From The Blog: Corona Labs joins Appodeal!

Getting Started Announcements
#1

Today I’m excited to announce that Corona Labs has been acquired by Appodeal! For those of you who are not familiar with Appodeal, Appodeal is a next-generation ad mediation/monetization company that already serves millions of impressions per day in Corona games. Corona Labs will continue on as a world-class game engine company, operating as a subsidiary of Appodeal. Merging with Appodeal made sense for multiple reasons which I aim to explain below.

Appodeal + Corona Labs

One of the laurels of Corona SDK is how easy it makes it to build games across platforms without compromising on power and flexibility. For those who need to extend beyond what Corona provides “out of the box” with its many APIs and plugins, the Enterprise version of Corona is perfect.

Appodeal is the functional counterpart to Corona — developers can simply sign up for Appodeal, integrate it with a few lines of code, and connect to multiple demand sources (including AdMob and Facebook Audience Network!). Even though Appodeal connects to dozens of ad networks, developers get the convenience of just one easy payment (with the exception of AdMob and Facebook Audience Network). For developers who want even more power and control over their ad network relationships, Appodeal puts you in the driver’s seat so you can tune as you see fit.

An important note is that the acquisition of Corona Labs by Appodeal does not mean that developers must use Appodeal to monetize their games — Corona Labs will continue to offer and support third-party ad networks into the future, although the integration with Appodeal may get deeper over time with the aim to make it even easier to add monetization to your games.

In addition to a natural fit around building easily and monetizing easily, there’s a shared appreciation around the role Corona plays in the indie developer ecosystem. While many ad networks tend to court developers that already have large audiences, Appodeal recognizes that it’s the smaller developers who make up the vast majority of the ecosystem and that nurturing the relationship with these developers will only promote the possibilities of growth and success.

Appodeal is a global company with offices in San Francisco, Barcelona, and Moscow to name a few. Corona has a large developer community in every nook of the world and Appodeal’s international presence and commitment to serving developers worldwide means higher eCPMs no matter where your users are — and where they can’t deliver, their connectivity to AdMob and Facebook Audience Network solves the problem well.

Looking forward

Allow me to also take some time to talk about Corona Labs’ last few years — 2016 in particular — and what the future holds. No doubt there was developer concern around the future of Corona Labs and our products based on the more-than-ordinary M&A activity surrounding the company. However, the reality is that these events had little effect on the nature and level of progress made by our superstar team. In fact, if 2016 could serve as a barometer of progress, I think Corona is just getting started and I personally am excited about what the future holds. Consider that in 2016 alone, support for Apple TV was announced (by the way, Appodeal monetizes Apple TV too!), over 15 new monetization plugins were released, the Corona Marketplace was launched, and we added lightning-quick iteration via Corona Live Builds.

So what happens next? In some ways — not much. We’re busy hacking away at the next major release which is right around the corner. We’re continuing to update plugins as their underlying SDKs evolve. And we’re also on-boarding more third-party assets and plugins into the Corona Marketplace as they are submitted. We want our developers to continue building fantastic games using Corona SDK, submitting valuable feedback to us, and staying in touch as your games hit the top of the charts, get featured by Apple or Google, or just because you think your game is awesome and we should know about it!

View the full article

#2

It’s like one giant game of pass the parcel. It’s becoming easier to list who hasn’t owned the company rather than who has.  :ph34r:

#3

Yeah, one does get tired of seeing our beloved platform change hands. But on the plus side, Appodeal is claiming that they’re going to open-source the SDK over time. If they make good on that, then it ensures a future for Corona development, even if it means that (worse comes to worst and Corona Labs shuts down) the developer community will have to maintain the source ourselves. I personally like the convenience of a product that is maintained by folks who are being paid to do that - and to be clear, there’s no indication that that’s going to change - but it’s nice to know that in the worst-case-scenario I’ll be able to keep using Corona as a tool and performing builds myself if it comes to that.

I just hope that the folks on the Corona Labs payroll have job security in this transition. They really do great work.

#4

I am not exactly sure if I should feel happy or sad to hear this announcement. Just a few months ago, due to the few pricing changes and the uncertainty of Corona’s future, I am considering leaving Corona.  Then just a few weeks ago, I decided to give Corona another chance by paying for the Splash Screen and Admob plugin, hoping that will help a little in keeping Corona platform alive. With this acquisition, concerns regarding the future of Corona definitely re-surface again. Now that Corona is in the hands of another company, we are unsure how Corona is going to change so as to align with their business goals.

I would have thought the introduction of the paid plugins and the professional bundle is to keep Corona independent but it doesn’t seem to be the case now.   :frowning:

#5

I guess I’m just used to this so I won’t be writing too much stuff this time.

I only have those questions in mind:

  • What will happen to PC/Mac support? Are you going to make it open source or will be out of reach like it was before?
  • How much time will it take Corona Staff to get back on track?
  • Will you introduce new monetization methods or is it already the way you intended?
  • Can you post a roadmap?
#6

496.jpg

I hope everything goes fine  :wink:

#7

Hey everyone, I know there are a lot of questions and we will do our best to answer them. For some of the forward looking questions, its too early to provide you any tangible details. What we can say is that we are excited about this. We plan to stay “business as usual” meaning you will continue to get daily builds and public builds on a regular schedule. We are going to continue to improve the platform. There is nothing but bright days ahead for you.

Rob

#8

I think Corona is caught between two stools.

On the one hand, it’s much easier to build and iterate with than engines based on C++ / JS / C#, and much easier to learn with if you’re just starting to program. The forums are great and if you have a problem, someone will probably be able to help you within the hour.

On the other hand, it’s not taken very seriously by the professional development community. I can take my game to an interview, and if I told them it was built in C++ using the SDL framework I’d get hired immediately. If I say it was built in Corona SDK using Lua, I’d get a blank look and ‘thanks for coming’. Been there, got the t-shirt.

This was fine when it first came out, if you were a beginner just wanting to build something it was the only real option as you didn’t have SDKs like Game Maker, Buildbox, Unreal Engine with Blueprint etc., which pretty much take out the need to learn to code. When people see Color Switch was made by a guy who couldn’t write a ‘hello world’ program, why bother learning Corona?

Corona is a wonderful product that has changed my life, but it is niche. It’s not really for people who want to develop skills that will lead to a job in development quickly. I’m amazed what I can do with it compared to when I started, but if I had to re-produce my game in a C++ framework, it could take me the next decade to get there.

And it’s no longer the best option for beginners who want to very quickly make something fun and roll the dice in the app store.

It’s for people who want to be able to make a quality product in a quarter of the time and aren’t worried what that looks like on their resume, but still want to not feel like they’re cheating by using a drag-and-drop game engine.

And Corona haven’t really done well at making money out of any of those groups. In five years they’ve had maybe $1,200 out of me, and I’m a reasonably successful power user, with 25 apps released on mobile and a game in Steam Early Access. In the next five years, based on the current business model they project to make $99 a year - and I’m on the fence as to whether I care about the splash-screen or not. Not really sustainable.

#9

Poor Corona, it goes from hand to hand. :smiley:

#10

I have no crystal ball. The future of Corona is uncertain once more. Corexit! Corona’s exit from Roj Niyogi!

I will say this. All stakeholders in Corona (without exception) know that Corona never has and never will be profitable.

I include staff, developers, investors and owners - past and present.

Hell, even my dog knows that it’s not commercially viable - and I don’t own a dog!

What a great tool. But from a commercial standpoint it matters not that the tool is great. It’s simply not a tool in demand. Not in terms of paying customers at any rate.

Appodeal will hope for the best - but I fear the worst. RIP Corona imminent?

CoronaSDKFuture.png?dl=1

#11

I am worried also. I love appodeal, but usually, the needs of ad networks are very different than that of a development platform. Appodeal needs to increase impressions while most developers want an option not to use appodeal at all. At what point does the core need of appodeal begin to infringe on what we can do on the platform.

For all the grief people gave Roj on these forums he was extremely transparent. Again not knocking appodeal they are very supportive and as transparent as they feel they can be, but they are not as transparent as Roj. Appodeal takes"10%" of the extra money you make with them but how they take and how they calculate that extra money has never been clear to me. I have never been able to figure out why for me I see less money on very similar segments with appodeal even when using admob which is a pass through for appodeal. Forget about other networks like applovin. Even with the “corona 5% tax” on applovin the revenue and eCPM are higher going directly to applovin then going through appodeal. Maybe it is no fault of appodeal and at times I felt it was the price to pay for them taking over my ad monetization duties. If I were Appodeal, I would force everybody to use the appodeal plugin or blessed backend deal plugins that I had created. They probably have backend deals with most ad providers.

@nick_sherman: I don’t know about interviews. But I do know that I have and continue to evaluate 2D development engines as they come out, and so far none have the ease of use and the breadth of feature that Corona has. They are not even close. I currently have a subscription to BuildBox. If you want to build a game using one of their patterns it is easy. If you don’t it is really hard. And the ones that are successful are not because of the quality of the game or the tool, but how well they are published. There are no turn-based or real-time multiplayer games in buildbox, limited ad networks and simple mechanics that can not be built (try creating a simple pinball game).

Unity3D is an order of magnitude slower in building 2D games. Marmalade (C++) although extremely extensible (I could build anything on it) was extremely slow to develop a simple game. I have also tried love, MonkeyX, Defold, GameMaker, GameSalad, Moai and Sencyl

Anyway those are my two cents. I’ll miss Roj.

#12

I fully agree that it is the best 2D engine bar none. But still they can’t find a way to attract enough users to make money. Many ‘professional’ companies seem to prefer building in native languages or Unity even if it is slower. This can only because they either don’t know Corona exists or don’t trust that there won’t be a point where they bolt the doors and run for the hills, leaving us with code we can’t compile. There’s are hobbyists and very small startups who are the target market, but they don’t have much money so you need an awful lot of them to make a profit.

#13

Wow. I can’t say I’m completely shocked by this. When many of us got wind in the fall that Corona would be funneling everyone into the Ad networks, some of which took a share of revenue, I knew it was downhill from there.

I practically begged them to offer paid ad plug-ins, but by the time they offered the professional bundle, it was too late. We had moved our entire app inventory over to Unity SDK.

Other engineers we knew also left Corona in droves because of this. They had a template business for many years, at the dawn of Corona, and it hurt them, and their clients in the process. I think Corona’s last ditch effort to become profitable was taking a cut of revenue from ad networks, but it backfired, and they decided to offer the paid plug-ins as a compromise.

Again, by the time that occurred, many of us had already moved onto greener pastures.

Hopefully Appodeal allows Corona to be open source so it continues to thrive, but without the expense of having a team do all the upkeep on the engine.

It seems to me that Corona’s days are numbered though, and I would be very weary about putting all my eggs into one basket with this engine. Definitely relieved that we moved over to Unity because of all of this. Should have seen it coming.

There is absolutely no way that getting acquired by new companies 3 years in a row can be a good thing. I don’t see a silver lining with this at all.

But we have hope that Corona will thrive, and I hope there is something positive that comes out of this for the sake of everyone who has worked very hard to maintain this engine.

#14

Not making money does suck alright and I really wish you guys could find a way around it.

I hate the current angle you’re pushing, it makes me feel like I am using the PC paint of app development tools when it’s so much more than that.  I 100% agree with nick_sherman Corona is no longer the easiest tool for newbies to make games with.

As an example I have a buddy who has spent just 2 weeks with Buildbox and he has a monetised, smooth running, shippable side scroller game.  Of course he has to work within its confines but as an ex corona user himself he said there is no way he had the technical know how to achieve it using Corona.  Buildbox got it right, noobs can ship products with ease and no coding pain barrier.

I think if you’re gonna keep pushing the “great for beginners” angle, the least you need is an IDE.

I have been a loyal Corona user for 6 years now.  I have made tons of games with it, messaging apps, games with messaging, a stack of faux ios style apps, a stock control system front end for an SME, even a remote HMI for a food packaging machine.  This is the beauty of Corona though isn’t it?  You can literally make anything you want with it and you know for sure its gonna run so smoothly and reliably, why are you not pushing this angle more?

The last debacle with the pricing served as a nasty wake up call for me that I have had all my eggs in one basket for too long.  I have spent the last several months with Unity and what a powerhouse it is.  I’ll be taking all my game dev over to it when I’m comfortable enough with it.  Ideally I want to keep Corona in my toolset because of the reasons I mentioned but until I can see some sort of stability and an actual map of the future from you guys I’m finding it harder and harder to stay confident.

Is there no milage in the Enterprise product?  This seems to totally de-restrict Corona for more intermediate and advanced users, but it kind of seems out on a limb, I don’t know, maybe I have rambled on for too long!

Tl;dr - Appodeal – Please save Corona!

#15

I’m a newbie using Corona for a short while. I simply cannot believe that this super platform should close it’s just too good. Without very big programming experience i’ve copied an app one that one of my friends have paid 20.000 dollars for (surely programmed the “right” way native) in about a week. Maybe Corona should put their money in business app development as it’s a better tool in my opinion than eg. phonegap, sencha those tools are simply just confusing at least. 

#16

Why do you think we will be closing? It’s just the contrary. We have an orginization that wants to see us grow and has some great ideas about how we get there. We are a great platform now and we will keep getting better tomorrow and into the future. There is only good things to come.

Rob

#17

Just a minor comment/clarification: Roj is still involved with Corona, and will continue to be.

And, as Rob suggested, it’s “business as usual” for the Corona staff. In fact, I almost didn’t even read this thread because I have a bunch of Corona-related things to work on. We (the staff) continue to march on, and there are some pretty awesome things coming down the pipeline soon.

Brent

#18

To be fair, that’s what was said the last two times Corona changed hands - eventually you’ll run It’s not washing with the people who matter - your most loyal customers who if posts above are to believe are leaving in droves. Regular changes of ownership are bound to dent confidence - eventually you’ll run out of people willing to take it on.

And Brent, I’m sure there are some awesome things coming. The quality of the product is not in doubt. It’s not us you’ve got to convince of that, though…it’s the millions of people who’ve never even heard of Corona.

#19

Hi @nick_sherman,

Absolutely agreed: Corona needs to expand its user base. Of course we have internal ideas and plans for doing so, but sometimes “we can’t see the forest through the trees” so any ideas from you (the customer) on how to make Corona more instantly attractive, exciting, and easy-to-use will definitely be taken into consideration… i.e. what we’re doing well, what we’re not doing so well, where people are potentially getting lost, etc.

Brent

#20

@Brent - From my point of view it’s difficult to say - I found Corona 5-6 years ago by accident, just going through the ‘list of game engines’ on wikipedia, and immediately loved it. However, I’ve not really seen Corona mentioned outside of the Corona website, apart from when it changes hands.

I think this says it all:

https://www.slant.co/versus/1055/1064/~löve_vs_corona-sdk

Love 2D has five times as many votes putting it much higher in the rankings. Having played around with Love, it’s not in same league as Corona, yet it’s somehow more popular.  :wacko: