OpenFeint Service Shutdown

http://support.openfeint.com/dev/openfeint-service-shutdown-and-gree-migration/

by siculars • 14 years ago

42 31 14 years ago

support.openfeint.com

siculars• 14 years ago

From the email they sent me:

"Migrating to GREE Platform is easy and a basic integration can take less than a week of engineering time. In addition, migrating your game to GREE Platform allows you to keep your user data and player scores. Please note that migrating to GREE Platform will require you to remove the OpenFeint SDK and re-submit your game to the appropriate platform."

Three cheers for subcontracted proprietary services!

PythonDeveloper8• 14 years ago

Perfect example of why you should roll your own platform libraries, or at least try to use an open source engine that allows you to control the servers.

All those users just lost faith in yet another service, and all these guys are doing is saying "Hey, we failed you as a SAAS vendor, but we made $100 million, so lube up and try GREE because they need to [overcharge you voraciously to] recoup their investment.

You'd think the geniuses in the game industry could put their collective [self acclaimed] intellects together to come up with a platform agnostic approach to these common issues, and open source it for the betterment of the customer.

Oh, yeah... the... customer. Oops.

>>>>>>>>>>> UPDATE <<<<<<<<<<

OOH.. and it gets better... From GREE's agreement, paraphrased:

ARTICLE 5: Virtual Currency; Revenue Sharing

We've created our own currencies, not unlike BitCoin, called J-Coins and G-Coins. We reserve the right to change the ratios to capture more revenue, but right now you should just trust us that we're being honest.

Customers will pay US, not you. We'll tell you how much they spent of that money with you, and then pay you what we think is fair, in our sole discretion.

Oh yeah, to further confuse the customer, you can't call YOUR currency anything like ours, and we get to decide what you call it, and if you don't change it, we don't have to pay you.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Where the f* do I SIGN UP!!!

jschuur• 14 years ago

I don't think rolling your own, or hosting your own is a feasible option for indie mobile and social game developers in the current climate short development cycles and small budgets.

slashclee2• 14 years ago

The whole POINT of OpenFeint was basically: Hey, indie game developers! We know that building and running a game server is really hard and expensive. Why don't you let us run the servers for you, and you just use our (fairly simple and easy-to-integrate) SDK to make some calls to set high scores and unlock achievements?

tlrobinson• 14 years ago

You have two options:

1. Use a hosted service, and IF they end up shutting down either migrate to another similar service or roll your own.

2. Roll your own from the start.

I'm having a hard time seeing why option 2 is better. Just make sure the services you use give you a clean migration path.

A lot of game developers don't have experience building web services, so it makes sense to outsource the things that aren't their core competency. Do we really want every game developer rolling their own potentially unreliable, unscalable, insecure web services?

josephlord• 14 years ago

I came to the same conclusion for adding usage logging and promo codes to my app. Use Parse for now but try not to use too much of their API and to keep it to a couple of particular lasses that I access it through so that if I need to move it is just a day changing the app and one or two setting up and securing a server with a database.

Not a game but a lists app focussed on reusable lists for things like shopping and packing with a couple of neat features. Http://iTunes.com/apps/fastlists. Free with in-apps if you like it.

I haven't decided how to do shared lists yet, iCloud, Parse, custom server or something else.

nachteilig• 14 years ago

For those who don't know the backstory, as I didn't: Openfeint was acquired by Gree last year for $104 million.

immad3• 14 years ago

Heyzap (YC'09) is launching leader-boards on Android and iPhone. Still in alpha but we have some good results, you can check them out here:

http://developers.heyzap.com/

Unlike most other leader-board services everyone has a name and most people have a picture, so you don't see a lot of playerxxxxx scores, and we give you lots of ways of seeing/challenging your friends. If you have an Android you can try it out on: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.piratemonk...

You could roll your own, the benefit in using us is that a) its easy (< 1 hour). b) it allows you to leverage our user base. c) We are working aggressively to add new features like challenges

Get in touch if you are interested or have any questions.

gwillen• 14 years ago

Question: What is your revenue model? What is your motivation not to go the way of the article we were all just reading, reminding us never to trust a platform because it will shut down and leave us with our thumbs up our asses?

PythonDeveloper8• 14 years ago

I'm sure the guys at HeyZap are good people with the best of intentions, but the issue is that they can't predict the future.

They can't tell you that their servers will be compromised, and all your users will be open game. They can't promise you that they won't bring in a CEO that just wants to get the company sold, and doesn't care about the developers or their customers.

They can't tell you that when they pivot, all your games will be busted. Not because they're hiding this gem from you.

It's simply because they don't know it.

When you roll your own, you know it's going to survive because YOU are responsible for it.

No BS politics are going to force you down an ridiculous migration path you don't already know about, and since YOU are the CEO, you can sell out and not worry about screwing companies who are dependent on your product or service.

Even IF you choose to use a third party, you owe it to yourself to write your own and mirror that data on to yours so that when, not IF, they go down or out, you can flip a switch and you're back in business within seconds, not days.

The deal with GREE stinks of potential currency manipulation, IMHO, and I wouldn't put my livelihood in their hands for one minute. Again, not because they're bad people - I don't know them from Adam, but because they've already shown that they're willing to allow the customer, we developers, to do ALL the work to satisfy THEIR migration to their API instead of requiring OpenFeint to develop a transparent proxy layer and make it turnkey.

Don't indie developers have enough to do already?

immad3• 14 years ago

People use Heyzap to install games, so its a pretty good opportunity to promote games to them.

We have a sustainable business model and are not too far from profitable with 16 employees.

We also have an API and will make it very easy for developers to download all the data if they ever want it. Openfeint is unfortunately not allowing that at all.

pdenya• 14 years ago

I don't play tons of mobile games but OpenFeint has been one of the most annoying things to deal with in a lot of the games I play. It slows everything down constantly bothers me with integration popup and adds absolutely nothing to my experience. It sucks for a lot of games and probably a lot of (less casual) gamers but I'm glad I won't be dealing with it in games anymore.

simarpreet007• 14 years ago

Yes, I don't want those AWESOME features! Thank you.

feint• 14 years ago

Finally! I get my name back.

cubicle67• 14 years ago

It's a shame really, as OpenFeint was developed initially for Aurora Feint†, a very nice iPhone puzzle game and one of the very first iPhone games. It was free, and it seems OpenFeint was an effort to make money for the devs

† http://www.appsafari.com/games/5330/aurora-feint-app/

Ologn• 14 years ago

FTW ( http://www.ftw.co ) is an alternative which is in the same space. I did some work for them on the Android side of things.

kanzure• 14 years ago

Something doesn't add up. They are claiming a dec14 shutdown. Regular app approval delay on iOS is maybe one week, but really two during the holiday season. Let's be generous and say that publishers will take only one week to implement the new SDK. That only leaves 10 days of wiggle room? Yikes.

fotbr• 14 years ago

From the end-user (very casual gamer) standpoint, good riddance. When it came out as an a feature of the "upgraded" AuroraFeint, I chucked the game I spent most of my gaming time playing, and have since avoided everything that used it, regardless of how nice the game may have looked.

atmanrising• 14 years ago

One of their competitors in the Android space is having a very good week :)

http://swarmconnect.com/openfeint_shutdown

OpenFeint Service Shutdown

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