Wishing everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving! Today's newsletter is a bit shorter, but don't worry—plenty more is on the way!

— Forrest Knight & Meghanadh Vasireddy

83% of Games Die in 3 Years

A new study by monetization firm SuperScale reveals that 83% of mobile games fail within just three years of launch.

The research is based on interviews with over 500 developers across the UK and US. It uncovered the startling fact that less than one in five mobile games survive beyond three years. And it gets worse as 43% of mobile games don't even make it through development.

Mobile gaming is extremely competitive and investors expect quick returns. Most revenue comes in the first year, so user drop-off means pulling the plug. Plus, small teams and budgets make it tough to keep updating games long-term.

It's a bit depressing, but the report does highlight opportunities around "legacy" mobile games that still have players but don't get investments anymore. Revitalizing old titles with new monetization could give them a second life. But for now, it's still really hard out there for mobile game devs wanting to build a forever franchise.

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Teaching AIs to Forget Harmful Data

Essentially, machine unlearning allows AI models like chatbots to selectively "forget" certain problematic data they've previously learned, without having to be completely retrained which takes tons of time and computing power. This could be a big deal for mitigating issues like biases, privacy violations, or incorrect data that can lead to harmful AI behavior.

The complex neural networks behind today's huge language models are tough to fully understand, so even the developers don't always know how or why they make certain decisions. And with the insane amount of data they train on, including things like biased societal assumptions or sensitive private info, risks emerge. Machine unlearning aims to let them efficiently ditch sketchy data on demand.

Researchers from the University of Warwick and Google's DeepMind recently published a paper introducing an algorithm that can make AI models forget specific data without hurting their overall performance. Unlike having to retrain for days from scratch, this algorithm basically goes in, targets just the data that needs removal, does its thing, and preserves the rest of the model's intelligence.

The team says it specifically handles biases, mislabeled data, and confidentiality issues, which all require different approaches. Early results seem promising as a way to keep capable AIs in check as they interact with the world. Having an efficient "undo" button could come in handy if models start going off the rails.

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GameMaker Goes Free for Indies

Game engine software GameMaker, known for powering hit indie games like Undertale and Hotline Miami, has just announced a big shakeup to its pricing that is a huge win for small and hobbyist developers.

Starting today, GameMaker Studio 2 is now completely free to use for non-commercial game development. No catches, no subscription fees, no royalties on revenue under $10k per year. As long as you're not selling your games commercially or publishing to major consoles, the full engine is yours to play around with. For anyone who's wanted to learn or dabble in game dev, it doesn't get much easier than this.

Now once you've used GameMaker to build an awesome game and want to actually sell it, there's still great news. Instead of a never ending indie subscription, there's now a flat one-time license fee of only $99 to publish your games commercially on web and mobile. Considering how feature-rich GameMaker is for rapid 2D and 2.5D game creation, that extremely fair permanent license for commercial use is a huge bonus for solo devs trying to release their passion projects.

GameMaker hasn't forgotten users already on subscriptions either. If you prepaid for any months of their old indie subscription, that money will automatically deduct from this new $99 Pro license purchase. So for many existing GameMaker fans, publishing rights just got drastically cheaper. For new users, there's now essentially no barrier to entry either.

It seems like GameMaker Studio saw the backlash against other engines hiking up prices or forcing subscriptions this year and decided to go the complete opposite direction. It’s nice to see companies responding directly to creators' needs like this, lowering the indie barrier rather than increasing it.

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