Back in September I reported on the impending end to development of the cross platform C++ game framework Marmalade. It was slated to see it’s final release in March of 2017. According to an email I received earlier today, it seems a last minute savior has stepped in, GMO Cloud k.k. Not a traditional gaming company, GMO Cloud is a Japanese group of companies known primarily for cloud hosting and security solutions, perhaps most famously in the west as the parent company of GlobalSign, one of the oldest SSL certificate companies in existence. While not a gaming company, it does appear that they intend to continue development of Marmalade and to continue supporting Marmalade developers. Excerpt from their press release:
GMO Cloud K.K. (President and CEO: Mitsuru Aoyama, “GMO Cloud”), a member of the GMO Internet Group, was granted the exclusive rights to use the Marmalade software development kit (SDK) by Marmalade Technologies Ltd (Headquarters: London, UK, “Marmalade Technologies”) on November 24, 2016. The Marmalade SDK features cross platform support.
This license will allow GMO Cloud to accelerate the development of and the ability to offer new features for the Marmalade SDK. GMO Cloud wants to increase its ability to support the development of games and apps in both Japan and abroad in order to expand and enhance sales and support throughout the world.
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To help meet these needs, GMO Cloud obtained a license to resell the cross platform SDK “Marmalade,” which enables the development of games and apps compiled from a single source code. They released the SDK on July 1, 2015 and currently offer it to game developers in Japan.
“We are very excited about GMO managing the development and distribution of the Marmalade SDK to enable our customers to continue building compelling content with the high performance and flexible C++ framework that the Marmalade SDK delivers” said Bruce Beckloff chairman and CEO Marmalade Technologies Ltd.
GMO Cloud believes that by performing everything from development to provision of the SDK that it had previously only sold, it will be able to further stimulate the development of games and apps in Japan and around the world. The company has thus been transferred exclusive rights to use Marmalade from Marmalade Technologies. In addition to selling it in the Japanese and overseas markets, GMO Cloud will develop new features for this tool that will make developers’ lives easier. The company will also enhance the sales and support that it offers in Japan and elsewhere to make Marmalade a more popular SDK, continuing to support the evolution of the game and app development market.
You can read the full press release here. Certainly good news for existing Marmalade developers. Will be interesting to see what the future holds.