Tag: Business

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JetBrains Investigated by FBI in SolarWinds Hack Probe

JetBrains, maker of popular development software including the likes of IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, Project Rider, the Kotlin language and even the Mono font, are being investigated by the FBI as part of the SolarWinds hack probe according to the New York Times. The product in question targeted in this investigation is their build management solution TeamCity. Please keep in mind, this is just an investigation at this point, there is no guilt established and no indication JetBrains products have been compromised.

From the New York Times article, JetBrains deny any knowledge of a compromise in their software:

JetBrains said on Wednesday that it had not been contacted by government officials and was not aware of any compromise. The exact software that investigators are examining is a JetBrains product called TeamCity, which allows developers to test and exchange software code before its release. By compromising TeamCity, or exploiting gaps in how customers use the tool, cybersecurity experts say the Russian hackers could have invisibly planted back doors in an untold number of JetBrain’s clients.

Government officials are not certain how the compromise of the JetBrains software relates to the larger SolarWinds hacking. They are seeking to learn if it was a parallel way for Russia’s main intelligence agency to enter government and private systems, or whether it was the original pathway for Russian operatives to first infiltrate SolarWinds.

Information on the JetBrains investigation are limited, there is also an extremely short article on Reuters. The extent of the SolarWinds hack continue to grow daily. After the video was published, JetBrains have issued a response to the New York Times article, included in full:

The New York Times has published a story in which they point to JetBrains being under investigation and somehow related to the SolarWinds breach that recently took place.

First and foremost, JetBrains has not taken part or been involved in this attack in any way. SolarWinds is one of our customers and uses TeamCity, which is a Continuous Integration and Deployment System, used as part of building software. SolarWinds has not contacted us with any details regarding the breach and the only information we have is what has been made publicly available. It’s important to stress that TeamCity is a complex product that requires proper configuration. If TeamCity has somehow been used in this process, it could very well be due to misconfiguration, and not a specific vulnerability. Furthermore, security is our top concern and we notify and manage updates transparently in our Security Bulletin.

Secondly, we have not been contacted by any government or security agency regarding this matter, nor are we aware of being under any investigation. If such an investigation is undertaken, the authorities can count on our full cooperation.

We remain open to answering any and all questions regarding this matter and as always are committed to delivering the best possible products and services to our customers.

Thank you
Maxim Shafirov
Chief Executive Officer

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Blender in 2021

The Blender Foundation have just announced their “Big Projects” list for Blender in 2021. It is hard to argue that 2020 wasn’t a banner year for Blender development, with three major releases as well as the first ever LTS release. Through 2020 we saw improvements to the Blender UI/UX, sculpting tools, modeling, EEVEE, Cycles and so much more. We also saw a record number of massive companies coming on board the Blender development fund. With the release today of the projects list, we get insight into the Blender priorities in 2021, including priorities such as:

  • launch of a new open movie called Sprite Fight
  • the everything nodes project, where everything in Blender will be able to be driven procedurally using nodes (see Geometry Nodes in action here)
  • all new Asset Browsers editor window for better content management
  • massive improvements to the VSE or Video Sequence Editor
  • EEVEE real-time rendering improvements including Vulkan support, motion blur, depth of field and possibly raytracing
  • VR improvements including the ability to use VR controllers and author content in virtual reality
  • Cycles rendering improvements especially related to perfromance
  • Animation 22 (previously Animation 2020), an effort to improve animation tools in Blender, sponsored by AWS
  • improved pipeline and USD support, Pixar’s open interchange format

You can learn more about the Blender’s accomplishments in 2020, as well as the new projects in 2021 in the video below.

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Blender Network Being Shutdown

Blender have announced that Blender Network is being shutdown. The Blender Network shutdown is occurring in just a few months according to the post on the Blender press site:

On March 31st 2021, Blender Network will terminate its operations. All ongoing memberships will be cancelled and have their last payment refunded. The Blender Foundation Certified Trainer program (BFCT), which was already on hold, will also stop. The blendernetwork.org domain (and all URLs) will redirect to blender.org. No data will be preserved on the blendernetwork.org server, which will be discontinued.

Originally presented by Ton Roosendaal as a whitepaper in 2010, Blender Network’s mission was to facilitate the provisioning of services and support, connect users and promote professional Blender businesses. This mission has been carried out by the blendernetwork.org platform, providing visibility and business opportunities to several hundred individuals and organizations.

However, the incredible growth of the Blender community and the rise of social media have greatly reduced the need for a Blender-backed platform to provide legitimacy and visibility to professionals. For this reason, after almost a decade of operation, it is time to retire the platform.

Fortunately, out of the ashes rise a new phoenix, with Pablo Vazquez making the following announcement on Twitter.

Followed by the follow Tweet with more details:

Unfortunately there is no successor planned for the Blender Certification Program, that was already put on hold due to a lack of focus. You can learn more about the Blender Network sun-setting in the video below.

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Amazon AWS Join Blender As Corporate Sponsor

Following quickly on the heels of last months Facebook Sponsorship of Blender, today it was announced Blender has a new corporate sponsor, Amazon AWS. This sponsorship is a bit different, in that it is aimed at improving a very specific aspect of Blender, character animation. The sponsorship will enable Blender to hire multiple developers to work over a period of 3 years on improving character animation tools in Blender.

Details of the announcement from the Blender news:

Today Blender Foundation announced that AWS has joined the Blender Development Fund as a Patron Member to support continued core development and innovation for Blender. AWS committed to a period of three years, specifically to support character animation tools development.

“We’re excited to continue to expand our support for open source solutions for our customers in the digital content creation space.” said Kyle Roche, GM of Creative Tools. “The Blender Foundation has been an industry leader in providing production-grade open source software solutions, and we look forward to helping our mutual customers work more efficiently than ever before through continued improvements in Blender.”

Two years ago, Blender Foundation started a project to redesign and upgrade Blender’s character animation system for the coming decade. Nicknamed “Animation 2020” it has a number of specs that were reviewed by character animator and industry veteran Jason Schleifer, now Creative Director at AWS.

“It has always been my preference to work closely with industry talents on improving Blender,” said Blender chairman Ton Roosendaal. “Thanks to AWS’ support we can recruit additional top developers to help us bring character animation in Blender to new heights.”

Blender Foundation will start recruiting in the course of Q1 2021, pending the current travel and meeting restrictions being lifted or relaxed.

Amazon AWS, or Amazon Web Services is the massive cloud services portion of Amazon, which provides a great deal of the backbone of the modern internet. They also have gaming divisions including owning Twitch, as well as the recently updated Lumberyard game engine. Blender is an open source cross platform 3D application that supports modelling, animation, texturing, rendering, sculpting and more. Improvements to the character animation tools will be a welcome addition. Blender development is supported by the Blender Development Fund.

You can learn more about the Amazon AWS sponsorship in the video below.

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Unity and Snap Inc Announce New Partnership

Unity Technologies and Snap Inc (parent company of SnapChat) have announced a new partnership. The partnership is a two-fold endeavour, advertising and technology integration.

Details of the advertising partnership from Business Wire:

Starting today, Unity Ads, which reaches a highly engaged mobile gaming audience on both Android and iOS, is now included in the Snap Audience Network (SAN). Snapchat’s SAN advertiser campaigns will now include video inventory from Unity’s extensive network of mobile gaming titles, helping advertisers extend beyond Snapchat. Unity Ads1 reports 22.9B+ monthly global ad impressions, reaching 2B+ monthly active end-users worldwide. In 2020, mobile ad viewers have converted at higher frequencies, with install conversion rates up by 23%2, and mobile gamers installing 84% more apps3.

“Snapchat is all about staying connected with your closest friends, but friendships aren’t just about conversations. They are often also based on shared experiences, which today includes gaming,” said Ben Schwerin, VP of Partnership, Snap Inc. “As gaming has increasingly become a visible part of the Snapchatter journey, it’s also an area that we aim to make easier for retailers and brands to reach Unity’s action-orientated gaming community through their Snapchat campaigns.”

From the same article, we get details on the new Unity integration of Snap technologies:

Available today in the Unity Asset Store, mobile game developers can also now leverage select features of Snap Kit to enhance gameplay and the game discovery experience:

– Snap Kit’s Login Kit allows gamers to use their Snapchat account as a quick way to sign up and log in to games.

– Snap Kit’s Creative Kit extends the experience by allowing users to share their gameplay, decorating still shots or 15-second videos with branded stickers, or attaching an AR lens that has been created with game branding to share with their Snapchat friends. The shares also include referral links back to the game, amplifying discovery and user acquisition for Unity developers to Snapchat’s 249 million daily active users4.

A Bitmoji integration will also be coming in early 2021, and will add a new level of personalization to gameplay. With Bitmoji for Game’s Unity SDK, developers will be able to leverage 3D Bitmoji to create a more immersive experience in games made with Unity. They will be able to bring players’ Bitmoji avatars into the center of gameplay, enabling players to be themselves in games like never before.

The SnapKit integration is already live on the Asset Store. For game developers utilizing Unity Ads, this should be an immediate win as a large group of advertisers are now going to be able to target their ad units, hopefully leading to an increase in revenue. You can learn more about the Unity & Snap partnership in the video below.

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Facebook Sponsor The Godot Game Engine

The Godot Game Engine have just been sponsored by Facebook Reality Labs. It comes in the form of a grant that is funding future XR (Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality) development. As a direct response to this grant, Bastiaan Olij is now going to be hired full time starting early 2021. In addition to being the lead developer on the Godot VR efforts, Bastiaan also worked on GDNative and other core Godot contributions. He also runs a very solid Godot technical YouTube channel available here.

Some details of the work he will be performing from the Godot news announcement:

  • OpenXR implementation for desktop and mobile. OpenXR is the new open standard for XR (Extended Reality, encompasses Advanced Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)). The OpenXR specification reached version 1.0 in 2019, and now has multiple conformant implementations by major XR players (Oculus, Microsoft, Valve, and more!). As an open source, cross-platform and vendor neutral game engine, we’re thrilled by the support that IHVs are giving to OpenXR and want to rely on it as our main interface.
  • Extending Godot’s input action system to support VR specific actions across all devices based on their respective capabilities (hand tracking, controller sensors, buttons).
  • Adapt the XR plugin system to the new Vulkan renderer design. While Godot 3.2’s XR support is functional, the upcoming Godot 4.0 release changes all the rendering backend and needs work to make XR functional again.
  • Implement Vulkan rendering on Android. This is necessary for mobile VR devices such as Oculus Quest 2, and will benefit all Godot users who want to make Android games.
  • Various rendering optimizations:
    • Stereoscopic rendering enhancements, providing details about the eye for which an image is rendered.
    • Support for compositor layers, which make it possible to render e.g. UI as an overlay without going through the eye buffer with lens distortion, allowing for sharper and more stable UI.
    • Support for variable rate shading in Vulkan, providing performance gains with techniques such as foveated rendering.
    • Rendering optimizations for mobile, implementing alternative techniques to the ones suitable on desktop platforms for better mobile performance.

This Godot Engine sponsorship from Facebook is their second in less than a month. In November it was announced that Facebook had become corporate sponsors of the open source Blender development fund. Even if you aren’t a big fan of Facebook, this investment in the Godot engine should be a win for everyone. You can learn more about the grant in the video below.

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Core Engine Monetization With Perks

Developers creating games using the Core game engine can now make money from their creation with the newly announced Perks monetization system. Lagging behind user content platforms like YouTube and Twitch, creating game content is becoming hotter and hotter. With the recent massive IPO of Roblox revealing that developers just made 1/4 billion dollars on the platform it’s obvious there is money to be made here. With the Perks monetization system, Manticore Games are offering developers a much more equitable 50% share instead of the 24.5% currently earned by Roblox developers.

Details from the Core Perks announcement blog:

With Perks, monetizing your games is easy. Simply put, Perks are in-game purchases built specifically for Core. They allow creators to sell in-game benefits and earn Credits from players. Players buy Perks with Core Credits, which creators can then easily convert to fiat (real) currency.

In just a few simple steps, you can make your game free-to-play or premium, require a membership, offer expansion packs, or whatever you want. No matter how you choose to engage and entice your players, we make it simple. And if after going in one economic direction you decide to pivot to another, you can change it up very quickly. Perks always gives you full control over the economics of your games.

Another significant difference is how developers make money and what is covered by the platform. In addition to double the earnings, the Core platform will also be taking care of a bigger portion of the workload as illustrated in this graphic.

Core Costs covered vs Roblox and Steam AppStore Etc

The Core Platform is powered by Unreal Engine and Epic Games have recently taken a stake in the company illustrating a certain belief in the idea. We went hands-on with the Core Engine when the open alpha release was announced. You can check out the video below to learn more about Core and the new Perks monetization program.

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FMOD Studio Now Free For Indie Game Developers

FMOD, perhaps the most popular audio middleware solution for games, just updated their indie developer licenses effectively making the use of FMOD free for smaller indie game developers. So what defines an indie game developer here? First you need to make less than $200K gross revenue per year and second, you need to have less than $500K USD in funding for your game title. There are also some limitations on industry, so for example gambling and simulation projects do not qualify for this license.

The primary details of this announcement came via this tweet:

FMOD Free indie license tweet.

The key paragraph from the linked legal document is the following:

This EULA grants you the right to use FMOD Studio Engine, for Commercial use, subject to the following:

  • Development budget of the project is less than $500k (Refer to www.fmod.com/licensing#licensing-faq for information);
  • Total gross revenue / funding per year for the developer, before expenses, is less than $200k (Refer to www.fmod.com/licensing#licensing-faq for information);
  • FMOD Studio Engine is integrated and redistributed in a game application (Product) only;
  • FMOD Studio Engine is not distributed as part of a game engine or tool set;
  • Project is registered in your profile page at www.fmod.com/profile#projects;
  • Product includes attribution in accordance with Clause 3.

More details about the licensing changes are available here. FMod has support for several game engines including Unreal and Unity, if you are a Godot developer there is FMOD support available via this project, as well as a GDNative version available here. To learn more about FMOD and the new indie licensing check out the video below.

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Unity Closing Unity Connect

Unity Connect was first launched back in 2016 as a sort of social hub for Unity developers. Due to declining interest Unity have announced Unity connect will be closing by February 4th, 2021. Users were sent the following email announcing the closure:

Hi User,

Today we’re announcing that on February 4, 2021, Unity Connect, our dedicated talent and sharing marketplace, will shut down. We’re proud of the community that rallied around Connect and we are inspired by the great sharing and discovery that came from it.

We want to make this transition as smooth as possible for everyone who uses Connect. If you are an active user on the platform, click here to learn more about the alternatives that will be provided for some Connect features. If you would like to download any part of your profile, please feel free to do so before we delete your information on February 4, 2021.

If you head on over to the Unity Connect website you will see a notice of the upcoming closure with the following details:

We launched Unity Connect almost four years ago in an effort to provide a free community tool for all users, of all experience levels, to connect with each other. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on February 4, 2021, we will retire Unity Connect. Some features, e.g. posting new content, creating job posts, will be locked prior to this date.

We understand that these changes might cause inconvenience, therefore, we have made sure to provide alternatives for some of the most popular Connect features, please read on to learn more.

You can learn more about the Unity Connect closure and the alternative services available for Unity Connect users in the video below.

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Facebook Joins Blender as Corporate Sponsor

Today Blender announced that Facebook would be joining the Blender Development Fund as a Corporate Sponsor. A corporate sponsor is the highest tier of sponsorship and means at least 120K euro per year in financial support, which generally gets translated as two full time developers on the project. Facebook will be joining the likes of Unity, Epic Games, AMD and NVIDIA in the corporate supporter tier.

Details from the Blender announcement:

To support these artists and the countless other animators, researchers, engineers, designers and content creators who depend on open source tools, Facebook wishes to contribute to the development of Blender. Which is why we’re proud to announce that Facebook will join the Blender Foundation’s Development Fund as a Corporate Patron as of Q4, 2020.  

We at Blender see this as another important signal of the industry’s willingness to migrate to open source, and contribute to open source’s continual improvement.

Ton Roosendaal,
Chairman Blender Foundation

Facebook currently use Blender in their AR product Spark AR Studio in addition to their ownership of Oculus. If you are worried about the corporate influence on Blender, don’t worry about it, for reasons described in this video. If you want to learn more about Facebooks support for Blender be sure to check out the video below.