I think so, but if people can give tips, it is also valid, there are libs that not everyone has the idea to create.
It’s MIT licensed now, you can do what you want. Tell people it’s an in-house engine if saying the name Corona embarrasses you, but it’s not like people will think you created a game with the virus. You could also say, “The engine is called Corona, which was around long before the virus” and just head it off that way. Or, like I said, just call it something else.
I do agree with your assertion that Corona is almost entirely unknown outside the community – in almost 10 years of using it I’ve never found a developer who already knew about it – but it would be *entirely* unknown if it were rebranded.
I’ve been out of the loop for a while so didn’t know it was changed from Corona SDK to Corona – the only name change I’d get behind would be to something like Corona Game Engine. That gives it an identity more specific than just Corona, but it’s not a complete rebranding.
Jay
I disagree that Corona is unknown. When we work with 3rd parties - from integration partners such as attribution, analytics, push notification, etc most know about Corona and some are still providing Corona-specify support. Similarly, I think platforms such as Google and Apple are aware of Corona and its idiosyncracy. The support of these partners are crucial for success of games on Corona. Asking all of them to adopt/change/reeducate them on a new name for Corona is very time intensive, and a complete waste of time & resource.
Among the wider developer community, I agree the brand recognition is lower, but still not zero.
For these reasons, I am fairly against a complete rename. I think a tweak like calling it Corona Game Engine or Corona-2d is OK to clarify what it is.
That’s my vote.
My vote is that the name be changed, Here in Brazil not even Lua is used a lot, even though it is a Brazilian language, Corona is still more unknown here.
I think the name should be changed because it will always remember this damn virus that has already entered history, there is no escaping the jokes about the name, I even think it is disrespectful that a developer who has a relative killed by the virus comes across a framework with this name.
Why nobody knows Corona? I just did a Google search about 2d game engines for Android and Corona was there.
I would like a name change but only if it doesn’t backfire. Corona Game Engine sounds good to me. A new icon is needed too.
Corona2d-x :wub:
I don’t care what it’s called, but the “powered by love with corona labs” doesn’t site very well these days… Maybe the splash screen could be temporarily ommitted during the pandemic?
Download the latest daily version.
The splash screen have been removed for everyone.
“Powered by love with corona labs” was appearing in the splash screen?
Really?
Indeed…what a load of old guff 
Great!
The splash screen, at least before it was removed, read: “Powered by Corona”. There was no “Love” mentioned there.
Still, from personal experience of attending game expos in Northern Europe, when I’ve talked with publishers, investors, ad networks reps, etc. I’ve never met anyone who has known of Corona. Some fellow game devs have mentioned remembering having read about it or played around with it years ago.
The splash screen has been removed, and I think the name change may not be so urgent, but as @jdsmedeirosbr said, this virus has killed too many people, and people will really be afraid of this name.
Here are some of my experiences ↓
I am from Taiwan (a small country in East Asia) and I am a Taiwanese.
According to Google Play statistics, the top five markets in the world are the United States, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan.
In my country, there are many scientific and technical personnel, but when I was in the largest forum (equivalent to Reddit in the United States), when everyone talked about a topic “what do you think of Corona?”, There were thousands of messages below, almost All are, “It used to be beer, now it is a virus”, and someone will add it below, It is still a renderer.
I’ve been waiting for someone to mention CoronaSDK, but not have until the end.
After that I watched the games on the Play Store. In this big market, I can hardly find any games made with Corona. Everyone still uses Unity.
This is what I see. Although I support the name change, if not, I will still use CoronaSDK, after all, it is friendly to individual developers.
Splash screen can be disabled in latest daily builds for free.
As I’ve said before this is what I’ve experienced too. If the brand is known at all it’s among indie devs, and not always a positive association either. Whatever message they were trying to get across in the past about Corona’s capabilities, they failed dismally.
I just did a google search for “top 2d game engine sdk” and “best 2d sdk”, etc, etc… and Corona always shows up and often in the Top 3. So, I don’t know if pixec was trolling or what. I have no idea how anyone can call Löve better than Corona. There are about 15 failed attempts at implementing a GUI in their user “library”.
IMO, Corona is the complete package. If anything, it has not had sufficient marketing or social media backing it, but technically, there is absolutely nothing to complain about. Yes, the name is unfortunate for this time in human history, but I am willing to bet people will start drinking Corona beer again once the coronavirus is under control.
AND, as mentioned, they just removed the Corona splash screen, at startup, so no-one should be afraid of anything.
That’s because you know to use the sdk keyword which helps bump Corona nearer the top. Realistically no-one is going to type that. Use ‘2d game engine’ and Corona appears on page 3 for me. ‘2d game engine’, ‘free game engine’, ‘game framework 2d’, none get Corona on page one or in the carousel of logos at the top, despite it being around for 11 years. And when you do find it, ‘last stable release - 19 months ago’ is not going to inspire confidence in a newbie…
Thats actually something i’ve seen too. Searching for stuff like ”corona touch” yields a lot of Covid19 stuff, but entering ”corona sdk touch” it gets better results. Funny thing is that based on what ive read, corona hasnt been corona sdk in years. The only case where you find search results is if you add terms to the search that dont exist anymore. I’m sure if search for ”corona sdk ansca mobile corona labs 2d game engine” then you have good search results :DD
Actually like sherman said, i searched for ”2d game engine”. You know the little box that google shows for good direct results? They were in order of: game maker studio, cocos, lingdx (wtf is this?), love, monogame, phaser, box2d (i thought this was just physic lib?), orx (again, wtf is this? :D), renpy (a visual novel engine for web? Come on!), flixel (never heard of this either…)
Corona isnt there but theres all sorts of random scrub
Anyone who thinks that corona has good seo doesnt understand that new users dont search for sdks - they want game engines. Also google, bing and such are surely going to devalue all non-covid19 corona pages, so the downhill is just getting started. Change the name! Also - sorry for triple post spam
I think your observation points to how changing the name from Corona SDK can be a really bad idea…
Right now, people can still find Corona stuff by searching under Corona SDK. If the game is changed to something completely different. It wouldn’t even how up on google search. Plus, all the domains should be changed. Partners who already have Corona integrations (eg. https://github.com/adjust/corona_sdk) would need to rename their stuff. And if they don’t (which is likely) Then that can actually create even more confusion.
A rebrand is expensive, even for a small brand. And if we just change the name without going through the effort of re-educating the entire ecosystem and getting them to adopt to the new brand, then it can create utter chaos and confusion.
I rather we save all that time and effort actually improving the engine…