next few weeks all our leaderboards will stop working and we will be forced to replace it and apologise to any users who will loose their account. 

Not the end of the world though and we can push a new update out, but i would be very interested in getting my hands on the code for Corona cloud so i can try and set it up on our own AWS server. I have no idea how difficult that would be, but if Corona were to provide a brief migration guide with the code that would be perfect. 

Fingers crossed for the code and a migration/installation guide :D 

#8

Folks, lets take sources from Corona and make our own service like this. The only cost would be service maitnenance.

It is possible to do ? I am not a server side developer, only client so i cannot predict it.

Tom

#9

I’m actually extremely disappointed it’s down. I’ve been working intensely with it for the last two days and I have logins, leaderboards, and multiplayer working. I had a few problems with it but it did work and I wrote a lot of code that made sure it worked. Wish I still had access, really not looking forward to finding an alternative.

#10

Soccerlax I totally agree, to say I’m frustrated they are shutting it down is probably an understatement. We were probably 95% completed with our mutliplayer game (8 months in the making) and were planning on starting a beta in the next few weeks. Heck we were even lining up advertising spots and marketing campaigns for our launch - all of which has to be completely put on hold while we figure an alternative out and re-code everything.

For us I am at least glad we found this out now, as opposed to AFTER we had launched, I feel for the people who have published games out with this service who will now need to scramble to quickly to update.

#11

David did mention in his email that Corona are happy to provide the code to developers - so it could be a case of setting up on AWS and (hopefully) just using the existing implementation?!?

As others have said a guide on this would be helpful

#12

I agree … stay with the core business, encourage 3rd party plugin development, and for goodness sake expand the platforms we can target.

#13

To be honest, I kinda suspected something like this. Gameminion was run by one guy and had it in beta for much longer than a cloud service should be. After the acquisition I doubt there were sufficient resources dedicated to make it into something world class. I still think this was a lost opportunity. 

#14

Well, coronalabs announces CC. I was really, really, and I mean REALLY happy with that announcment. I bought pro licence coz of it. And have been working on my project based almost completely on Corona Cloud! What a fool I have been.

All I can say coronalabs has lost all credibility in my book. And when asked about corona, I’m gonna tell them what to expect. Basically, avoid Corona at all is the best solution atm.

And that’s excatly what I’m gonna do. Thank you for my lost time, patience and all that goes with this decision. Thank you for my lost money, and my enthusiasm about learning corona. And goodbye. For all time.

#15

Fortunately I’ve not used Corona Cloud in any of my apps, so I’m not affected by this. 
However, as many other said, I think the main issue is that the time allocated on creating the cloud could have been used on other, more vital aspects of the SDK. 

It’s a lost opportunity and a sign of minmanagement… I mean, it was not just an “experiment”, I presumed you had a detailed plan, you acquired Gameminion as a start, you built and adapted the cloud service, planned how to monetize it, and launched it. Evidently in one of those steps, something went terribly wrong.

I’m happy to read Walter saying now you’re focusing more on the SDK itself. 

That’s great, and really hope it’s the way to push Corona forward… 

But I can’t say I’m not worried about the future of Corona SDK; it’s not the first time you’re focusing and then cancel  features not really important, then there are some basic API not working properly from years and not yet fixed, new features occasionally shown as “coming soon” and then MIA or cancelled (BTW, I’m really looking forward for the new graphic engine… coming soon?), a feedback page largely ignored (minor features like adding a native ios facebook popup could be done in a few hours), promises of allowing pro users to run obj c code, and so on… point is, when you have many apps created with a SDK that compile and build on a remote server you’re definitely  very  worried about the future of the SDK. 

I love Corona, it’s great and I’m planning to keep using it it for my new apps, but I’m also trying to learn Obj C because I’m worried and it’s better to have a backup plan.

Finally, I still believe that focusing on the  plugin market  and giving the ability to  Pro User  to build plugins (or allowing us to run custom obj c code) could make Corona much, much more flexible and competitive. Really hope you’re considering something like this.

#16

Thanks all for the comments — positive and negative! We are taking these to heart. 

Yes, Corona Cloud was a big bet. I would make an analogy to Apple’s foray into the PDA market with the Newton. That is, there was potential, but the ultimate execution of the product did not meet our expectations. And like the Newton, it did not deserve to continue to exist.

This was a tough decision precisely b/c some of you were not going to like it. For some of you, I know we have work to do to regain your trust.

The good news is we are now laser-focused on the core Corona SDK engine. Several big changes that you may have noticed in the past several months leading up to this decision, but I want to call out explicitly: 

(1) We currently only talk about what we have already delivered, what we can actually demo, or what we are actively working on.

(2) We’ve been laying key infrastructure, especially plugins, to enable more flexibility and monetization.

(3) We are actively engaging with the community on ideas. 

And on that last note, as always, feel free to send me feedback: walter at coronalabs dot com. Yes, I do read them!

#17

Walter: Do we know if Mohamed and his brother will relaunch Gameminion?  Or are they not allowed to due to some legal agreements?  It is unfortunate that Corona Cloud did not make it, but it would be nice if Gameminion were reincarnated. 

#18

Really bummed about this. I was planning on using CC on our next game. :frowning:

Would love to see the important stuff at the top of the wishlist get addressed though. :slight_smile: (Amazon, Chartboost, etc)

#19

Guys, you should focus on one thing IMHO.

Make a killer feature that would actually allow devs to earn money. Not just to make games but earn on them. Those money would return to you anyway…

My 2 cents,

Tom

#20

+1 on Bladko