Add requirements for companies on the porting page

[skyace65]

Given that more companies are getting added to the porting page I figured it was time to add requirements to keep the list useful to developers.

To reiterate what's in the PR a company must have ported and published a Godot game to a console platform (Xbox, Nintendo or Playstation), there must be a way to contact them, and there must be a section of their site going over that they offer porting.

These requirements mean that the two open PRs for FIXER Group and SneakyBox cannot be merged as neither have ported and published a Godot game to console, and SneakyBox has no information on their site that indicates they do publishing.

Additionally I have removed Olde Skuul from the list. Their website has no information on them porting games, Godot or otherwise, to console. There's no contact info. They list the 3 descent games on Steam as something they have worked on yet they're not credited on the Steam store page at all. And on the "Games" page of their website clicking on any of the descent games takes you to "Battle Chess: Game of Kings" on Steam.

Mazette! technically passes if you consider the link to their Twitter and LinkedIn as a way to contact them. I'm ok with keeping it for now though I think we should ask them to add an email.

Also worth noting is this criteria does prevent W4 games, the company started by several maintainers, from being added to the list for now. To be clear In the interest of transparency I am a Godot maintainer, but do not and have never done work for W4.

Feedback on these requirements is welcome

[YuriSizov]

Additionally I have removed Olde Skuul from the list. Their website has no information on them porting games, Godot or otherwise, to console. There's no contact info. They list the 3 descent games on Steam as something they have worked on yet they're not credited on the Steam store page at all. And on the "Games" page of their website clicking on any of the descent games takes you to "Battle Chess: Game of Kings" on Steam.

Heh, you shouldn't have, these are good people 🙂 #7816

[adamscott]

Additionally I have removed Olde Skuul from the list. Their website has no information on them porting games, Godot or otherwise, to console. There's no contact info. They list the 3 descent games on Steam as something they have worked on yet they're not credited on the Steam store page at all. And on the "Games" page of their website clicking on any of the descent games takes you to "Battle Chess: Game of Kings" on Steam.

The decision to add Olde Sküül to the list was approved by the production team a few months ago. We talked to the founder of Olde Sküül on multiple occasions. We confirm that Olde Sküül is serious.

[skyace65]

While I can appreciate that you guys did talk to them, I do not think they should have been added to the page with their website in it's current state. Having them linked right now doesn't even benefit them because there's no way to contact them.

Additionally I think it's important to look at this from the perspective of what the function of that section of the page is. Godot doesn't have partial built in support for consoles right now like Unity and Unreal. So it's important to let devs know there are companies they can work with that have experience doing porting to consoles with Godot. Listing companies that haven't done this at least once, and in this case haven't worked with the engine once, defeats that purpose. If we don't have that requirement we have no reason to not add any company to that page, and at that point why not just go to google and look up random publishers?

I also don't want us to have these rules but add exceptions when the production team says it's good. We have no guarantee the first devs to try and work with them will have a good experience because that company isn't us, we have no control over how that will go. I don't like the idea of exceptions to the rule because we say so. To me that comes off as us saying "trust us bro, we've never used their services before for ourselves at all, and they've never done this before, but it will be fine." And if anything goes wrong between a developer and them, or hypothetically between another company getting it's start in the future and a developer, that would damage our reputation.

[adamscott]

While I can appreciate that you guys did talk to them, I do not think they should have been added to the page with their website in it's current state. Having them linked right now doesn't even benefit them because there's no way to contact them.

I agree that this isn't optimal. I'll reach with them to let them know about this.

Additionally I think it's important to look at this from the perspective of what the function of that section of the page is. Godot doesn't have partial built in support for consoles right now like Unity and Unreal. So it's important to let devs know there are companies they can work with that have experience doing porting to consoles with Godot.

I agree with you 100% that it's important that we triage who is on our contact list, and to make sure that they are competent. The last thing we want to happen is a bad port due to incompetence.

Listing companies that haven't done this at least once, and in this case haven't worked with the engine once, defeats that purpose.

I don't agree. You can be competent with Godot without having a port done yet. Godot isn't some arcane software, it's source code is one of the most easy to understand in fact. A software engineer (or a team) that have a lot of experience in porting games and is serious about supporting Godot should be considered by the project to be included in such lists.

If we don't have that requirement we have no reason to not add any company to that page, and at that point why not just go to google and look up random publishers?

I know that it's hyperbole, so I'm not gonna comment about this.

I also don't want us to have these rules but add exceptions when the production team says it's good. We have no guarantee the first devs to try and work with them will have a good experience because that company isn't us, we have no control over how that will go. I don't like the idea of exceptions to the rule because we say so. To me that comes off as us saying "trust us bro, we've never used their services before for ourselves at all, and they've never done this before, but it will be fine."

I agree, I don't want exceptions either. That's why I'm in favour of closing this PR. The intent is good and, in order to prevent a flood of wannabe porting developers, I understand the reason behind it. But I don't think that the rules as written are beneficial for the project, at least, not as "hard" rules.

I think that the list should be handled by the Godot Foundation, in order to prevent every company to submit PRs themselves. There should be a triage made by the foundation.

And if anything goes wrong between a developer and them, or hypothetically between another company getting it's start in the future and a developer, that would damage our reputation.

But your rules don't and can't prevent this. Again, the principle behind your rules is fine and commendable, but a porting company isn't immune to bad blood or bad ports even if they did one, one time. Here's a good reason why it should be behind the foundation's approval. It makes it possible to revoke studios that technically make the cut.

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And about that part in your PR description:

Also worth noting is this criteria does prevent W4 games, the company started by several maintainers, from being added to the list for now.

Again, I don't agree with the rules you suggest. It's not in the interest of the project, neither of it's users to not suggest, in the future W4 as a porting company because they wouldn't have done a port yet.

In order to not contradict the hard rules you set, you will prevent a company not only founded by several maintainers, but core maintainers, including the project manager and the co-founder of the engine itself. To protect users or companies that want to port their project? That doesn't make any sense.

(full disclosure, I am not part of W4, I'm employed/sponsored by GDQuest)

[paddy-exe]

Here's a good reason why it should be behind the foundation's approval. It makes it possible to revoke studios that technically make the cut.

Might I suggest then that we should instead add a section so that porting companies get in contact with the foundation first before opening PRs to be added to the page? In that case the foundation can have a final say about this and yet we can be still somewhat sure that the companies are serious about it all. This will put more work on the foundation though.

[adamscott]

I contacted Olde Sküül to ask them to update their website to have a working contact page, and they said to me that they will fix it shortly!

[skyace65]

Here's a good reason why it should be behind the foundation's approval. It makes it possible to revoke studios that technically make the cut.

Might I suggest then that we should instead add a section so that porting companies get in contact with the foundation first before opening PRs to be added to the page? In that case the foundation can have a final say about this and yet we can be still somewhat sure that the companies are serious about it all. This will put more work on the foundation though.

While on paper I like the idea of total control better than them creating exceptions to the rule. How does the foundation go about deciding who does and doesn't get added? What are the standards and what would be an example of a situation where they say no?

Edit: To be clear, I'm looking for a hypothetical example

[wkubiak]

As the founder and CEO of one of the companies which are listed on the page (Pineapple Works), I think that @skyace65's concerns are quite valid and would like to comment on this and suggest a few things.

In my mind, the doc page should inform Godot Engine users (both current and potential) about the current state of affairs while being accurate at conveying that information to the readers.

A simple rule would suffice - no entries about companies who are still only in planning stages in terms of supporting Godot Engine on consoles.

As an example, I believe the company Ratalaika was planning to support Godot Engine on consoles, going so far as showing off some screenshots of the Godot splash screen happening on dedicated hardware, but ultimately they didn't finish the ports and didn't offer it on their website - they tried to make this list here, but ultimately have been removed due to the above.

Historically there were more examples like this, to be found in the github history.

By making changes to our own entry to this page, we've always made a point to claim only what we actually have, not what we plan to do. We are very serious about adding PlayStation support to our name and it's been a work in progress for many months now, yet we don't claim to have this support right now to everybody interested, hence it's not listed as a platform that we support, even though we did port games for the PlayStation platform (just not with Godot).

So in that sense, I'd opt to keeping those companies which have something to show for them, strictly related to Godot Engine.
Being able to easily get information about their offer and being able to contact them about it is pretty obvious and self-explanatory.

For multiple reasons listed above, I don't see why Olde Skuul should be placed on the list.
I can understand the fact that somebody talked to them, that they are "good people" or that they say they are serious about things, but that can also be said about a multitude of companies. I like them too. I follow their CEO on twitter. But I really don't know what they have in common with Godot Engine and console porting at this stage.

That being said, "planning to port an unannounced Godot Engine project to consoles" also shouldn't be enough to make the list. You can't really verify these kinds of claims, often due to NDAs and other contractual restrictions.

I can also imagine some companies aiming to make the list with their business model relying on companies like W4 Games finishing their porting solutions - that's also an example of a misleading offer, at least today.
Historical example - Flynn's Arcade wanted to make the list as publisher, but then the truth came out that they don't port the games themselves, they use RAWRLab for that, which prompted the change that Flynn's entry got removed while RAWRLab stayed.

Now to add to what's already been said on the topic of eligibility - there's the matter of technicalities.

Up until now the list had a simple form. As things expanded, we had to add a couple of points to our own entry to be able to differentiate our offer as Pineapple Works from others.

For example, if someone claims being able to port a Godot Engine, do they mean 2.x, 3.x, 4.x or all?
GDScript or C#?
If they claim Xbox support - UWP-based or native?
Do they license exports? Can they port your game? Can they also publish your game?

I imagine that a table might do better at conveying all of these in a simple to digest form instead of a bullet-point with a line or two for each offering.

This might be worth a separate PR as it's more about formatting/revamping the company list, but I just wanted to mention it here as well.

[wkubiak]

I stumbled upon this video today and I think it explains things regarding Olde Skuule and @adamscott's POV around the issue.
https://youtu.be/WhdJLNxQf34?t=2558

The clip is dated September 12th and in it Becky confirms that her company is a potential W4 Games client.

Adam even participated in the stream and I'm guessing this was the catalyst for the meeting mentioned here, three days later: https://twitter.com/scottmada/status/1703111514486427963

IMO this can be treated as confirmation that Olde Skuul doesn't have anything in terms of Godot porting tech yet and they might use W4's solutions once they become available. If anybody knows better - please correct my assumption.

Again - I really have nothing against them, but IMHO this really is not enough reason to add them to the list of Godot Engine porting companies or keeping them on the list today.

[clayjohn]

Taking a look at Olde Skuul's github you can see that they maintain an open-source porting layer https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/burgerlib/. Further Olde Skuul confirmed in the meeting you mention that they indeed have Godot Ports running on consoles using this porting layer. I don't see why you bring up W4 games at all. Becky's video mentions the "godot team" which from Adam's tweet obviously means Adam, Emi, and Remi.

So lets cool it with the conspiracy theories and focus on the reason for this PR in the first place, i.e. providing helpful information to users. It is a good idea to ensure some minimum level of information on the websites linked in this page.

When we originally added the list only Lonewolf was included and their website was also very sparse. The next addition was Pineapple Works and at the time we added them they had no information about porting or Godot on their website. That is to say, we had no website quality threshold. I find it extremely unfair that we would raise the threshold all of a sudden and remove companies who have already been added.

However, as more and more companies seek to be added to the list, we should have a public set of guidelines for being added to the list.

With respect to the current proposed guideline, I would remove the requirement to have published at least one Godot game. The list is for companies who offer porting or porting and publishing. We shouldn't exclude companies who only offer porting services.

I suggest we move forward as follows:

1. Leave current list in place.
2. Add "Your website indicates that you offer porting" and "Your website includes a way to contact you" as requirements to be added to the list
3. Contact all listed companies that fail to meet the requirements and ask them to update their website ASAP

[wkubiak]

Further Olde Skuul confirmed in the meeting you mention that they indeed have Godot Ports running on consoles using this porting layer.

This sounds a lot better than "we talked to them, they are nice people and they are serious about it". Thanks.

I don't see why you bring up W4 games at all. Becky's video mentions the "godot team" which from Adam's tweet obviously means Adam, Emi, and Remi.

So lets cool it with the conspiracy theories

Alright, I apologize for my previous comment, I jumped to conclusions here. Watching the video yesterday I misunderstood what she said about getting access to repositories with console ports (which to my mind meant W4's upcoming exports). Upon rewatching, I understand my mistake and that she meant trying to establish a repository with Godot Engine porting tools being available to anybody interested, but she also noted that she doesn't want to be "that person" to be held accountable for that in front of the platform holders.

Basically - trying to solve Godot Engine's middleware problem while W4 Games wants to do that already.

I hope I got it right this time :)

When we originally added the list only Lonewolf was included and their website was also very sparse. The next addition was Pineapple Works and at the time we added them they had no information about porting or Godot on their website. That is to say, we had no website quality threshold. I find it extremely unfair that we would raise the threshold all of a sudden and remove companies who have already been added.

To be honest, I had to use the Wayback Machine to check how the Pineapple Works website looked like back in 2019, but now that I know, I have to say:

• we were only a porting studio back then so all our listed projects were porting projects and described as such
• we had our first Godot Engine ported title listed, clearly stating that it's a game made with Godot
• contact information was present as well

So I can't really speak for Lonewolf, they were the first to publicly offer Godot Engine console porting and I guess they didn't need a fancy website, but in our case I don't think you can say the same. If in doubt, you can check for yourself.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane though!

However, as more and more companies seek to be added to the list, we should have a public set of guidelines for being added to the list.

I agree! Quality standards can evolve :)

With respect to the current proposed guideline, I would remove the requirement to have published at least one Godot game. The list is for companies who offer porting or porting and publishing. We shouldn't exclude companies who only offer porting services.

Agreed. The requirement should be: ported at least one Godot Engine game.

[mhilbrunner]

Superseded by #8824. Thanks!