brainCloud personnel
Hi @william - thanks for the suggestion - I'll present it to the devs.
One note - when doing custom queries, MongoDB should automatically choose the appropriate index for it -- you shouldn't have to mention it in your query. Thus - adding a custom index for queries that you are finding slow SHOULD pseed them up... (thus your last feature is actually part of the system)
Hi folks,
We at brainCloud, like many of you, have been following the Stop Killing Games movement with interest.
I am interested in what you think of it?
We are all in a similar spot I suppose -- caught in the middle!
As gamers - we love games - and it's awful when a game you love (or never had a chance to love) gets shut down and becomes unavailable to play.
As game developers (trying to make a living at this for us and our families) - any handcuffs to how we all work to make a living feels like overreach.
I definitely respect what the movement is trying to do. That said, I don't think many of the influencers that have jumped on board appreciate the technical complexities involved. We are far from the days of simply self-hosting a multiplayer server from home.
That said - how the backend is built (and what it's used for) has an impact. Custom solutions are often single-purpose and heavy - and of course require full-time devops and software maintenance to keep things running. This costs mucho $$$.
But that's where services like brainCloud come in.
Unlike custom-developed server solutions, brainCloud costs are elastic - scaling with the player count. And there's $zero cost for personnel to operate and maintain the backend - as the brainCloud team takes care of all that.
Which means that games can be operated for a much longer period of time before studio's need to make the hard decision to shut them down.
Take Anthem, for example - a game reportedly still drawing 15K daily players, yet slated for shutdown. Obviously, it's a AAA game with custom tech, but it illustrates a point: many games still have life and loyal players, but not enough revenue to support full-time ops and maintenance teams.
But on brainCloud? No problem. Our elastic pricing model is designed to scale with your player base — from indie games with just a few thousand users (on plans starting at $15/month) to larger-scale titles with millions of monthly players. And because brainCloud handles the backend operations for you, there’s no need for dedicated DevOps/Maintenance teams. As player activity (and revenue) naturally declines over time, costs decrease as well, helping studios preserve the long tail without breaking the bank.
Which is to say that I think gamedevs are being responsible, and are aligned with the spirit of Stop Killing Games, by using elastic BaaS services like brainCloud for their backend. We know that your games are your babies - and you want to see them live on...
Which is why we are also investigating the possibility of offering Sunset plans for games -- so that gamedevs who find that their games no longer warrant active development can better afford to keep them up and running (at low player counts) for players to continue to enjoy.
Anyway - I'm interested to hear your thoughts!
Paul.
And... the upgrade is complete.
Hopefully a non-event for everyone!
Reach out to support if you see any weirdness!
Cheers,
Paul.
Reminder that the upgrade starts tonight -- and a note that we've bumped up the time.
So we'll be starting the upgrade process at 6:30pm Eastern... (not 8pm as previously announced).
Also note that the upgrade will be performed in two stages:
Stage 1 - We upgrade from MongoDB 6 -> 7
Stage 2 - We upgrade from MongoDB 7 -> 8
Hopefully all complete by 8pm Eastern.
Paul.
Hi folks,
MongoDB is ending support for MongoDB 6.0 at the end of July, so we will upgrade all environments to MongoDB 8.0 by that date.
The upgrade of the Public BaaS is targeted for Monday, July 7th.
The official notice can be found link text.
Let us know if you have any questions or concerns!
Paul.
Oh - and one thing that wasn't in the release notes... we bumped up the Design Portal session timeout -- so if you go away from the portal and come back to it later -- there's a better chance that you can pick up from where you left off (instead of being booted and having to re-login).
<crickets>
D'oh! We get it - we're all busy - and some folks are shy.
That said - the more feedback we get, the better we understand what features the community is looking for! (We've got plenty of features queued and/or in development - but it's prioritizing them that's the real trick.)
So let us know what works and what doesn't!
For example, is the Self-Service Account Deletion useful? Or were you all just planning to handle it manually, making it less important?
Paul.
Hi folks,
We have just released brainCloud 5.7 - and are eager to hear what you think!
Do you like the new Team Dashboard?
The new Node Usage pane in the Server Monitor?
How about the Self-Service Branding and Account Deletion Features? Are they useful?
Full details on the release here.
We are eager to hear your thoughts!
Paul.
Ah! Thanks for letting us know!
HI @francesco-lenolli - definitely log into our support chat to provide that information. Thanks.
