Thread by @Xrayez

Godot Forums and The Mirror, the next Roblox-like platform, announced a business partnership.

What does it mean to @GodotEngine's supposedly bright future? 🙃

#TruthAboutGodot

Read the thread below. 🧵👇

To start off, Ariel Manzur, co-founder of Godot, has come on board with The Mirror as a technical advisor. Similar to Juan Linietsky, the lead developer of Godot, he represents Godot PLC and retains a permanent seat at Godot.

prnewswire.com/news-releases/…

Juan Linietsky, another co-founder of Godot, once floated the idea and tested the waters within the Godot community, seeking their thoughts on platforms similar to Roblox. He posed some "philosophical" questions and even collaborated with Ariel on a similar game in the past.

Several notable Godot maintainers and contributors, like HP van Braam (Godot's plumber, member of Godot PLC), Aaron Franke (C# maintainer), Gordon MacPherson (added FBX format support): all work at The Mirror.

Several months ago, Godot Forums was acquired by Mike Lundahl, along with his company.

https://twitter.com/Xrayez/status/1685310652552736768

In his blog, Mike Lundahl posted a video titled "Building A Great Community With Godot Forums!"

mikelundahl.com/2023/09/29/bui…

Mike Lundahl did not talk about The Mirror back then, but he mentioned the "business side of things".

Mike removed the thread that accused Godot of being a grift, and forum users perceived it as a form of censorship.

Mike does not share details. 😉

web.archive.org/web/2023072108…

Mike, just your typical admin in the Godot community, hands out bans left and right. Back in the day when I could still post, I got a private message from a user. He wasn't thrilled about Mike's rules and announcements. This was way before The Mirror partnership took place.

I described the broader context to him in private. Some of these conclusions may be slightly out of date, but they demonstrate the business relationships of Godot, W4 Games, The Mirror, etc.

For more elaborate info, you can read this article:

waiting-for-blue-robot.gitlab.io/governance/wai…

Mike ended up pulling off various antics, such as recreating "Welcome" threads and locking them, probably just because I and others raised the question about the deleted thread.

The user I had a private chat with shared his perspective on all of this.

He also commented on how the name "Godot" foreshadows these problems. More information on the choice of the name can be found here:

waiting-for-blue-robot.gitlab.io/organizational…

The next day, this user informed me that Mike locked the thread discussing the rules and that Mike didn't respond to his question. As a result, he's pretty displeased with Mike, as you can imagine.

I shed my own perspective on Mike's wrongdoings too!

Eventually, as expected, Mike banned me after I made a post on the topic of Telemetry in Godot Engine, where I attempted to discuss the topic, posting Clay John's words on the Godot team having a "productive discussion about some light opt-in telemetry."

godotforums.org/d/35841-teleme…

If you're curious about the business plans of Godot and The Mirror, rest assured that this partnership holds considerable importance for Godot's seemingly bright future... 🙃

I've also shared some posts discussing how Godot's simplicity serves as its driving force, preference for GDScript over industry-standard languages like C#, and how these technical decisions come into play with the requirements of The Mirror:

https://twitter.com/Xrayez/status/1681392690821201935

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