The Machinery, a game engine we first covered in 2020 appears to have shut down and have done so in perhaps the worst way possible. On July 28th, 2022 they made changes to their EULA, then a few days later sent the following email to all of their users (including myself):
Hi Everybody,
Thanks so much for supporting The Machinery.
Unfortunately, we’ve reached a point where it’s no longer possible for us to continue in the current direction. Per Section 14 of the End User License Agreement, the development of The Machinery will cease, all licenses are terminated as of 14 days after the date of this notice, and you are requested to delete your copies of The Machinery.
We really appreciated you being a part of the Our Machinery Community. We hope we have been helpful in some way to your development needs.
-Our Machinery
This is an especially painful move to those that joined The Machinery in early access as paying customers. This means studios could potentially have over a year of work invested in using The Machinery and all that is for naught now. Instead of granting a perpetual license to those paying customers, the EULA instead states:
Upon the termination of your license, you must immediately (a) cease all use of the Service and the Content, and (b) destroy any copies of the Service or Content in your possession, custody or control, including any related source code and/or binaries of the Service or the Content.
This horrible way of shutting down a proprietary game engine is perhaps the single most effective advertisement that open source game engines could ever ask for. You can learn more about the entire ordeal in the video below.