Here is the post and thread, I wish them all the best: http://www.torquepowered.com/community/blogs/view/20495
Thats real sad.
I hope the guys find work pretty quickly.
Sad to hear, I didn’t think Torque was hurting that bad. Hopefully they find some to buy it and continue its development, would hate to have a license for software like that that just goes dead.
There are diffidently some smarty guys working on that engine, maybe UT can scoop up a few of there developers.
Just goes to show how tight the margins are and all it took was one serious competitor like unity to rock the market to make their business unsustainable.
It would be interesting to see what the operating margin for Unity is…
I think the thread subject is a bit of a misnomer. Isn´t it more like InstantAction is closing down and torque is intended to be sold off?
I hated torque always, one of the most crappiest commercial engines. These guys were literally making money from air. I am glad this piece of rubbish is dead now.
Well,
They didn’t listen to their customers (I was one such customer) and when I spoke of documentation (I felt I had a right to point out the docs were lacking) I was told off and even kicked from their IRC channel. I didn’t even make any fuss, I just insisted that since I bought the product, I would like to see more work invested in the docs.
But senior developers there told me I should find out for myself like a real programmer would. It’s that attitude of not listening to your customers which will always, always kill you.
It doesn’t hurt to listen and agree with your customers but it does hurt if you say the customer is wrong because I’m sorry - I’m not wrong where my own money is concerned. Frankly torque was crap and the best thing they did was mel’s 2D engine, that rocked a lot.
When I came to Unity, one of the users on this board attacked me with no good reason and both Higgy B and David H responded and dealt with it. When the top man looks after his product and listens you know thats money well spent. That is why Unity is up there and others are down below.
You can have the best game engine on earth but if your customers aren’t looked after they don’t come back… 
Yes. That is exactly what is happening. IA is closing its doors and selling the Torque side of the business. It has been a great ride working there. I’ll try to let anyone who is interested know what is in the loop.
Thats a bummer.
@ugur Yea I hope they find a buyer. TGB and TX have paid my bills. So far Unity has not, but then again I am kind of new.
I think it’s about time they close the door.
i think the falling is just a logical consequence to their actions ,hippocoder is right, i was a costumer of them in the past, and their costumer service was awful, i was also atacked in a very rude way because i pointed out the lack of documentation and tutorials and the lack of polish of their 3d engines line…
the thing was that TGB was always a very decent product with a somewhat decent documentation, not the best, but existed… but for both tge and tgea was none, and as hippocoder said “I should find out for myself like a real programmer would”… thats was the way of thinking of GG, im charging you for experimental pre alpha quality software, find out how it works
garage games and now torque powered was always drowned by their own arrogance and over confidence, which lead them very often to false advertising and a very unrealistic view of the actual quality of their products
one strong point of why im using unity, its because i feel confident the developers care about their product and their costumers, in a more familiar friendly way, more like camaraderie instead of large corp vs poor defenseless costumer
i think if you are making the commitment of investing a lot time on learning a software that you intend to use for long term, at least you want the same kind of commitment from the developers, i dont want to spend 1 year of my time just to find out they better close,dont care about you anymore or change their minds and now they are going to manufacture fridges
no matter how good a tool is, if they creator does what ever its in their power to avoid you to use it, its useless
Unity prevails!
I was expecting that to happen they service and documentation was useless
sad to see them go as they did have some nice stuff… but, like others have said… poor to no documentation, bad customer service… i guess it proves true that when all else is equal, it’s the customer service experience that can make or break a company.
guys, again, you´re missing the point, its intended to have torque continued (just maintained by the company who picks it up), what is closing down now is instantaction. So yeeh, why are you all discussing torque closing down instead of talking about instantaction closing down?
Regarding that actual topic i find it kinda sad, i feel like InstantAction tried some interesting things, i´d like to know more about the details why it was ultimately closed down, was it hard to find a way to monetize the web game distribution ways or something else?
Your assuming someone picks up Torque though…
It is possible no one will.
It’s dead because every big player and their mother is backing unity. And one install a second, well there’s no catching that now.
Now there’s also rumors that Emergent Game Technologies (Gamebryo) have liquidated their assets to be put up for auction.
For reference:
www.gamingbusinessreview.com/emergentsellsassets.htm